Thanksgiving Math and Literacy Centers...TPT

I just uploaded by biggest packet yet (83 pages!) to Teachers Pay Teachers. :) Click here to get it! :)

Thanksgiving Fry Phrases...TPT!

Is anyone else getting a little tired of Halloween? It's my favorite holiday, but I've gotta say, I'm kinda ready to move onto Thanksgiving. Maybe it's because I've been working on Thanksgiving themed centers...:) I just posted Thanksgiving Fry Phrases, but please note: these are the same phrases used in the Halloween Fry Phrases packet. I've had a lot of requests to theme these for Thanksgiving since a lot of you are still using them in your classroom and the students are still learning them. I can do another Thanksgiving packet for new phrases if you would like. Just let me know! I've also been working on my Thanksgiving Math and Literacy centers and hopefully they will be posted by tonight so be sure and look for those. Click the pic below to see the Thanksgiving Fry Phrases.

Turkey Time! A Telling Time Math Center...TPT!

Click the pic to get my telling time math centers. It includes time to the hour and half hour. :)

Two New Centers on TPT

I have just uploaded two new centers to my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Click each pic below to see the center.

This math center focuses on beginning addition facts like the doubles facts, adding 1 facts, and adding 0

This sound sorting center is centered around the long a sound. Students will sort word cards with long a, short a, and words that have the vowel sound /all/. 

***I don't know about y'all but I'm running into to some major ink problems! It seems like I'm always out of color ink! I made this sound sorting center in all black and white and printed it onto colored paper to save ink, so hopefully that'll help for y'all too!

Unit 2 Reading Street Concept Question Board

I decided to change up the question board this unit. I liked the way the first board looked, but I felt like it was more for decoration and I want it to be more of an interactive board that the kids help make. So, I came up with this:

I've made a chart that has the unit question in the middle and all the weekly questions surrounding it, but forgot to take a pic of it. On this board, the weekly question is in green and the kids have answered it in their journals and I displayed their work. They really liked this and I felt like they noticed and "understood" the board so much better this way. Here's a close up of some of their answers.

This is my kind of family! :)

We just finished up with A Big Fish for Max for all you 1st grade reading street teachers, so I'll post some of the charts we made and my new vocabulary center that has worked out *fabulously* tomorrow :)

Hope everyone's had a great week and I hope everyone has a really great, long weekend! Roll Tide!!!

Pattern for Frank...Free on TPT!!

I've just uploaded the pattern for the inferring with frank craft onto my teachers pay teachers store. It's free though! Click the pic to get it... I'd love to hear from you if you download it! :)

*** I didn't realize that I had already deleted the file for the writing part, so I wasn't able to include it. Sorry!

Inferring with Frank!

We haven't yet gotten into that hard skill of drawing conclusions and making inferences. I don't know about y'all, but that's always a tough one in my classroom. Sooo I made a little introduction activity that we did last week to kinda preview this skill. We created a Frankenstein and made inferences about what some of his favorite things were. The main thing I wanted to get across to my kids was that you used clues that you were given (like the fact that Frank was a Halloween symbol) to decide the answer. I didn't go too far with this skill, but I welcomed the chance to have the time to do a mini introduce lesson for it. Hopefully when this skill comes around in a few weeks, my darlings will have an easier time with it. 

***I left the pattern for Frank at school, so I can't upload it now, but if you want it let me know and I'll upload tomorrow!

*** 10/6/12: This freebie can be found in my TpT store by clicking here! :)

Soccer Ball Word Sort...TPT!

Click the pic to get a new word sort. This one deals with the vowel sound -all as in ball, small, talk, etc.  

A few classroom happenings

After having review week last week and having only a two day week this week due to Fall Break, we are going on two weeks of no reading story. Y'all have no idea how ready I'm (and my kids!) are ready to get back to a story. We need structure in first grade! These two days have given us the opportunity to get in some Halloween activities though and  I'll share those tomorrow! Here are a few things that we've been doing.

We created a character spotlight on the witch from Room on the Broom. Then at the reading center, the kids had to fill out the same graphic organizer on another book. We are loving Room on the Broom. To see the literary companion for this book, you can click here

We made a bubble map of the penny. This was inspired (aka totally copied) by the always fabulous Cara

This was a bubble map that we created during the last story of our reading series, Animal Park. I forgot to take a pic of it to share with all your Reading Street teachers out there so it's a little late!

This is a new center that I'm using. I found a pic on Pinterest of something similar and didn't pin it (hate when that happens!) Jennifer at First Grade Blue Skies blogged about something similar and it may have even been her pic that I saw. You can buy these, but I just made my own using clip art. You just cut out the middle, laminate, and you're good to go! I was a little hesitate to just put these out with several word lists and not have the kids write anything, but they did great! Didn't have anybody playing with them. They used them correctly and they were a hit! 

