A Simple Strategy to Review Sight Words

Are your student's struggling to learn their sight words?   Would you like an easy to use system with those students that targets just the words that they need?

I'm Christina from Hanging Around In Primary and I would like to share a simple, yet effective strategy I am using with my students this year.

When teaching sight words I do not have a specific order that I use nor do I follow a specific reading program.  We are fortunate in that we can teach with our choice of resources, so I use a mismash of things I have created, along with purchased resources to teach my students during our literacy block. You can check out a couple of blog posts {HERE} and {HERE} that I have written about the word wall on my own blog.

I believe strongly that students must learn their sight words or word wall words, as I call them, in order to be a successful reader.  Students need to develop an automaticity when reading them.  I want them to be able to read these words without sounding them out so in my classroom we say that these words are like popcorn - they pop right out without having to sound them out.

If your class is anything like mine, even when you spend time each and every week to review the words, some students just aren't getting them.  I needed to catch these kids and provide intervention by targeting the words they didn't know in a systematic way.

First off, I assessed each student and came up with a customized list of words they did not yet have. From this point I determined which words to work on first and prioritized.  Finally, I created customized flip books for each student that would be used to track their progress.

So, how does it work?  Good old fashioned practice!  I send home 5 flashcards at the beginning of the week in a special ziploc bag.  My parents LOVE flashcards - it is familiar to them and easy to do.  I suggest games they can play with the cards but my students often share that they just practice the flashcards.

On Friday I make time to meet with each of my target students (usually during read to self) and do a check in with the 5 words.  If they can read them with automaticity then they get to put a sticker beside the word in their flip book and I stamp their card.  They take the old cards home and I give them new flash cards.  Some weeks students need to continue to practice previous words, so they may only take home 2 or 3 new words.  My students love to put the stickers into their flip books and feel a sense of pride when we review all of the words in their flip book at the end of our check-in session.

I have found this to be a very powerful way to move kids forward in their sight word development.  I have had great parent support with this program because it is both easy to do and takes a little time each night.  

If you want to store this idea away why not pin this image!

Would you like to try it out?  Click below to download a free copy of the flip book to use with your students.

Thank you for checking out my post! 

Student-Created Math Word Walls

Hi, this is Brandi from The Research Based Classroom. Last year I spend a ton of time creating a really great math word wall for my first grade classroom, only to find myself moving up to fifth grade. It looks like this:

When I switched to fifth grade for this school year, I thought I would start making a new math word wall. I brought home my current math books, found old math books, started to search the internet for lists of math vocabulary words for fifth grade and I got overwhelmed with the number of math vocabulary words I would need to do. Not overwhelmed and not tackling this, but more overwhelmed and feeling like my first year in fifth grade has other more important things I need to spend my time on first. So I stopped working on creating a list of words. I still decided to go ahead and put up a math word wall, but I thought I would work on it as we went. Adding the word wall cards a few at a time. I thought by the end of the year, my entire word wall would be complete. Not my best idea. Mostly because I don't own a color printer and running down to the copy store to print one or two cards at a time is quite frankly something I will never do. You have no idea how long it takes me to run to the post office for a stamp! Now here I am at the end of the first term and my word wall is still sitting completely empty. I was lamenting my decision to even put up the word wall when I finally got a good idea. I think it's even a great idea: Why not let my fifth graders create the word wall themselves?

I assigned small groups of 2-3 students one word and they made a mock up of their vocabulary card. These are all words we have already learned in class. I used mostly properties we have worked with or words that go with basic operations. While they wrote their definitions to create their mock up, I went around and helped groups refine some of their definitions. It was a challenge for some of the groups to come up with good definitions even when they were sure they knew the math behind the property. Here are some of the word wall cards they came up with:

I just couldn't bring myself to ask the associative property of addition group to rewrite their examples so that they could keep the numbers in the same order and just change the groupings. I thought it was right on their mock up, but the final product shown here has the numbers moved around. 

