Back to School is coming!!!

Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

I know - it's a scary thought reality!!!!  

I'm sorry to even say the words......Back to School.  

But let's be honest.  It's not that far away now, and closer for some than for others.  So let's start thinking about how we can prepare.  

I don't know about you, but I have been stalking Target, Hobby Lobby and a few other places all summer long looking for the best deals and the cutest little bins, buckets, and supplies.  Why, oh why, do we teachers spend so much dang money on our classrooms (and have so much fun doing it!?!).  

I know, I know!!!  

(I say as I wave my hand in the air like my new students will likely be doing soon enough.)  

We buy cutesy new things for our classrooms and spend our money on supplies because we love to see the looks on the faces of our little ones when they walk through the door and see their new HOME!  It's one of the many reasons why we love teaching so much.  As much as we all dread the end of another summer and the freedom we get with it, we also secretly love the excitement of the first day of school. Come on - admit it - you feel the same way too.   

If there ever comes a time when I don't feel that way, then that should be when I retire.  I say retire because I am positive it will not be happening for a LONG time, if ever.  I feel like I'm going to be one of those lovely, older, experienced teachers who doesn't want to retire and has to be kicked out.  I'll have to dragged out kicking and screaming - dragging my chevron and polka dotted decorations behind me!

So back to how we can prepare for going back to school.  I don't actually go back until after Labor Day (I'm sorry if that makes you hate me right now, but you get out earlier I'm sure =)  I will definitely be posting pictures of my classroom when I actually get around to organizing and decorating it.  I also have to find room for all of this stuff... (remember I mentioned I had been shopping just a teeny bit).

Even though my room is nowhere near ready 

I have been thinking A LOT about what I plan on doing those first few weeks of school.  This will only be my 2nd year teaching 1st grade.  It is my 12th year teaching, but I taught 3rd and 4th grades for 10 years.    Last year I was in survival mode with the implementation of Common Core, all the changes with teacher evaluation, and being my first year in a new grade level.  It was fun, but I have so many ideas for what I want to do differently this year.  

But before I talk about all of the things I plan to change (that will have to be another post), I have to get through the first week of school.  Yikes!!   

So here are a few ideas I've been throwing around for that first week.  

I will start with some things from my Welcome Back Pack.  

I've always loved reading First Day Jitters by Julie Dannenburg on the first day of school and I also found First Grade Jitters by Robert Quackenbush - how perfect is that?   I will start with this First Day Feelings survey and class graph after reading one or both of those books.  The picture of the graph is just an example to show what it might look like.  

We will also make Jitter Juice from Babbling Abby's Fun with Firsties to ease the nerves and have a little snack break =)  

We will compare our summer with school like this example from First Grade Honeybunch.  

We will reminisce about our summers *tear* with a little summer writing (which is really my teacher way of getting a quick writing sample to see where they are at).   

We will HAVE to finish on a high note and not get totally depressed that our summers are over, so we will then come back together and talk about all the amazing things we will be doing this year in first grade - like learning to READ!!!!!!  That's a big one!  I will give some beautiful, could hear a pin drop, speech about how reading opens the doors to anything you will ever do in life like driving, traveling the world, and of course social media like texting, Facebook, etc. (I'm not totally serious, but I know they will think this is the best part =(   

Next, we're going to need to break up the sitting, because I don't know if you know this or not, but kids (and adults too) who are just coming back to school after a summer vacation are not so good at sitting for long periods of time and their attention spans are mere minutes at best.  So it is extremely necessary to plan for multiple breaks in the day.  My Find a Friend activities will give us that opportunity to get up and walk around.  

These are perfect for any student because there is no reading involved - just pictures.  I would introduce this by going through the pictures and pointing out what they are and what they might think of when they see them (a little inferencing on the first day of school - take that Common Core!)  Then they walk around and get other kids to sign their names next to a picture they like.  When we come back together to share I have students share what they picked and why.  For example, I might pick the dog and say that I have a black lab named Molly and tell a little about her.  There are 4 different versions of this so I can do 1 each day to get up and moving.  

The next thing that I think we probably all do is some getting to know you activities or All About Me.  I created an All About Me banner that will be perfect to hang up in the hallway or on a bulletin board.  So excited to do these this year!  There are a couple variations to choose from.  

I will probably choose this one 

I also have this super cute Math About Me craftivity that I like to do with the kids.  

We discuss how math and numbers are everywhere and how we can even describe ourselves using numbers.  The craftivity above is a freebie in my TpT Store, but I also just wrote a poem to go with it.  You can download the poem HERE if you'd like it.

To finish off my pack, I also have included a Back to School interactive mini-book and some printables/coloring pages to fill time or use as morning work.  

