Stop, Swap, and Roll - With a Giveaway

Welcome to the Stop, Swap, and Roll with a giveaway!

I had the pleasure to swap products with Heather from Recipe for Teaching.

I was able to choose one product from her store to print, laminate, and use in my classroom.  I was so excited to find her Football ABC Activities, since a student in my SPED class, is working on his ABC's,  and he LOVES football.  I knew he was going to LOVE learning with this resource. She has so many

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G products! You should seriously go check out her TPT store!

This packet if full of engaging activities, with a football theme!  My student matched the picture to the sentence on our pocket chart, and read the poem several times to build fluency.

There is a printable version available to put in his reading journal. He found and colored the sight words and read the poem.

We played "Football ABC" where you laminate, and cut out the ABC footballs.  All the ABC Football cards went into a bag.  He chose a letter, and told me the letter and sound.  If he got the letter correct he got to color the football on his recording sheet, and then he received a trophy card for writing the letter.

He begged me to play again at the end of the game! This resource is such a fun, and engaging way to learn for kids to practice their letter and sounds.

Heather is so sweet to have this product on sale now in her TPT store.  Be sure to grab it at a discounted price while you still can!!!

You can also enter to win a copy by entering the rafflecopter below.  I will email the lucky winner their own copy!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Be sure to head over to Recipe for Teaching and enter to win my Zoo Nonfiction Passages.

Have you seen the other awesome giveaways in the product swap? Be sure to hop along below for more chances to win K-1 resources.  You can check out more grade levels on Jungle Learner's post!

Five for Fraturday and $50 TPT Giftcard

Hi y'all! Happy Saturday morning!  

I am a day late, but yesterday officially started our SPRING BREAK so I took the evening off!  Did yesterday officially start your Spring Break?
I would love to hear your plans!

 

We have been tackling multiplication with one of my math groups! During stations this past week they created a Multiplication Strategies Chart.  

Another math group in my SPED class has been tackling subtraction regrouping.  My students were have trouble knowing when to regroup when regrouping and no regrouping problems are mixed together.  This flap book by Step into 2nd with Mrs. Lemons really helped my students confidence knowing when to regroup when problems are mixed together.  They are pros now! 

I love this hands on learning interactive sight word emergent reader! 

My little reader LOVED building the sight word and pasting it. 

You can find Interactive Sight Word Emergent Readers by clicking HERE.

I could not be more thrilled to announce the launch of my Fluency and Skill Based Comprehension Notebook! Students can now keep the phonics skills they have learned throughout the year in one place to refer to during the year
and review at the end of the school year.  We have tested these in our
classroom and my kiddos have really loved reading these stories.

 

 

 

AND the WINNER is.....

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Fluency and Skill Based Comprehension Notebook

Hello Friends.

Happy Tuesday! Can you believe it is already the end of March? This month 

has been super BUSY and has flown by! 

During Daily 5 my students have always had a fluency passage where they had to find the words and write them down. However, I wanted a passage that would not only cover fluency, but comprehension and vocabulary as well.  Thus, I created the Fluency and Skill Based Comprehension Notebook.  Now students, each week, will be able to review a Phonics Skill, Comprehension, Fluency, Vocabulary, Writing, and will be able to store it in a composition notebook.  Throughout the year they can refer back to their notebook for each phonics skill and at the end of the year they will have a notebook with all the skill based patterns they learned throughout the year.

Here are a few pictures of the Fluency and Skill Based Comprehension Notebook in action.  Students can cut between the lines in the middle to the top of the passage line and can paste a word list and writing activity underneath.  This can be used during Daily 5 stations, Reading Small Groups, Intervention Groups, Homework, etc.  This notebook focuses on:

*Phonics

*Comprehension

* Fluency

* Vocabulary

*Spelling

* Writing

Students can highlight the phonics skill words.  Then, they answer three comprehension questions and one vocabulary question.  To further their comprehension they will draw a picture to illustrate the story.  To build fluency each time a student reads the passage they can color a picture clue from the story. Students can cut between the lines to the top of the passage line and paste the writing activity underneath the comprehension questions. 

 Now, students can focus on writing the phonics pattern words from the passage and a sentence using one or more of the pattern words

Students can paste a word list underneath the writing passage. 

Another look at how students can paste a word list and writing activity underneath the reading passage and comprehension questions. 

If you want to check out this product in my TPT store you can click the 

picture below. 

Save HUGE with the Growing Bundle!

What's Included?