 I also wish I had put more emphasis on the name of the property here. Maybe I should have gotten them to write Distributive Property of Multiplication over Addition. But even still, they did a fabulous job and we are now on our way to creating our math word wall together. It was a good learning experience. I hadn't realized how hard it would be for the students to verbalize definitions, it took a lot of discussion for us to agree on how the definitions should be stated and to make sure that everyone understood what each definition meant. Just for the refining of our thinking, this endeavor was worth it. I know this won't work with all grades, but for the upper grades, it just might be better to let them do it themselves.

Thanks for stopping by. 

P.S. If you are interested in my Math Word Wall for Grades 1 and 2, you can find the original and the printer friendly versions at TpT.

Learning to Read and Spell Tricky Words

Hello, It's Christina from Hanging Around In Primary.  I am so happy to be guest blogging over here at Who's Who and Who's New.  It is an amazing honor!

I am a first grade teacher and have been for most of my career.  I absolutely love this age, especially the after-Christmas-oh-my-goodness-they-finally-get-it moments! 

Today I want to share with you some tips for teaching those tricky words.  You know the ones; those rule breaker words that our students cannot sound out.  These are the words that they just have to learn to {READ} memorize. I call these words Word Jail words.  

Every week I introduce 5 new words.  We don't have a set list to follow but I have developed my own go-to list and somewhat of an order over the years.  Most weeks the list will include a word that I like to call a Word Jail word - one of those nasty rule breakers. 

When I introduce the words each week we try to sound each word out.  The students quickly discover that the rules we know don't work when sounding out all words.  We then talk about why a particular word is tricky. 

When we take a closer look at each word and apply the decoding skills we have, we find that one or more of our weekly words just can't be sounded out - perhaps it has a silent letter or it has an unusual spelling.  I need to clarify here that a word that my first graders may consider a rule breaker may vary from your first graders or older students.  If I have not taught my kids about the soft c sound, for instance, they are going to cry out that {nice} is a rule breaker - it is, until they know there is a rule for the c sound.  I will put the word in jail if they believe it belongs there.

I believe strongly that kids need a hook to help them to learn to read and this just seems to work.  I find this especially true of the boys and this strategy definitely hooks my boys!  They love the jail. It is located right on the word wall as you can see from the picture above.  They love to put words there.  All of the words we decide are jail words go in "jail" and under the correct letter on the word wall.   Having those tricky words in one easy-to-read spot makes finding them easier, especially for some of those little ones who struggle with the number of words on the word wall.  This way the word can be found in two different places on the word wall.  







After I make a big production of putting a word in jail I like to take a moment to read through all of the words in the jail.  Again having all those tricky words in one place makes review of them much easier.  Throughout the week we will do "find and print" activities where I give them a word and they find and print it on their whiteboard.  My more competent students write a sentence using the Word Jail word.  There are many, many ways to practice sight words but these are some of our favorites. 

I run a modified version of the Daily 5 during my literacy block and I wanted my students to work on those tricky words then as well.  They often use the magnets and sit in front of the Word Jail and make words, they use markers and rainbow write them or make rainbow sentences.  During writing time I often see kids writing and then hear them exclaim "that's a Word Jail word" and run over to the word wall and check it out.  {there are often pencil marks all over the cards from kids pointing a little too closely} Frequently in reading we hunt for Word Jail words and I often see them swing their head towards the Word Jail when they spot one in a book.  Once they spot it in the Jail they are able to read it on the page.  That makes for a very happy teacher. 

I also created a pack of printables that includes 1 sheet for each of 35 word jail words.  Each printable reinforces a number of skills:  copying the word spelled correctly, identifying the correct spelling of the Word Jail word when it is presented with the misspelled version and crossing off the incorrect ones.  The students also have the opportunity to edit a sentence with a Word Jail word spelled wrong and to write their own sentence using the Word Jail word.  Included with this pack is also an editable file where you are able to insert your own words and create your own printable to match the words you would like to use.    