In addition to all this FUN, I also need to take care of some business.  That business will be ROUTINES, ROUTINES, ROUTINES!!!!  I will be modeling like a crazy woman and pointing out when students are following rules.  I will be positive and upbeat, but when needed we will stop what we are doing and go back to the carpet to review a routine or a rule.  Here are a bunch of books I plan on reading those first few days as we discuss rules and routines and make anchor charts.  

I don't have any formal plans for these yet, but I am working on a few things to go along with some of these books, and others will be just discussions and connections.  We will work through our class rules that first week (more to come in a later post on that) and more routines.  

So I hope you got some good ideas from my First Week of First Grade plans.  I'd love to hear what you are doing in your own classrooms (or are planning on doing), so leave me a little note =)

Click HERE to go to part 2 of this post - I Survived the First Week - Now What?
Some more freebies and a chance to win!!!  

They're not short, they're FUN size!

Hehe!!!  I'm still giggling over the title of this post.  I originally was going to have this as a tag line on the cover of this pack I'm here to talk to you about today, but it didn't really fit.  So instead, I got to use it as the title of this post.  

I was here not too long ago posting to you about how I teach phonics and I showed some snapshots of my Phonics "Ph"riends Bundle of Blends.  While writing that post I was still working on my short vowel pack.  I had a few of my wonderful, amazing followers contact me to give a little more detail about what's in this one now that it is complete.  So to those fabulous friends - here is a closer look at The Short Family.  

Have I ever mentioned how much I appreciate all of you - those who comment and email, and those who just visit and read.  It is an honor to have you here!  And if you ever want to see me do a post on something, ideas or products or whatever, don't hesitate to ask.  I will always try to deliver.  Since it's summer, I don't have any student pictures for this post - so sorry =(  But I hope I was able to give you enough pictures to see what you're getting.

Ok, back to this "little" family.  

As I've mentioned before, I really like giving my students something visual and tangible to connect to whenever learning something new.  I think it's so much more engaging and fun to connect to characters when dealing with phonics and word work.  If I could write and illustrate my own children's books, this is something I would love to do.  But, since I do not have those skills (not even a little bit), I get to grab some super cute clip art from some super talented people to help do it for me.  (The Short Family characters are from Jessica Weible in case you were wondering).

So in order to introduce my students to these new characters I use the posters you see below.

I made posters with each character and then I have posters that include some of the graphics from their stories on it.  I like to use the plain posters to introduce the characters and brainstorm other words we know that have that sound.  Then I put them into the Picture Sort and Word Sort centers below to use as sorting mats.  As we read each character's stories, then I bring out the posters with the extra graphics.

This is just an example of the mini-book for Dad, but there is one for each character.  I tried to include as many different words for them to read and practice.  The readability should be appropriate for those lower readers since I tried to include some early sight words and mostly decodable text.  I read these stories to the students when I introduce the characters and then they have the chance to reread the books, highlight the short a (in this book) words and trace them.  Of course they can color them if they have time too.  We keep these in their book bins for free reading time.

Here is just 1 example of each type of practice page included.  There are 8 pages of cut and paste sorts with different word families and 5 pages of both the read and draw and highlight and write - one for each short vowel.  

Next up are the 9 literacy centers included in this pack.  These are perfect for your word work stations in your classroom.

The first center is Rollin' with _____.  Each character has a separate center.  You will need dice for these centers.  Basically they roll the dice and then pick a beginning sound letter card.  So if they roll a 1 in Rollin' with Dad and pick the letter b it would make the word bat.  Then they decide if the word is real or nonsense and record it on the sheet.  This would have to be modeled whole class so there isn't any confusion when they get to the center.  As I write that I'm thinking, Duh!  You of course would know you have to model how to do each center.  Thank you Captain Obvious!  =)

Next up is this picture sort center.  There are tons of picture cards. You don't need to use them all, but could pick and choose which ones work for you.  Or you could use some one time and then change them the next time for a whole new center.

The same goes for the Word Sort center - there are tons of words and you can pick and choose which ones you want.  I included two direction sheets for this one because I know a lot of teachers like to do write the room.   Personally, I would rather have the students complete this on the floor or at a table so they can use the sorting mats.  I included a few choices of flip charts to use for recording at this center.

Silly Sentences is the next center.  Students have to find the same colored words and put them together to make a sentence.  There are 5 sentences to make, but I only have my students choose 2 of them to write on the recording sheet and illustrate them.  

 

And finally is Word Detectives.  This center is meant to go along with a reading book.  You could do this with students during guided reading or you could have them complete it on their own, possibly during Read to Self time or DEAR or whatever you do in your classroom.  **FYI-The typo in the direction sheet has been fixed in the product - thank you to Lori for catching it for me.  I love when people are looking out for me.  =)

I hope this helps you see what is included in this pack and how I use it with my students.  If you wanted a closer look at the Bundle of Blends you can click on the picture below to go that post.  Or if you are a blogger, you can link up a post of your own about how you teach phonics and do word work in your classroom.

