Weigh Away

One thing that I find is that any kind of hands-on activity will keep kids engaged and be a popular center in the classroom.  That is why I've cut back the time my class spends on doing worksheets in Math to about 5-10 minutes and given them lots of time (45 minutes) to go to Math centers.  While they're there, of course, I'm with small groups, often working on similar or even the same type of assignment that they would've been doing if the worksheets were longer.

I needed a weighing center for Math a couple of years ago and couldn't find one that would suit my needs.  I wanted it to have a variety of different tasks for the kids to work through at their own pace.  I ended up making these task cards and they have become the best seller in my TpT shop.  (I thought I was just being too picky, but it looks like there was a niche in the market! Lol.)

There are 3 different activities included. The first is finding how many unifix cubes weigh 
the same as the given item.

The second is predicting which of 2 given items weighs more.  

The third is comparing objects to a given weight. I made two copies of these cards; one with ounces and the other with grams. 

Each of the 3 activities requires a prediction before weighing.   

I also made all the cards in black and white to save the pricey coloured ink. 

I set up the balance scales, along with all the items that they need for weighing.  All they have to do is grab a recording sheet and a few task cards and they're off and weighing.  They love it so much that I've had kids ask me if I could include it again when we switch out the centers.  I might have to make a second set! 

To look at Weigh Away in my store click here or on any picture of the task cards above. 

 
I'm joining Joanne at Head Over Heels for Teaching today for her Spark Student Motivation Saturday linky. 
Click to head over to pick up some great ideas for your classroom.

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!

Freebie Friday Calendars

What a busy week!

My staff had a highly productive 2 day planning retreat up at Sun Peaks, B.C.  Fall was definitely in the air up there. No snow yet, though. Thank goodness!

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday at school working on my classroom. I thought I'd be done and have a 4 day weekend, but when I left yesterday the room was messier than when I left on Tuesday. I guess I shouldn't have started to organize my Math centers........

I made this set of school calendars for my classroom yesterday. I tried downloading some from the internet, but couldn't find any that were just what I wanted. While I was at it I decided to add American versions in case others could use them too. 

I'm linking them up with FREEBIE FRIDAY over at Teaching Blogging Addict. Click HERE on the calendar preview above  to download them!

School is only a long weekend away now in B.C.  Last year I got completely bogged down and didn't blog while school was in session.  I'm hoping to do better this year, and over the summer I've started a bunch of blog posts to keep me on track.  I've even finished next week's post for Freebie Friday.  It's a set of templates for Journal Writing that I made for Emergent Writers.  Check back for that!

Happy Labour Day!

Phonemic Awareness-"Silly or Real"

Just over a week and we'll be back in school here in B.C.!  Summer has flown by.

I've spent a lot of my career teaching first grade. Phonemic awareness is so important for emergent readers and kids who are able to "play" with sounds are generally quicker to catch on to reading. 

I was lucky to teach in a primary school (we only had kindies and first and second grade) and we were able to focus all our resource $ on early primary. One of the things we were able to get for every classroom in the mid 90’s was a reading program called Open Court. It has been revised several times in the intervening years. This student workbook is part of the 2005 edition. We were working with the first edition published around 10 years earlier. 

The program was published by McGraw-Hill and came with a huge range of resources. It was incredibly well researched and the credits go on for pages. Many of the contributors were ones that later became familiar to me when I was doing post graduate courses in Literacy Instruction. The senior editor for the Open Court program was the late Dr. Michael Pressley, my ELA hero.

One of the things that I really loved about the program were the daily oral exercises that were set out in the Teacher's Guide. There was a wide range of them and I believe they made a significant contribution to the success of the program in effectively teaching young students to read. The school I was working in was in a small, rural community. About 40% of our students were from the three First Nations bands in the area. The third year I was using the program my students' average reading level (DRA) was 32 at the end of the year. The school district's level for "meeting expectations" was around 17 at the end of grade one. This was a highly effective program. 

One of my favourite exercises went like this:

Teacher:  My word is fan.  What if I changed the last sound to (make a 't' sound) ?  

Kids:  Fat.

Teacher:  Now change the first sound in fat to (make an m sound). 

Kids:  Mat.  

And so on for about 10 - 15 changes. 

But every now and then I'd go off script and throw in something like:  Change the last sound in mat to  (make a z sound). 

The kids thought this was hilarious and were always waiting for me to toss out a silly word. 

This gave me the idea for a ELA /Work on Words center that I've been using with my students for years. I originally had little rubber tiles that were like Scrabble tiles and I hand wrote the vowels on a sheet of paper for them. Last year I made it up on my computer and called it "Silly or Real"  It worked well and was much in demand.

Click HERE to head over to TpT to get the freebie in the preview file.

I just posted Real or Not Real to MY TpT STORE .The freebie is in the preview file. If you download it please take a moment to rate it.  AND this is the first time I've uploaded a preview file, so if there are any glitches please let me know.  I tested it out and it seems to be good.

I'm joining Freebie Friday hosted by Fern Smith at Teaching Blog Addict this week. Click on THIS LINK  to head over and get more freebies!

P.S.:  If you happen to have any copies of Open Court lurking in the dark corners of your school's book room I recommend that you check them out, especially the Teacher's Guide.

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.

