Reading Groups and some freebies

I feel like I've been searching the whole time I've been teaching for the best ways to do guided reading or small group reading. Last year I felt like I had a pretty good handle on it because I would read with students individually. This year, I'm striving again to figure out what I want this part of my day to look like. I read a couple of interesting blog posts last week about what guided reading really was and how it had no place in the common core. I then read a response to that on another blog. (I'm sorry that I have no idea which blogs it was I was reading. I do most of my blog reading on my phone which is kind of a pain) This got me thinking. I have been planning on posting about my reading groups for a few weeks now and I was planning on calling it guided reading. I'm not really sure it's guided reading in the definition sense. I'm reading with students and working on word skills or comprehension skills depending on the day and the group. I haven't mastered the scheduling part of this or the planning part of this. I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants on most days. I have an idea of where all my students are and what they need to work on. I make notes as I'm reading and working with them. But I don't sit down when I do my lesson plans and plan out small group lessons. I probably should. I'd really like to but I just can't get a handle on things this year. I have felt like I'm behind since day one.

Anyway, I had a few things I did want to share that I'm doing that are working well. One is these dry erase circles I bought at big lots over the summer. I put them on my reading group table and the kids love writing on them.

It makes doing word work and responding to a story really easy. Here's a couple of pictures of my students responding to a story.
Another thing that I'm enjoying is these notebooks that I made. I don't remember whose blog I saw this idea on this summer but it was genius. I have four notebooks (usually this is enough for everyone to have one.) In the notebook there are pencil pouches with dry erase markers, sentence strip dry erase boards from target, fluency practice, sight word practice and my word work activities. It is so nice to have everything at my fingertips and to be able to add to it.
I made the fluency pages that focus on our phonics and spelling pattern for the week. I offered them as freebie a while back. I am offering the next unit this post (at the end). These are based on the spelling pattern for treasures for first grade and this is unit 2. I also have some sight word phrases I got from Sally at Elementary Matters this summer. The last page is my making words activities from my falling for words pack on Teachers Pay Teachers. Which if you go check it out right now, it is a flash freebie. You will be able to download it for free until in the morning. (Check that out here.)  
(This item is no longer free. It was a freebie from Oct. 16 at 5:04 to Oct. 17 at 7:14 am)

Here are a couple of pictures from my notebook:

If the flash freebie wasn't enough freebies for you, here's the fluency freebie.



Click here for this freebie.
If you download either one of my freebies, I would love it if you would follow me here and on Teachers Pay Teachers. I would love it even more if you left me some comment and feedback love. What are you doing for reading groups? Are you weighing in on the guided reading has no place in the common core? I would love to hear what's going on in your classroom.

Promethean Board Ideas

First up I need to announce the winners of my giveaways.
Day 1 giveaway winner was Cathy Irwin.
Day 2 Giveaway winner was Kirra.
Day 3 giveaway winner was Mrs. B. I've sent emails to all of you so hopefully you will receive all your goodies soon.

I have had a really hard time getting back into blogging since school started. It has been so hard to  balance everything. On top of school, I feel like Chris and I are so busy all the time. He's a boy scout leader and a youth leader. I help with the youth and also teach a class on Wednesday nights. We just started a Sunday school class for young adults. I'm really not sure how we're going to balance everything when we decide to start a family. Then on top of all this I've had jury duty and dealing with my knee issues. It looks like I'm going to have surgery the week before Thanksgiving on my ACL. We went yesterday to get a second opinion and although I'm still not going to be able to run, I feel a lot more positive about it all. I'll be out of school at least a week and on crutches probably close to 6 weeks. They gave me the crutches last night and I'm suppose to be practicing with them.( I got tired of being at school and just stopped this post yesterday afternoon.)
This is Wednesday now. This is my third go on writing this post. I'm determine to get it written today. I haven't been blogging like I would like. I like to blog about ideas and things that are going on in my classroom. I don't think I've done that much lately. But I was happy to see that pictures from my blog are being pinned and I'm getting some traffic on some older posts. So I've tried to revamp some of those posts and ideas. I reblogged about apple week activities on Smedley's Smorgasboard of Kindergarten blog on Monday. You can check that out here. I offered a freebie so you might want to head over there when you finish reading this post.
Another topic that gets a lot of traffic on my blog is my promethean board posts.  I love my board. I don't know how I ever taught without it. I use it for everything. Last year when I was in kindergarten I created a chart to go with every letter. I have a couple to share with you if you are interested.
Flipchart on the letter A
Flipchart on the letter M
Flipchart for the letter P
Flipchart for the letter S
Flipchart for the letter T
I also use my promethean board to do calendar each day. This is my kindergarten one you can check out.
Calendar flipchart for Kindergarten In first grade I do things a little different. So I'll have to post again and share some of my resources for first grade.
Here's a flipchart that I use for literacy centers. They are pages taken from my letter charts for the week.
Center flipchart