Be sure and check back tomorrow for some really cute Frankensteins!! :) :)

Scott Foresman Reading Street Unit 2 Questions of the Day

I've uploaded Unit 2 questions of the day from Reading Street (1st grade) to my TPT Store. They're free, but I had upload problems with Scribd, so I had to upload them to TPT. Click here to get them :)

Room on the Broom and Cat in the Hat Fry Phrases... TPT

Just uploaded 2 new packets to my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Click the pics below to check them out!

Witch Pattern...Freebie! and Room on the Broom Mini Unit Coming Soon!

Here are the patterns for the Cute Little Witches. And below is a sequencing activity for the story Room on the Broom. It is in my Room on the Broom mini unit that will be available on Teachers Pay Teachers later on today :)

Let me know if you have download problems!

Dress

Hat

Head

Witch Pieces

Room on the Broom

Isn't this a great Halloween read? My kids loved this book! I thought it fit perfectly for teaching Sequence. We read the story and created an anchor chart to help remember was sequence was. Then we did a follow activity to identify the sequence in the story. 

This activity is included in the Room on the Broom mini unit. It will be on Teachers Pay Teachers later on today.

Witch Patterns coming soon!

I've had lots and lots of requests to post the patterns for the cute little witches. I promise I will! I just bought a new bedroom suite, so my entire house is thrown upside down with boxes everywhere. I'll try hard to post the pattern tomorrow since a lot of you have said you would like to do them next week. We are on Fall Break for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so I'll catch up on posting. We've done several fun Halloween things that I will share with y'all and I've also been making some new Fry Phrases that should be ready within the next couple of days. Just wanted to update y'all on the witch patterns so you wouldn't think I'd forgotten u! :)

Hope everyone is having a great weekend...Roll Tide!!!!! :)

Cute Little Witches

Aren't these little witches cute? My sweet kids had a blast making them! Let me know if you'd like the pattern and I'll post it :)

*** The small black thing that they are holding are cauldrons. Yes, I know they look like purses HAHA! If you make these, it would be better to make the cauldrons bigger! :)

******** Updated!!! I have posted the patterns for these. They can be found here :)

Forest Friends Fry Phrases...TPT

I've just uploaded the forest friends fry phrases flash cards for those of you who have requested them. Click the pic to get them!

I also upload a center activity I'm using this week that deals with sentences and questions. Click the pic to get it!

It's Hocus Pocus Time!

We've started making a few "Halloweeny" things for our classroom this week and the kids are lovin' it! We made witches feet today, along with a writing activity. The kids wrote about what their favorite part of Halloween is. Witches feet are my favorite Halloween symbol and I absolutely love making Dorthy's red slippers during our Wizard of Oz study last spring (I used the wonderful Babbling Abby's Wizard of Oz unit....soooo good!) I also brought out my purple Halloween lights and put them on the cubbies with our witches feet. Take a Look!

*** The pattern for this craft is in my Halloween Unit on TPT. You can get it here I have a poem featured on the craft in the unit, but we decided to use it with a writing activity today.

You can't really see the purple lights, but it looks really cute. :)

What are fry phrases?

I've been posting a lot about using fry phrases in my classroom and I've gotten several emails asking what fry phrases are exactly. 

At a workshop I attended at the beginning on the year, we were given a list of fry phrases. These were created by Dr. Edward Fry and the phrases are made up from his list of sight words. The first 300 phrases make up 67% of all words that children encounter when they read. My class is making their way through the list and I'm starting to see a lot of progress! I hear a lot of my kids using these phrases in their everyday speech and they get so tickled when they realize they just used a fry phrase.

My kids LOVE doing these! We go over them everyday in small groups. I introduce 10 new phrases each week. We add to our collection every week so we've got quite a few now. My kids even ask to go over these in the afternoon after my car riders leave. They usually just sit and color or watch tv for the 20 min until the buses are ready, so I thought this was great that they actually wanted to go into groups and go over fry phrases instead of coloring. I cannot tell you how much they enjoy them. It's their most favorite activity in our small group lesson by far! 

I've created several fry phrases packets. My aliens are uploaded on TPT. These are the first phrases I started with. Click the pic below to get them!

I promised my kids that if they could tell me all of the aliens, then I would make Halloween ones, and they did! They were so excited about these! Click the pic to get them on TPT

I've also created Forest Friends. I've had several requests for these, so I will try and upload them soon

Hope everyone has a great week!

Halloween Nonsense Words...TPT

Why is it, when you put clip art on a word, the kids are so much more excited about it? My kids use to complain at small groups when I pulled out our fry phrases, but when I started putting them on cute clip art, the kids began BEGGING to do them. It was a complete turn around. Here lately, my kids are doing the same thing about nonsense words. They are hating them. So, I thought I would do the same thing with nonsense words that I did with fry phrases. And thus, Halloween Nonsense Word flash cards were created. I just uploaded these to TPT. There's 25 pages with a total of 100 cards. Click the pic to get them! :)