Open Court Sound Spelling Cards Reference Sheet

Open Court Teachers, this one is for you! I just compiled a FREEBIE one-page reference sheet with all of the sound spelling cards. I printed a class set and ran back-to-back with a digraph and blends reference sheet created by Lacey Yates from Wild About Teaching! It is available for FREE as well in her TPT store. You have to check her stuff out!

Then I laminated the set. They are now ready to go in my students' literacy boxes. I plan to run a second set and place in their three-pronged SHIP to SHORE folders to use as a reference at home as well.

Writing Journals

I just finished preparing my students writing journals for the year. It took a little time - but well worth the effort. All it took was a pack of decorative paper, a glue stick, my pirate-themed labels (with each student's class number on the treasure chest), and a role of clear contact paper.

These Stage 3 Primary Journals by Mead worked just perfectly for my 1st graders last year. It was amazing to see how their writing progressed .
There was plenty of room for pictures and top, middle, and bottom baselines for proper letter formation.

They were more pricey than the regular composition books, but worth the investment.

Update...

A few weeks after this post, I received an email from a follower asking if I could create these labels for second grade as well. So, here you go Liz! Click HERE to download the labels for SECOND GRADE.

Last Year I had big plans to do a graph a week with my kiddos, unfortunately it NEVER happened. Although I had collected some graphing files, I never had ones I truly loved and they certainly were not all together in one place. So, this year I decided I was going to make it happen!

I spent most of the last week, hours and hours a day, creating a 150+ page pack that I have entitled:

A Graph a Week

A Graph a Week includes 46 different Graphing Activities... MORE than enough for the Entire School Year! (Here is just a sampling of the graphs you will find in the pack.)

Each Graph includes:

• Survey Question Header and Data Response Cards to use in a pocket chart or on a bulletin board
• A Response Sheet with space for TALLYING and GRAPHING RESULTS and lines for recording DATA ANALYSIS

I am really excited about the finished packet and can't wait to implement A GRAPH a WEEK in my classroom this year with my first graders. It is available now in my TPT store. 

While I was creating the graph I also designed some new Simple Shape clip art called SIMPLY SHAPES which is also available  in my TPT store. I used these graphics for one of the graphs in the pack and have included it below as a FREEBIE for you.

Enjoy, and Happy Graphing! 

Along time ago - 25 years ago to be exact, I began my teaching career. During the summer before my first year, I  purchased loads of supplies and spent weeks and weeks decorating my classroom. One of my favorite items and most useful was my Flip Phonics Word Family cards.

Unfortunately, after ten years of teaching I left the classroom to develop curriculum and train teachers how to integrate computers into their classroom and donated all my materials to my former school. Once I returned to the elementary classroom, I wished that I hadn't dumped all those wonderful supplies - especially those flip phonics cards.

I searched the Internet and looked through all my teacher supply catalogs, but never found those cards that I loved and used so much. So, this week I created my own set. Which I am posting here as a FREEBIE. I will be adding additional cards in the future and posting a more complete set on TPT soon.

Check out how cool these cards are! Just print them back to back on cardstock and you are ready to go - no laminating required! The children can even quiz each other with them...how cool is that!

This free digital slideshow generated with Smilebox

Unit 1 Open Court Materials Update

Today I completed updates to the Unit 1 Materials for Open Court and reposted all of the downloadable files. All the pdf files are now together in one organized zipped folder. If you are a first grade teacher using SRA's OCR Program you can download the entire set of Unit 1 Support Materials HERE.

Files for each week of the program include:

Unit Focus Question Posters

Weekly Overview

Spelling List

Challenge Spelling List

Spelling Pretest

Spelling Words for Pocket Chart

Vocabulary words and Definitions for Pocket Chart

Focus Wall Strips for Pocket Chart 

Follower Request

Yesterday, I had a request from a TPT follower to create a set of frog-themed classroom rules with specific wording that her grade level team uses. So, thanks to Annie ... you can grab a FREEBIE set too. (The set below includes a tweak or two from her set.)

Grab yours here. Enjoy!

Back to Blogging

Now that the school year has come to a close, and I have successfully pulled off my parents' 50th wedding anniversary Sock Hop party (which kept me busy for two weeks), I am back to blogging and creating materials for the classroom.

Make sure to come back for a few FREEBIES
which will be added in the next few days.


This week I completed my:

• August Super Sentences 
• Unit 1 Open Court Focus Question Posters
• First Grade Open Court Unit 1 Decodable Worksheets
• First Grade Open Court Unit 2 Decodable Worksheets

All of these products are now available in my TPT store.