* Short Vowel Word Families

* Digraphs Coming 

* Blends Coming 

*Long Vowels Coming May 2015

* R- Controlled Vowels Coming June 2015

* Diphthongs Coming June 2015

When the bundle is finished it will have over 100 passages.  You can check out the Growing Bundle by clicking the picture below.

Clipart Credit: Melonheadz Illustrating, Creative Clips

Font: Kimberly Geswein

i Teach First

Hello Friends.

I have a very exciting announcement to make! 

I have decided to team up with some of my very best first grade buddies to write for a collaborative blog! 

That means ONE blog with TONS of great ideas from several super awesome First Grade teachers!

One thing I L-O-V-E about this blog, is you will know exactly what to expect each day of the week.  For every day, there is a blogging theme.  Check them out! 

I'm SO excited to get started on this new adventure, and am thrilled to invite you along for the ride.  Let's celebrate with a little giveaway!  

You can win my Mega We’re Going to the Zoo Unit!!! 
This giveaway will starts March 15th and ends Friday, March 20th.

All you have to do to enter is follow us over at iTeachFirst then follow the instructions (in the rafflecopter/on the image below).  

a Rafflecopter giveaway

*Follow us on iTeachFirst!* 

Can't wait to get started sharing some great First Grade ideas with you!

An InLinkz Link-up

Clipart Credit: Melonheadz Illustrating, Creative Clips, Sonya DeHart Design
Font: Kimberly Geswein

Wild West Unit

Hi y'all! This week we worked on my Wild West Unit.  Every year the SRO officers host a Rodeo event for the special needs students in our county.  We had so much fun learning about all things cowboys and the Rodeo for the past week!

Here are my favorite Read Aloud's for the unit.

We started the week with a text evidence passage on Cowboys.

This is the circle map we created while brainstorming and 

writing adjectives to describe cowboys.  

We labeled a cowboy and cowgirl in whole group while students 

completed a bubble map listing cowboys clothing.

Then, they labeled their own picture. 

In Work on Writing one of the activities this week was to create a poem for a cowboy and cowgirl.

Around the room is always a classroom favorite to build student vocabulary.

Students unscrambled sight words and dabbed it on their 
sight word cowboy hat recording sheet.   

They worked hard finding the pronoun that takes the place of the noun(s) and writing their own sentence with that pronoun.

Every cowboy loves eating beans so I had to bring some out 
for math stations this week.

Every cowboy and cowgirl needs a pair of boots, so we went
shopping for cowboy boots!

Another math station where they had to figure out which 
<,>,= symbol made sense.

You can grab this FREEBIE from my unit by clicking the picture below.

Unfortunately, for the Rodeo a winter storm hit our area so we will be out of school tomorrow for our field trip.  
Here are a few pictures from last year.

You can check this Wild West Unit in my TPT store by 
clicking the cover below.

Font: Kimberly Geswein

Elf on the Shelf

I absolutely LOVE having an Elf on the Shelf in our classroom!  It's always a 
treat seeing the children light up each morning trying to find elf.  Having a classroom elf is also a great tool for behavior management.

One of the first thing we did was we watched An Elf's Story on DVD.  
It  was thrilling seeing how amazed the kids were watching this movie.  

After the movie was over we wrote letters to Santa asking him to PLEASE send our class an elf.  Then we sealed the letters in an envelope and mailed them.

The next day the front office called our room to let us know we had a package from Santa Claus.  I had put the package in our freezer the night before so when the kids felt the package the next day they could feel how cold it was.  I printed out a "Special Delivery"  tag found at Kinder-Craze.  The children were excited and couldn't believe they received a package from the North Pole.  We opened the package and found a letter from Santa Claus.   Our classroom elf was secretly hidden in one of our table caddies until the package was opened.  Right away my students voted on the name, Chippy for our classroom elf.  Here are a few pictures of Chippy in action.

We went to France in our Holidays Around the World Globe Trot with Scott.  

Chippy had gotten into the Buche De Noels.

   

                        

Chippy surprised us ALL!!! I thought Chippy was going to decorate our Writing Station with post-it, but when I came in to class the next morning there were the sweetest notes on my kiddos desk!  It turns out a 5th grade student at our school had the idea and wanted to write an encouraging note for every student.  Him and his mom put a message on every students desk or locker in our school the same night.  Goodness that just completely melted my heart at such an act of kindness at how one child made such a difference.

 

Chippy brought mini cards for our students to write to Santa.  Found these in Mel's  Ultimate Classroom Elf Kit.

Merry Christmas everyone!!!