Ok now for the fun part.  Those of you who made it all the way through that long post now get the chance to win this or any of my Phonics "Ph"riends products.  

Here's what you have to do to win:

1. Pin any picture from this post OR from the How to Teach Phonics post and write a brief comment about what you like about it or what it is.  

2. Leave a comment below that includes the URL of your pin AND your email address so I can send it to you if you win.  

If there is something else in my store that you want instead, you can hop over there and pin the product and leave that URL instead.  I will pick 2 winners using a randomizer.  You can enter as many times as you want and each pin will be a different entry.  You have until Monday night after the finale of the Bachelorette to pin.  I'll pick the winner after I'm done watching this little guilty pleasure.  I hope poor Des ends up with someone.  The commercials don't look too promising.  

Ok - enough reality gossip ---- get pinning!!!!

Back to School Shopping

Oh Target and Hobby Lobby - how I love you so!!!!!

Actually below are pictures of a shopping spree at those fabulous stores and also Dollar Tree and Staples.  

Saved my receipts for my teacher write-off, of course, but they really need to increase the amount us teachers can claim on our taxes.  Really - $250???  In a whole year???  I know we all spend WAY more than that on our classrooms.  Oh well...

So here is what I am planning for some of the things I bought.

I plan to use the Fly Swatters to swat and read sight words (probably at a group with me or another adult so it doesn't get out of hand).   Or maybe as a whole class activity to swat the words that rhyme or have a short a sound or something like that.  

I think I'll have to make a fun Fishing for Sight Words center with this cute fishing pole from the Dollar Tree.  Maybe I'll turn a dish bin into a small pond (minus the water).  They could fish for sight words and then use the ones they get in a sentence.  

Math, huh?  Well the heart is perfect for working on combinations to 10.  I think I'll save it for Valentine's Day and use conversation hearts.  

And the plain white plastic tablecloths????  Ok - this is a project.  I plan to make a life size tens frame on one of them and a life size number line on the other.  I haven't decided how to do it yet - I'm thinking some fun duct tape to start.  Not sure about the rest yet.  Any suggestions???

Here are some Dollar Tree finds for kids to use when tracking as they read.  I will be gluing the googly eyes on the popsicle sticks so everyone has their own, but then the others will be special ones for centers or guided reading.  

Washi tape and chevron - Yes, please!!!!  

I have lots of little things planned for the washi tape - nothing big yet.  I'm going to use one of the chevron fabrics to cover a small cork board that I have next to my desk.  Not sure about the other one yet.  

 I'm new to Scentos, but I'm sure my kiddos will LOVE them!!!  And do you see those adorably oversized push pins.  Fun!!!

This is what my classroom looks like right now.  Nothing was put back where it was and I was missing a few pieces of furniture that I had to hunt down around the school.  Ugh!!!  So much to do!!! 

Here are just a couple of the things I've been working on at home (when I'm not stressing about my classroom or shopping).  A new lunch clip chart and some math resources.  You can find the math resources in my TpT store.  Let me know if you're interested in the lunch chart and I will make it a freebie.  I wasn't sure though since each school has their own choices for lunch and ways of saying it.  

And finally, some things to hopefully make you laugh.  If you follow me on Instagram you have seen these already.  

I'm potty training my youngest right now.  It is my least favorite thing about parenting.  She's doing great, but there's always a few slip-ups along the way, so this is my new best friend.

And I just loved this e-card (despite the typo).  Hilarious!!!  (I took this picture of my computer screen so it got all wacky - sorry). 

 

Oh, and have you seen this free resource that was just added to TpT???

This one is for Math K-2 Common Core resources put together by the amazing Rachelle Smith at What the Teacher Wants.  There is going to be an ELA K-2 that Deanna Jump is putting together too.  There are also ones for 3-5 and tons more.  Click on the picture to go to TpT to download it for free.  You will find TONS of great tips for implementing common core standards and freebies!!!

 I hope you are enjoying your summer, even if you're getting ready for going back to school.  

How to Teach Phonics Linky

I have to start out with a little disclaimer---------

I DO NOT HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS 

(not even close, really!)
Which is why I'm making this a linky so you can link up with what you do in your own classrooms =)

So, I am writing this post, not to TELL you how to teach phonics, but to EXPLORE how to teach phonics. If I did have all the answers, as if there was only ONE way to teach phonics, then I'd be very famous.    But... sigh... I don't, and I'm not.  And as far as I know, there are a variety of different approaches and theories about how children learn to read.  Teaching phonics isn't necessarily included in some of those theories.   But for me, my own theories, and the district I teach in - we teach phonics.  Even looking at the Common Core Standards, I think a teacher would almost have to teach phonics (and phonemic awareness) in order to reach those standards.  (Again, I could be wrong because remember I don't have all the answers).  