Hopefully this will help someone out. I'm always getting emailed about my flipcharts and now you can get all of them from this post. I'll be back next week with a post on first grade flipcharts.
I hope to be back later this week with some information about reading groups.
Let me know if these flipcharts help you out any.

Product Swap Fall Edition

I am so excited to be partcipating in the product swap hosted by Mrs. Standford's Class. I participated over the summer and had a blast. This time I was partnered up with Michelle from Just Wild about Teaching.
I looked over her store for something I could use with my class before the swap had to be posted about. I found the perfect item her September 11th packet. (You can click here to get to her TPT store and this item.) I had every intention of doing this packet with my kids the week of September 11th but the school system had different plans. We had to do standardized testing the week of September 11th and I just didn't have time to get the packet done. But I've got everything ready and we're going to do some of the activities for Veteran's Day. This packet is perfect for any patriotic unit of study.

 Here's what I did from the packet and have ready to complete with my kids:
I took the pledge sheet on the right and shrunk it so I could fit two on a page. This will be the poem that will go in the students' poetry notebooks the week of Veteran's day. This is the perfect opportunity for us to examine and memorize the pledge.

 The next activity we're going to complete is a hat. I colored mine using the templates that Michelle provides in the pack. We can't copy on construciton paper at my school. I think when I do this with the kids I'm going to have them cut out the stripes and the base of the hat using construction paper. Her example in the pack looked all glittery too, so I'll probably give the kids a little bling on the hat.

I think I'll add a writing component talking about the symbols of the united states. Michelle includes several different writing papers to choose from. These are the two that I plan on using. The first talks about a hero. I think this one is perfect for Veteran's day.

The second we're going to use is an acrostic poem about America. I think this would be a great challenge for some of my students.

One of my favorite activities involves a listening quiz. I plan to do that with my kids for sure.

There are a variety of other pages too. There are several more writing templates, a word search, another craftivity that is a heart shape wreath made out of stars, and some information about September 11th. If you are looking for a patriotic unit for September 11th or any time America is being studied, you need to check out Michelle's.
Be sure to hop over to Michelle's blog and see what item from my store she blogged about.

Thanks Michelle for sharing such a great item and Jessica for organizing this. Be sure to check out Jessica's blog to check out the other items people are blogging about.

500 Follower Giveaway day 3

Well, I hoped to be back today with something actual to blog about other than just my giveaway. But last night was parent teacher conferences and I was behind on my lesson planning and other things. So this is going to be short and sweet.
Today is the last day of my giveaway. You have until Monday to enter all three giveaways. Thanks to all my great bloggy friends that gave me lots of things to giveaway. Here's what you can win today:

• 2 Items from my TPT store of your choice
• Fall is Here pack from Lanier's Lions

• Columbus day pack from Mrs. Lirette's Learning Detectives

•  Beginning Sound sort from Ketchen's Kitchen

• Any item from Kindergarten Smiles TPT store

• Halloween Math and Literacy Pack from Kindergarten Korner

• Kindergarten and First Grade Writing Forms from Teaching with Love and Laughter

Here's the rafflecopter to enter:


a Rafflecopter giveaway


 I'll be back tomorrow with my item from the product swap. I can't wait to see all the great stuff people swapped.

