Teacher Clip Art, Literary Resources, Classroom Ideas
Do you ever show your kiddos the phonics videos on youtube?
My kids just love them. We have collected lots of really good ones, especially for phonics rules like Bossy E.
Harry Kindergarten is their all time favorite – they know every word and sing it LOUDLY!
Harry Kindergarten – One of my favorites!
Just a warning – this one might stick in your head all day!
Magic E Kids
Silent E Song
Silent E Electric Company – An old favorite!
Another Magic E Song
Nessy Reading Strategies [Read More…]
10 Apps for Encouraging Reluctant Writers
Do you have ipads in your classroom this year? Are you looking for ways to encourage your reluctant writers? I am always on the lookout for fun new activities for my young writers.
Each year, I have students in my class who just LOVE to write. When I ask them to write one sentence, they write five. If I give them a few scraps of paper, they’ll staple it and create their own fully illustrated [Read More…]
Fairy Tales are well proven vehicle for Readers’ Theater, but the engagement and learning increases significantly when you also incorporate masks and interactive play.
Here’s how we explore fairy tales in my class.
Character Masks
Creating masks is a fun way to incorporate art into your literacy activities. They are so fun, and sometimes I almost can’t recognise the students underneath!
I love that there’s lots of laughing when the kids walk around with these on!
Letter Writing
Letter writing to the fairy tale characters is also [Read More…]
Does your early literacy time sound like this:
Teacher, how to you spell….?
“What does this word say?
When early readers hear the answer “Just sound it out”, do they really know what you are talking about?
Do they know what that means?
How can we support them further with the risk-taking involved in early reading strategies?
So many students feel anxiety when left on their own to read, and as we know, this anxiety greatly impedes their ability to process information and focus.
Over the last [Read More…]
If you’ve read many of my posts, you’ll know by now that we integrate almost all of our content area in class. Rarely do we let an opportunity go by for writing, and using out own art is so motivating!
But, we do keep it simple.
For example, we studied the art of Ted Harrison, who painted in the north of Canada. His colorful but simple images are perfect for elementary students.
We googled his artwork and simply talked about what we [Read More…]
We’ve been working on letter blends in our classroom, and I got a new set of Letter Buddies Blends books from Hameray Publishing to use with the class.
Here’s what we did this week:
The first thing we did was take some time to look through the books together. The students quickly noticed that each book had words with the same beginning blends. The clear pictures and simple text made even my lower readers feel confident.
Next, I passed out one book to [Read More…]
I am always searching for fun new ways to teach core skills: phonics, phonological awareness, spelling patterns, etc. One day, one of my students brought it a pop-up book, and I saw students’ eyes light up with interest. How do they work? Are they magic? Can we make some?
With this in mind, the newest addition to our writing center is a class favorite: Pop Up Phonics booklets!
Each booklet is made with just one page, folded twice, and cut once on [Read More…]
We’ve decided to embrace the idea of STEM in our classroom.
We’ve also explored STEM outside of the classroom! This is where creativity flourishes and students feel the freedom to be themselves and let their natural curiosity lead them.
Since almost everything we’ve done this year has fallen under the category of “integrated learning”, I’m not surprised that my students have completely embraced STEM projects.
Projects that integrate science, math, engineering, art and more? Sounds fantastic, especially when we bring it outside where [Read More…]
There’s a lot of attention on integrated learning. Many schools are moving away from the traditional “single subject blocks” model to a multi-subject, project-based model.
Here’s a quick video from Edutopia to explain the benefits of this approach.
Click for Introduction Video
Project-based learning is perfect for this kind of approach. Why? Within each project there are multiple problems to solve. Each problem is drawing from knowledge in various subject areas.
Our school adopted Genius Hour as another way to facilitate project-based integrated learning. [Read More…]
Assessment can be difficult for both teachers and students, depending on how it’s done.
Here’s a super simple little trick for assessment that I call Hop Across the Pond. It can be used for a lot of different things, but I use it mostly for assessment of students’ sight word knowledge.
I used to ask my students to read through a list of sight words and tick off the ones they knew; I’d use this for reporting and to know which words to [Read More…]
