Sharing my love of literacy

December 26, 2015

It's Break Time!

I had to work for three days this week. Yes, there were concerts and parties, so some of my reading classes were interrupted. It was a nice three day week with the kidos. They were excited about Santa coming! 

Here are a few pics of some things I did this week: 


 My first and second graders loved hearing this story!
 One student's writing response to "Grumpy Santa" 
 My third graders did a scavenger hunt!
Thank you SuperTeacherWorksheets !!
 I used my TPT product with my 2nd and 5th graders.
They now want one for a snowman! 
Here is the secretary gift I gave this year.
If you live in the NY - you love a Tim Horton's card!

 Santa stopped by on a firetruck!
One of my kidos gave me this gift that her mom made.
I just LOVE it !!! 

I hope everyone is enjoying this Christmas Day!
I am off to read my holiday book: 

while I drink some Christmas Blend coffee! 
Happy Reading! 

December 20, 2015

Weekly Photos

I have three more work days! I am jealous of all those teachers who get two weeks of vacation. My district stopped doing that about ten years ago. I miss it!

Here are a few random pictures from the week:

 
I finally laminated this and put 
it on the back wall. 
 
 
Working on consonant clusters. 
We highlighted the blends first.  

 
A fun read aloud 
A student written retell. 
Not bad for grade one! 

This is the best retell one of my kidos has done! 
He has made such great progress!

Here's the best picture of all: 

 I went to see The Force Awakens Friday!
It was Awesome! 
GO SEE IT!!! 

Happy Reading! 

December 13, 2015

Weekly Photos

It;s a busy time of year! Here are some photos from he week: 

 Vowel Patterns in Grade 1 
Using the LLI Reading Kit 

I challenged kids this week to come up with words using vowels. 
We also have done consonant blends. 

This week I am finishing up the nonfiction text - If You Lived in America as a Slave. The kids are going to make small posters. 

More work on building fluency in grade 1. I think I have a student that is going to move out of my group! I made some response prompts for the book The True and False Book of Dogs for my grade 3 reading group.  I have a big unit I am working on for Jan. with them, so for the next  classes, my focus is reading and developing more word attack skills. 

I hope everyone has a nice week. Some of you lucky teachers only have a few days left. I work until the 23th! YIKES! 

Happy Reading! 

November 29, 2015

Sunday Night!

Happy Post Turkey Weekend! 

Who else is tired from Thanksgiving? I had my turkey and pumpkin pie. I celebrated my mother-in-law's birthday! I shopped, and shopped, and shopped! I bought some holiday gifts and some new slippers for myself. I visited with my cousins which was an unexpected treat!

I did a fun scavenger hunt with my grade 4 reading group. I found it on Super Teacher Worksheets. They loved it. Here are two pictures:



 
I taped this cards all over the room. 



 
The kidos were challenged by the mystery words.  

 
Rhyming words - I think this list is funny! 

 
More writing about a story

 A few weeks ago.... 
After reading six chapters of the Magic Tree House Book.
I love how the kids changed their ideas. 

This week I am working on the following: 

1. Main Idea and Detail
2. Reading a non-fiction text to learn new facts
3. Short /u/
4. Vowel blends /oa/ and /ow/ 
5. ReadingMagic Tree House

It will be a busy week. I have a staff development class one evening, two assemblies at work, and my grad class on Thursday night! 

Happy Reading! 

November 3, 2015

Reading Photos

I have been busy in my classroom. I felt like I had a good groove the past two weeks. We have been short subs, but the principal only pulled me once.

Here are some photos and some from this past week. I hope you enjoy them.

October Fun:

Thank you Super Teacher Worksheets



 
The kids love reading and writing stories about the books from 
the LLI Reading Kit. 


November Lessons: 

I gave some first graders a spelling test with random sight words and short vowel sounds. This kid did perfect: 


I started a unit on sequence and did some fun activities with the kidos. Here is the chart from day one: 


In grade five, we are reading Pinballs. I used the book last year too. The kids enjoyed the story, so I hope my new class likes it too!
 
 
I did a week long unit on summary. 
This was the one we wrote together. 
I read the individual summaries over the weekend and this year was the best I have seen from this unit!  

I am preparing for some mystery words for this week. I did mystery main idea a few weeks ago, so this is next. I want kids to start using context clues for unfamiliar words. This is part of the intro lessons: 


October 31, 2015

Happy Halloween!!


Here I am right before my school's Halloween event. The students come trick or treat at each classroom:

 
I hope you enjoyed your tricks and treats! 

Here are some other pictures from my classroom during my reading lessons.

 
Writing after reading a text. 

 This is how I motivate my kids!
Everything is a mystery. 
 
More writing
I love cut up sentences for grade 1
 
We use "I Can.." statements in my school. 
First lesson for grade 3
Magic Tree House Book 


Look at this cutie I get to teach everyday!
We were rhyming words. 

I hope everyone is having a nice week. 

Happy Reading ! 

July 20, 2015

Summer School


Summer has been wonderful. Sure it has rained here, but I still have had my sun and pool time as much as possible. I am enjoying my back patio as I type this!

I have been working in the summer program and it has been nice to teach without all the common core rules. It reminds me of my younger teacher days when we could choose read alouds and were trusted to do what was right for the kids. Sure - having accountability is good - BUT there are a lot of good teaching practices that no longer exist in the classroom. SO SAD! 
Reading aloud is crucial and a lot of teachers in NY are no longer allowed to even do that ! Lucky for me, I have been able to do it a lot in summer school!!

Here are a few cute pictures from my summer school lessons:

I love these books: 

After a read aloud, the kidos did some writing with a prompt: 
 Here is a cute example from one of the kidos: 
 

Here is the second read aloud from last week: 
 
I just love how this kidos added a disco ball! 
 

More read alouds from summer school:
    

Here is a sample of a kidos response. 
So cute ! 
 


 I also teach math. This coming week we are working on the word "greater." Both of my groups - the K kids and the first graders need the practice. Here are two pictures from the chart I made last week:

 

I also have to work on solving word problems with the kids. Each kido was given a word problem on a 1/2 sheet of paper. The kids a great job with addition, so I moved onto subtraction. We read it aloud and then circled the important parts - the numbers and the word "left." We also talked about the label for the number sentence. It floors me that you have to use the word equation with first grades! Here is my example: 


There has been a lot going on in summer school and I am loving it!

Happy Reading!