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

I'm I have enjoyed reading all the great posts from the teacher bloggers who have joined this BTS in a Flash linky the past weeks. There are so many super ideas out there that I can't wait to try out in my classroom!

This week the topic is things we do to foster our students' engagement. 

Here are a couple of things that have been successful for me over the years. 

Reading aloud to kids!  I try to read at least once to them every day. I was feeling a time pinch a couple of years ago so I started reading chapter books to them while they were eating their morning snack. I wondered whether they would feel unhappy that I had requisitioned part of their "visiting" time, but the first time I didn't do it they let me know in no uncertain terms that it was one of the highlights of their day. Sometimes I read an entire book to them over the course of a couple of weeks, and sometimes I just read a chapter or two to entice them into reading it themselves. 

When I read picture books to my students I usually do it first thing in the morning and then have them do a follow up activity. One of the favourites I've found is to write a postcard pretending that they are a character from the story, or that they are writing to a character. My students have really enjoyed doing this and I've even been asked frequently if they can write more than one postcard.  

I blogged about Scaredy Squirrel and an activity I do after reading HERE. There's a freebie in the post!

Something that really changed my classroom was having large blocks of time for Language Arts and Math centers. These are often hands on activities and include playing a variety of games with a partner or in small groups. I bought Fountas and Pinnell's book Guided Reading:  Good First Teaching for All Students at a workshop many years ago. It was pretty expensive for me at the time, but it's a purchase I never regretted. It not only gives explicit instructions for running Guided Reading groups, but has excellent info on setting up LA centers. 

Once I got started with centers the kids loved them so much I knew I'd never look back. I set up a rotation board that told the type of activity they'd be doing at a certain time, and they would often get a choice of what they did. Being able to pick which activity they want to do is a big factor in keeping students focused and engaged in their work. 

FOOD!  Whenever I fit eating into the curriculum they are 100% on board. This works really well with Social Studies. Studying about China? Bring in fortune cookies!

Or with a zillion read alouds!  Here are a few of the obvious ones. 

In Math I sometimes make little edible counters (eg fishy crackers) part of the lesson, especially when we need manipulatives to work on a concept in small groups. No eating until we're done, though!

 

Check out the other posts in the collection, or better yet, add your own.  I'd love to hear what you do in your classroom!

Rotating Buddies

Oh! Snap!  It IS almost September! At least it's officially half way through August and that's getting very close. 

If you're not back at school yet like me, you're probably starting to think about it a lot. Time to start getting ready. 

One of the first things I do after I get my class list is get my buddy system ready.
I have tried all sorts of systems for classroom partners including choose your own buddy (takes too long if you do it one student at a time, causes too much angst if you do it en masse) and drawing sticks, but this is the one I've been using for the last 15 years and it works really well for me.
I make name tags for each of the kids, laminated and backed with a magnet.  I put them on my chalkboard (now painted with whiteboard paint) in two columns in alphabetical order going down the left side, around and up the right side.   

Here is a sample of what the rotation would look like.  Since I don't have my class list yet I made up one. This is a great class (16 students?  In my dreams!) with pretty good gender balance.  Also great 
for teaching alphabetical order (and -y endings....lol).

If the list on the left was for Monday the one to the right would be Tuesday - I rotate the name tags counter clockwise at the end of each day.  This year I'll have second and third graders, so I'll get one of them to do it as an end-of-the-day job.
If there's an odd number of kids in the class  I have a single on the top one day and on the bottom the next.  That student has the same options as students whose buddies are away.

The kids keep the same buddy for most activities all day.  Everyone knows who their buddy is and who it will be tomorrow.  No waste of time deciding who will be buddies and no disappointment that someone didn't get chosen.  Everyone takes turns buddying with everybody else.  If a student is away I just pull their name out to the side for that day.  The person across the list from them buddies with another student who has no buddy or, if they are all buddied up, gets to choose to either join another pair, have me for a buddy (if I'm available for the activity) or another adult who is in the class, or go solo, if that is a possibility. 
 I also make tags that say Right and Left (they look tiny in my picture, but they're actually the same size as the name tags - I added them to my screen as an afterthought and didn't have much room to fit them in-LOL) on them and put them above the names, so I can direct them e.g.: the person on the left gets to go first and the one on the right gets to pick the spot where they'll do the activity. It is also good for re-enforcing the left/right concept.

I don't use this system for times when they are going to do a partner activity after finishing work because it's unlikely that they will both be finished at the same time.  When a student is done they go to get the things they will need for the activity then wait for the next person to join them.

If you'd like to make a set for your class you can pick them up HERE. They're editable in Word.
If you use Pages get them HERE.

I have a few things in my TpT store that are great to pull out in September. 

Getting to Know You is an activity I put together for my class to do during the first couple of weeks. 

To get them hooked on doing the activity I call it a "game" and add a dice rolling component. 
It's FREE HERE.

Incentive tags are a standby in my classroom. The kids love to collect them. My printer and laminator will be at work soon printing up these September ones. 

They are $1 in my TpT store HERE.

Or if you'd like a great deal get the fall three month combo set. 

They're usually $2 but right now they're on sale HERE for only $1.25. 

 I'm off to link up with Teacher Deals and Dollar Steals for their September linky.  Hop on over to get some great goodies for your classroom.

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