Mini I Have, Who Has Freebie Friday

It's time for FREEBIE FRIDAY with Fern Smith of Teaching Blog Addict again.  Click on her button at the bottom to head over there to see this week's goodies.
Last summer I made 3 new sets of mini I Have, Who Has games to play with my small groups.  I bundled them up with the 3 sets I already had on TpT.  They are for reviewing the diphthongs"aw", "ew", "ow", "oi/oy", "oo" (soft), and "oo" (hard).

I put one set on TpT for free so you can try it out and see how it works for you. To read the post and get the freebie click HERE.

CAFE Headers and Strategy Cards Freebie

I am excited that my Classroom Expectations posters are the featured freebie this week for Freebie Friday.
This week I am offering my C.A.F.E. headers and strategy cards.  I have used these for several years in my class and have finally gotten around to adding them to my TpT store thanks to inquiries from other staff members in my school last week at a professional development day.

Snatch them up here if you'd like them.  I find them really handy for introducing and reviewing the concepts.  There are 21 different cards in this set.  They are strategies for becoming better readers.  The four headers include a short definition for each word in the CAFE acronym. 

And don't forget to head over to see other great freebies with Fern at Teaching Blog Addict.

Make sure that you check out my blog tomorrow when I share my top three Pinterest Picks that I found for my classroom in September.  You'll want to check them out because there are some super freebies!

Journal Starters for Freebie Friday

We are back to school and today we will get our new classes.  I just found out yesterday afternoon that my class would change from mostly grade 3's to over half second graders.  We have more kids who registered in our school this week, especially in kindergarten.  Last year we had one class of kindergartens and a k-1 combo with about 8 kindies.  This year we have 2 full classes of kindies and a handful that will be in with one of the grade one classes!  That's lots of kids coming up!
So we all spent several hours re-configuring our classes.  I am very excited to meet my new class!

Last year half of my class were firsties.  In the many years that I've taught grade one I have always had them write daily in their Journals, starting on Day 1.  Well, maybe Day 2.......

Since most of them didn't know HOW to write yet, this involved me printing "I like" in EVERY Journal and then drawing an ink line (even though the notebooks they use are already interlined - I noticed that many of the kids didn't "see" the lines that came printed on the page and wrote huge or slanty or randomly on the page.....).  Major time drain!

Last year I had an inspirational moment and made a page on my iPad with sentence starters and nice dark lines for them to print on.  They look like this:

They worked perfectly.  I just printed them off on the photocopier, cut them down to size and the kids did their printing on them, then cut them out and glued them into their notebooks!  Why didn't I think
of that 20 years ago?!?  (Well to be fair with myself I only got the iPad 2 years ago.)
If you have emergent writers you might find these really handy, too.  I used them until about mid-November when most of the kids were becoming more confident and independent writers.

There are quite a few different sentence starters, and extra lines for your high achievers who are ready to print more.
Sentence starters include:
I am                     I went to        I saw a...It was...
I like
I can                    I want
I have
Here is a
I see a
I see a...It is...
I have a...It is...

To get a set go to my store to pick up the freebie.
Then hop over to Freebie Friday at Teaching Blog Addict to see more goodies.

Have a great weekend!

I Have, Who Has Mini Games

I am frantically getting ready for Back to School.  How can it be that there is still so much SCHOOL STUFF to do???  Isn't it supposed to be summer holiday time?

Actually I did go to the lovely town of Salmon Arm, B.C. on Wednesday.  It is right on the gorgeous Shuswap Lake about an hour drive east of where I live.

I have just finished making and updating a bunch of I Have, Who Has mini games that I use with my small groups in Language Arts.  I already had these 3 sets posted in my TpT store, but decided to make more because they worked really well and the kids enjoyed them so much.

 Here are the 3 new sets that I made:

I'm sure that you have played I Have, Who Has? with your class.  I have, too, but I really prefer to do it with a small group.  In the large setting kids get bored because they have to wait so long for their turn.  In a group of 5 or 6 kids they each have 2 or 3 cards (I made 12 cards in each set) and the game goes quite quickly, so they stay focused listening to the person who is reading so they will know when it is their turn.
Here is an example of a card from each of the 6 diphthong sets.

The cards are a mixture of real words and silly words.  The kids LOVE reading the silly words!  I originally had all silly words on the cards, but decided that there would be more reading support if there were actual words too.  For example, if they started out reading "look" then reading "mook" is not a big stretch, and if they have difficulty I can remind them that the word they are trying to read rhymes with "look".
I have been selling these sets in my TpT store for $1 each, but bundled them all up for a saving of almost 50%.

To get them click HERE.  They are excellent for introducing and reviewing the diphthong sounds and spellings.  I have used them with both grade 1's and grade 2's.
I have made the oi/oy set free so that you can try them out with your small groups.  Get them HERE.