I have been using the Word Jail concept for years and I swear by it.  Kids need to learn their sight words so if I can make it just a bit more exciting, especially for the boys, then I think it needs to happen.  I never get tired of hearing them tell me when we are reading or writing that that they see a Word Jail word.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed reading about how I teach those tricky sight words.  If you are interested you can find the bundle of worksheets and Word Jail display and words here: 

The Word Jail - BUNDLE

The Word Jail -  A Must-Have addition to your Word Wall

You can find me over at my blog {HERE}.  Thanks for stopping by! 
  

Easy-Prep Writing Centers!

One of the things I love most about first grade is witnessing the HUGE growth in writing throughout the year. By the end of first grade, most of my students love writing and can write several pages on a topic.

We do writer’s workshop in our district,  but I also love to include lots of different creative writing activities during center time.  My favorites are the ones I can reuse over and over again, with minimal prep.

Here, I’ll give you my top 10 easy writing centers- easy to prep, easy to change from week to week, free or inexpensive, and best of all, kids love ‘em because they are FUN!

1. Stamp a story- I think I've bought just about every stamp set from Oriental Trading Co. to make this fun center. I just switch out the set each week to go with our theme. Kids stamp, draw around the stamps, then they can write a story or describe their picture. I have a TON of themed sets. Some favorite themes are birthday, outer space, and of course, dinosaurs are always a hit!

2. Sticker story center! Just change the stickers to vary the theme! I get stickers from the dollar store and let kids pick up to 4 stickers to use in their picture, then draw the remaining scene and write a story. Check out the great freebie (click pic to get it) by Sarah Paul I found on TpT . 

3. Magazine Center- A Picture is worth 1,000 words! If you have old magazines, simply look through and rip out pages that you think may spark a writing idea! Funny ones are great (can you imagine the story for the cat picture below??), but so are ones that kids can relate to and write about a past experience. If you don’t have old magazines, ask parents- I always get a ton sent in when I do. TIP: go through the magazines to ‘censor’ (rip out pages) before putting them out- kids love to giggle and make fun of underwear ads J.

Another idea for magazine pictures:  I taped small pictures to index cards, then wrote some reference words on the back of each. Kids can use them to write a story OR, you can number 6 pictures, place them in a folder, and have kids write a sentence about each of the pictures! Template included in my freebie.

4. Theme writing center- I like to get kids thinking about our current themes, so I have a theme writing center, which usually has a prompt for kids to write about. Check out this week’s center, Earth Day People, courtesy of Kelly Everoski from Happily Ever After Education. I just love how these came out and the kids LOVED making them!  Click on the picture to see her awesome pack.

5. Word wall story- OK, I must admit, I’m a word wall addict. I love providing theme word walls for writing inspiration, as well as spelling reference. I have word walls for just about every theme imaginable. Here is a FREE one by 2 Super Teachers on TpT that we used for our writing center this week (click pic to get it). Check the bottom of this post for one of my own word wall freebies!

6. Starfall journal- Did I mention I love word walls? Well, I just LOVE these little journals by starfall.com (If you don’t know this website, you must get to know it! Lots of emergent reading and writing activities.). The journals include writing prompts and mini word walls with nouns, verbs and adjectives students can use to help them. They’re not free, but so worth the small price. I also buy the blank journals to make scrapbooks.

7. A day in the life of . . .  This is your typical “If I were a . . ." writing prompt. Kids love to pretend, so this center is perfect for little minds with BIG imaginations! I like to include craftivities here- for example, after kids write “If I were the Easter Bunny. . .” I would have them create a bunny holding their paper, or “If I were a leprechaun. .  .” they would make a leprechaun holding their paper.

8. Letter-writing center- I don’t have pictures of this center, as I just got back from maternity leave and didn’t get a chance to set it up this year, but this is another popular center with kids. After discussing different purposes for letter-writing, I place letter stationary and envelopes at this center, and a mailbox (made from a shoebox) for kids to ‘mail’ their letters from. They can write to the principal to ask for longer recess time, to the cafeteria workers with lunch requests, or to their friends in other classrooms. Pick some ‘postal workers’ to deliver the letters and this center will be a HIT! I included a template for you also!

