Read to Self and the Interactive White board

This past week I really started my kids on read to self. They are starting to take off as readers and this time of year is the perfect time for me to introduce something that becomes a staple in our routine. You have to remember I have my kids for 2 years. So we start read to self in Kindergarten but in first grade it is something we do everyday without fail. So this week, they had their book bags which had books from the leveled library that came with our reading series and the sight word readers they made themselves. They were getting all excited to tell me the popcorn words they found while we were reading. So I had to come up with something to get them to not yell them out but still encourage their reading. I hate to get on to them when they are so excited about being able to read a word. So I told them to be on the look for the words and then when we gathered on the carpet they could share a word they found. I just used an open flipchart on the board but it got me thinking.
I use my promethean board for everything. If you have followed my blog for a while, you know that I make flipcharts each week to go along with our reading series. I also use a calendar one everyday. So after asking some questions on my facebook page, I created this freebie. It is a pdf file that has several questions for your students to focus on during self selected reading time or really any reading time. This is just to try it out and see how it works. It has one for sight words (popcorn words as I call them), words that you stretch out, words that have g in them, words with short a and words with short i. These are the skills we're working on in my classroom. From my experiences with a promethean board, you can import the pdf into a flipchart or you can open up active inspire and use the desktop feature so your students can write directly on the page. I know nothing about smart boards but I've been told you can import pdfs into smartboard files as well. If you grab this freebie and use, I would love to hear some feedback. This is something I'm excited about but I'd love to hear how it works for others.

Click here to download the freebie from google docs. 

The weatherman is calling for snow Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I was really hoping for a five day week again. We are suppose to celebrate the 100th day on Tuesday and then go on a field trip on Wednesday. We'll see what really happens with the weather. I'm so ready for spring break! I set up new centers on Friday so I can't wait to show you what they are later this week!