Ninjas, Spiders and Pumpkins, Oh My!

So we all know that Halloween is at the end of the week…I mean how could I forget? My kids talk about it like 57398234 times a day! No matter what we are working on or discussing, they seem to find a way to include dressing up like a ninja into the conversation! Well you know what they say, if you can’t beat them, join them right? Well, I have to get a little creative when trying to incorporate “Halloween” into my teaching. (My school does not celebrate Halloween, and we do not teach in themes either…major bummer, I know!) So, I have been trying to squeeze in “Halloween” related material wherever I can!  Last week, we were working on fact and opinion. We spent some time reading books on spiders, and we watched the PebbleGo on “All About Spiders” to build some background. Then, we completed a fact and opinion sort on SPIDERS! They loved it, and more importantly, they did really well on it! If you would like to use our spider fact and opinion sort, just click the photo below!

We also started working on fact families last week. We talked all about how the fact family is related and, how they live in the fact family house. Well, this year – it just happens to be a fact family HAUNTED house! We did this little activity in our math journals. They got to pick a fact family and complete the facts inside, and then color the haunted house on the outside!

 

We also got to learn about the lifecycle of a pumpkin last week. We only spent a day on this, so we did not get to do much. We did read the book, From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer and completed a pumpkin lifecycle cut and paste that can be found in my Lifecycle of a Pumpkin Set. Finally, we read a small reader from my set that reviewed the stages of the pumpkin lifecycle!

Have a Happy Halloween everyone!!

Tennessee SDE Conference

Hi ya’ll! I am so excited to tell you how I spent my day! I was lucky enough to attend the SDE Conference for First Grade Teachers today in Franklin, Tennessee. I got to listen to the AMAZING Cara Carroll speak all about how she implemented Reading Workshop and Math Tubs in her classroom. She also shared some phonics games and activities that she used to increase fluency and comprehension with her students. I have been a HUGE fan of hers for years and years. She is precious, and sweet and is such an inspiration to me. I hope to be half the teacher she is someday! I am telling ya’ll, if you ever get the opportunity to go to a SDE Conference to see her speak - GO!

Oh, and this picture may have just made my year! Ahh!!

RTI and a freebie!

Does your school implement RTI? My school is implementing it for the first time this year and honestly, we are just learning as we go! I am an interventionist with a small group of babies that struggle with decoding words and reading fluently. They also REALLY struggle with rhyming words. I have heard that in order to read, kids must be able to rhyme, so we have been focusing a lot on rhyming for the last few weeks. We have been utilizing these rhyming flip books by The Printable Princess- they are awesome and the kids really love them! Do yourself a favor and check them out!

I also created these rhyming picture cards for my kiddos to practice with. They simply say the word of each picture on the card, and identify the two words that rhyme! If you’d like to use these to practice rhyming with your sweet babies, just click here! 

How do you implement RTI at your school? What are your favorite intervention strategies to use? I’d love to hear what works for you!

Welcome!

Welcome! I’m glad you've found your way to my little corner of the web! I have to be honest. I felt kind of silly starting up a blog and talking about my own little experiences. However, I have learned so much and have grown so much by stalking reading other teacher blogs, I figured that having my own would help me grow as a teacher too! My hope is to learn and grow as an educator, make some connections with fellow teachers and to share a little part of my world with you! Thank you for stopping by and happy teaching!