So where does one start when trying to teach children how to read.  Hmmm - this could take a while.  I think I'll skip ahead --- past letter recognition and past phonemic awareness where children learn about the sounds our letters make, or the phonemes.

Hold on - I already went too far.  I think I need to briefly talk about phonemic awareness.  Obviously, children need to be able to recognize their letters in order to read, but more importantly, children need to realize that letters have sounds, those sounds come together to make words, and those words make sentences.  Phonemic awareness is all about children HEARING the sounds and being able to segment the sounds.  You can practice this with children by segmenting sounds out loud for them and with them.  For example, what sounds do you hear in cat?  /c/ /a/ /t/  What if I change the /c/ to /h/ - what word would that make?  And so on.  These activities can be very difficult for pre-readers, but the modeling and guided practice is oh so important.  After they can hear the sounds, they need to represent the sounds and manipulate the sounds.

Here is a quick video from YouTube that shows some things you can do when teaching phonemic awareness.  Love the hand movements!

This is where I would say the phonics instruction comes in - linking the sounds they hear to the letter or letters that make those sounds.  And of course, the English language has to make things extremely difficult for us by having rules and rule breakers and ifs and only whens.   It can be confusing for sure.      But as the teacher, you need to provide direct teaching and then multiple opportunities for students to practice.  With almost any learning, the way to get better is PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!!!

So here is a list, in no particular order, of some ways to practice:

• Show students the letters that make the sounds-using flashcards or something visual 
• Give students examples of words with those letters/sounds.  
• Think of other words with those sounds and chart them.  Give nonsense words as well, but identify them as such.  Keep the charts up if you can.  Displaying word families is one to do this. 
• Make words using tiles, playdoh, Wiki stix, magnetic letters, stamps, etc.  Elkonin Sound boxes are helpful when doing this.
• Read the words in context - using decodable readers when possible so there is multiple exposure.

This is an example of a decodable reader that comes in our reading program - Treasures.  There are many others out there - Reading A-Z is a great online resource with printable books.  

• Practice writing the words - alone and in sentences
• Sort the words 
• Be a detective and find the words - either in your reading or write the room activities
• Make it kinesthetic and/or musical and use movements or music to reinforce the sounds

And so much more!

I KNOW there are many other activities that you can do, but this is a list of what I work hard to do in my own classroom.

Here's the MOST IMPORTANT THING about all of those activities  . . .

MAKE IT FUN!!!

Remember I said how important it is to practice, practice, practice?  Well, when it comes to many things, repetitive practice can get *yawn* boring.  It's the teacher's job to make it interesting!  Spice it up!  Find something fun and go with it....and then after a while, find something new.  Of course you want routines in there, but you also need to keep things interesting and keep your students on their toes.  Children become machines if they are doing the same activities day in and day out.  They need something shiny to make it new again - which could be as simple as using a witch's finger pointer around Halloween to point to words on a chart.   Especially for younger children, little changes make a big difference.  

Here's why I think it's important to make it fun:

One day, as I was using yet another worksheet from our Treasures program this past year, and looked around the class at my children practically falling out of their chairs from boredom, I decided I wanted to make something that was going to make this more fun and exciting - both for my students and for me.  I get bored teaching with worksheets too!  That night, as I was sitting at home, after my kids went to bed, my Phonics "Ph"riends were born.  I thought, wouldn't it be so much more fun to tie each sound to a character?  And have each character have its own story?  We could connect to the character and not just the sounds.  So here is what came from that late night brainstorming.

These pictures are from my R-Blend Pack, but is representative of the other Phonics "Ph"riends packs as well.

I use these reference posters to display when we are doing whole group activities like making anchor charts and sorting words in pocket charts.  I like to keep these up for reference.

Of course you still need some practice pages, but these are way more interesting than just a worksheet.  These pages have your kids cutting and pasting, highlighting, and drawing.

And of course, probably the most important of all, are the literacy centers where students can work together in groups to practice their new sounds independently.

You can find my Blends packets by clicking on the picture below.

I also have a Digraphs pack in my store right now.  You can click on this picture to go to my store.   I added a few pictures of my students' work from last year below.

   

  

    

I will end off with another quick video from the amazing Teacher Tipster where he explains a cute center you can make with your students' photos.  Love it!!!

I'd love if you link up your own blog posts below to share some ideas and activities you use to teach phonics and things you do for word work in your classroom.  Just grab the picture at the beginning of this post and link it back here.  Can't wait to read about what you're doing in your classroom!  If you don't have a blog, you can tell me about it in the comments.