 

Writing and 500 followers Giveaway day 2

Last week I blogged about struggling with teaching writing. I don't feel like this is my strongest area. But I also don't feel like I can devote as much time to overhauling my instruction in this area this year. I'm working on implementing Daily 5 and math work stations. But for the past few weeks, I've been trying to change things. I have one student who I believe is gifted. He's so stinkin smart. He likes to write stories and they are like books. So I got the idea of giving him 2 pieces of paper and folding them hamburger style to make a book. This inspired the other kids to want to make books too. So slowly we're making books. I made them sketch out their ideas on a paper with labels and then adding sentences. They they told me when they were ready to start the book. In the middle of all this, I decided to purchase Deanna Jump and Deedee Will's writing workshop unit 1. The biggest thing I took from that this week was to have the kids share something. I started the week by reading a Mo Willems book. We're crazy about Mo in my class and he's our author of the month. We read Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. We talked about how the illustrations can show parts of the story. We also talked about how books tell stories and don't just name things. Then they went back to their story and worked some more. At the end of the time, I had them tell me what their story was about. I have some pretty creative kids in my class this year. By listening to them talk, I wrote on the board, the names of students I needed to meet with the next day. The next day I shared some of my own writing. I wrote the beginning of a story about a camping trip. I also included some sentences about what I wanted for Christmas. This led us to talking about making sure only important information was included in our story. This time when we shared, they told me something about the beginning, middle or end of their story. I had 3 students who were finished with this story. I put their names on the board to share the next day. So Wednesday, I started out our writing time letting the three kids share their stories. It was magical. They were listening so intently and then we practiced giving compliments and telling why we liked the story. I think this inspired some of the other kids to finish their stories and to add more details to it. Then the three that shared started new stories. They started sketching out their ideas. So slowly, I'm making progress with my writing. I wanted to share one of my student's stories. This is the one that just amazes me.

This is the cover of the book. The story is called Super Max vs. Robot

" Back at the hideout of super max Jack and Robot were out there doing evil. Lets go said super max. Out into action they went. "

 "Yes yes three days three days yes said robot. we only have three days. So lets go get grony goblin. Just then a zoom! came up the road. Super Max is coming soon he said. "

"Wish went super max's sord as he striked robot down. and with robot back in jail. The city was saved thanks to super max. "

 This was the back. What I loved the most was that he put a barcode on the lower right corner like a real book.
I'm going to try blogging once a week about writing. I hope that they will help me to grow in teaching writing.
Now on to the day 2 of the giveaway.
Here's what you can win today:

• 2 items from my Teachers Pay Teachers store. You can check it out by clicking on TPT on the right.
• An Apple to Play from Sharing Kindergarten 
• Finger Counting Combo Pack from Kindergarten Smorgasboard

• Any item from Herding Kats in Kindergarten's TPT store

• Fire Safety Math and Literacy centers from My Not So Elementary Life

• I can read alphabet from Crayons and Curls 

• Monster Madness from Miss Kindergarten

You have until Monday October 8th to enter. Check out the rafflecopter below.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

500 Followers Giveaway Day 1

Oh my goodness! I can't believe I have reached over 500 followers. And even more than that I can't believe that I have so many bloggy friends who are willing to help me out with this giveaway. So many in fact that I have split the giveaway up into 3 days. 

 Here's what you can win:

• Any 2 items from my Teachers Pay Teachers store. You can check it out on the right by clicking the button.
• Any item from Penny at Superlative Science's TPT store

• First Grade Sight Word pack from Danielle at Kroger's Kindergarten. You can check out the pack here.

• First Grade Dolch Word Worksheets from April Wolfe at Wolfilicious. You can check the pack out here.

• Any item from Vickie Plant at Mrs. Plant's Press TPT store

• Sub Tub from Kindergarten Lifestyle

•  Common Core Math Journals for K-1 from Maggie's Kinder Korner

 This giveaway will last until Monday October 8th. Be sure to check back tomorrow for another great giveaway.
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