9. Greeting card – Who doesn’t love to brighten someone’s day with a nice card? This center is great because kids will enjoy making these cards for different people, so  they’ll keep writing (I have a small collection on my file cabinet already- make sure you make lots of copies!) YUP, you’ll be getting this template for free! =)

10. Riddle center- Riddles are a great way to assess student learning. I use riddles after many topics and have kids match the riddle to the answers. A great center (that can incorporate any other subject) is to have books that go with your theme in a basket, add some index cards and ask kids to write a “Who Am I?” riddle on one side, and the answer on the other side. Then, you can share them with the class as a culminating review of your theme!

OK, so I know this post was long, but hopefully you got some good center ideas for your last couple of months of the school year. And here's a freebie, made exclusively for you! It has some of the templates found in this blog post.

Here’s another freebie from my store. . . with a word wall :), and my newest writing centers pack (not free, but on sale right now :D)!

 Do you have any more ideas for 'easy-to-prep and reuse' writing centers? 

I'd love to hear them!

Word Walls Across the Grades

Before I get started with all the goodies, let me introduce myself... I am Terri from Terri's Teaching Treasures.

This is my 9th year teaching and I have taught every grade from 1-7 and had a part-time contract in Learning Assistance. I definitely feel at home in a grade 4 or 5 class but there are many perks to each grade I have taught.

Currently, I am teaching a lively group of grade 2/3s at a school close to my home (yay I save on gas!!!). This is my third time teaching at this particular school but this time there are a bunch of new-to-me faces. I love getting to know new coworkers and collaborating with them to make the school environment fun and engaging. They quickly saw that I am a little obsessed with having my classroom look put together (my son calls it a sickness) and that I like to make things look inviting. Everything has to be color coordinated (shhh don't tell anyone but I actually turned down some plastic bins because they didn't match my classroom colors..shhhh). In case you are wondering here are a couple pictures of my overly coordinated classroom. Yup even my water bottle matches my colors :)

Since I have been in many different grades I have had to adapt how I use word walls in my classroom. Since I have pictures (another obsession... I take pictures of EVERYTHING) of both of the word wall formats I use I thought I would write my first blog post here about them.

The first type of word wall here is what I use when I am in a primary classroom. It is your typical "display the alphabet and add high frequency words and student names above the alphabet" type of word wall. I find that in my school district the primary classrooms  tend have more space and therefore more wall space for a word wall. I have not had the same word wall design/colors yet as I always change it to match my theme. This year I have gone with a bold color theme to match my book baskets and my word wall labels had to match so I created simple turquoise and lime green labels. If you are looking for this type of word wall and you like the colors just click here to get them for free!!!

When I was working in intermediate grades, I didn't think it would work having your typical word wall for two reasons. 

1) There is less space and more words students use.

2) Students may feel this is babyish.

 

I am not sure how I thought of this idea but I wanted a way for student to use the proper spelling of words without constantly asking my for it (you can only spell "awesome" so many times for students) and we had a lack of dictionaries for them to use. This is when my word wall was transformed. I have an index card box with index cards labelled with the alphabet. One letter per card. When a student asks for a word to be spelled they have to help me figure it out and it gets written on the appropriate index card. Before students can ask me for a word they must check the box (finding the right card) and only if the word is not on the index card will I write it on it. At the beginning of the year there are a lot of words being written on the cards but later on they have written a lot of the words they frequently use. It is great getting through an entire writing block and not having anyone ask how to spell a word.

 

I think this approach allows students to be more independent writers and it gives them continual practice at putting letters in alphabetical order as the cards are store alphabetically.

 

Here is a bonus tip on how to make writing times more successful. I post weekly writing prompts in my classroom in order to give students thinking time about a writing topic. I know that I have a hard time writing on the spot and have way more ideas if I have time to think about what I am writing about. They have notebooks they can jot down ideas throughout the week and then when it is time to focus on the writing topic they have already done a great deal of their brainstorming!

Well that is it for now. I am super excited to be apart of this wonderful blog and I cannot wait until I get to post again next month!!!

 

Cheers,