Teacher to the Core

Bye Bye Spring Break

Actually I am an off-track-year-round kind of teacher. So I have

been off for a month, and I am headed back Monday. Boo Hoo!

But really I miss the students and did a reasonable job on my To Do

list. I have a few things left to do and of course laundry. I hate the

laundry! It is always with me... Why does my family have to wear

clothing. Darn you Adam and Eve! If she had only thought about

the laundry, she may have made a different

choice! I know I would have.

Print Like a Jedi Master

in Freebie, Printing

This has come out of a place of needing my students to print neatly and actually making it happen. Through daily 5 minute board work lessons & cool pages, my students really are printing like Jedi Masters. I have found that some kids don't "see" ~~or have not learned to look at~~ the lines so they are not able to use them. Seeing, naming, and using the lines is key. In class we call them sky line, tree line, dirt line.

How many times do you get crazy “k”s like this?

Or worse, the ALWAYS capital K... drives me nuts too.

These cards HELP.

Because we name the lines, we have a common vocabulary.

I can talk about the dirt line (bottom line) and how I want that k to touch the dirt line. Or in the case of a lower case g, I can remind the kids, they don't start at the sky line. They start at

the tree line and go down into the roots!

During 5 minute board work....

nobody can hide at their desk forming letters incorrectly.

I can all of them!

VICTORY!!!

After I model, help, and help some more,

we move on to the practice pages.

Here are samples of the pages included!

Each page has the letter inside real words with a picture clues.

Words are kept short to make them readable to young eyes.

By the end of the alphabet I have transitioned into sentences.

As a bonus, I included the 4 diagraphs!

I named the groups based on how the letter is formed. And I created “stay sharp” pages to review. We do one page once a week, and let me tell you they work hard on these pages because neat work means a skittle. If I have a child who is making the letters p, q, j, y, and g incorrectly I can hand them the " roots letters " review page for homework. This is also why they work hard on review pages because no one wants extra homework.

I have included pictures because some of us

need the see the whole thing before they can

feel comfortable taking the plunge.

So for those of us who want to see it all, here you go.

These are the ball and stick letters.

Letters with Roots

Sky Scrapers

Middle Men

Curved Letters

I also made Digraphs Pages as a Bonus!!!

Plus you get the board work cards and

a detailed description of how to use them.

Click here to see other feedback

These two pages are a little freebie for you. They are waiting for you at TpT in the “Download Preview”. Enjoy!

Brown Bear Adjectives Book

in Adjectives, Brown Bear, Freebie, Grammar Guru, Response to Literature

Do you love the book ? Me too! I'm celebrating the 45th anniversary is this student book with a freebie! Well 3 freebies actually! I did one for each grade level K-2.

First Grade

Kindergarten

Second Grade

I really hope that you enjoy teaching adjectives using these books!

Each page gives students the power of choice ! After we write and illustrate our book, we use our dark yellow crayon (dandelion) to go back and highlight the adjectives. Funny enough, I think that the kids know what an adjective is by the end of writing the book. But I could not be more wrong! By going back and highlighting, I can see a few "freeze". They don't know... They have been pretending to know!

By the way,

What?!?!

They didn't all get it to 100% accuracy!?!

Call the Common Core Cops!

There are always 5 kids who don't "get it".

Usually it is the same five.

*sigh*

Highlighting is my go to teaching trick. In this case, because we do the highlighting after their whole book is written, I am able to catch the kids who "tuned in"a little late in the program. I can see them freeze before highlighting because they were not really listening. S~~hame on them!~~ It happens. I sort of imagine their thought bubble to look like this......

What has 'teacher' been talking about for the last 15 minutes? I like her shirt. She has pretty hair. But adjective? ? ? What is an AdJecTive?"

It is in that moment of pause, crayon suspended in mid air, I can catch them & meaningfully reteach. I pull them back and we discuss each other's pages. They can see the adjectives in another person's work so much easier than their own. Kids are such funny creatures! Their own writing mystifies them, but the writing of another child is clear as day.