Slowing Down

Time to SLOW DOWN! With 2 four-day weeks in a row and so many holidays to celebrate, our first grade team decided to slow it down and only cover one week's language lessons in the eight days. Whew!!!

I felt like I was in over-drive... and trying to push my firsties just a little too hard to keep up.  

Can you imagine trying to cover the sound spellings for oi, oy, ph, wr, and possessive pronouns, read 2 stories in your anthology, and 4 decodable books in 3 days - so you can assess on Friday? And if that wasn't enough...just try to throw in Presidents' Day and Valentine's Day into the mix! Yikes!!!

So, we took on oi and oy last week and will cover ph and wr this week.

Note: For my Imagine It followers that's Unit 7.11-7.15.

In preparation for the week, I created a new wr word work pack and 2 PowerPoint Shows to use to practice decoding wh and ph words. Grab your freebie page HERE. To grab the PowerPoint shows click on the pictures below.



In addition to the word work materials, I also created a new geometry foldable pack to go along with chapters 20 and 21 in our math book. You can grab a freebie foldable HERE. The rest of the booklets are available in my TPT store.

Happy President's Day!

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

This week we will be reading The Itsy Bitsy Spider and The Tortoise and the Hare in our Reading Anthology.

My students usually know the first verse from the Itsy Bitsy spider rhyme - but not the later ones... So, this is always a favorite.

And... there are always a few if not more, who ask for a copy of these later verses to go home. So this year I created this little booklet for them.

They will begin by filling in the missing rhyming words for each verse and then illustrate the pages.  On the last 3 pages they will be asked to 1- list the spider's problems, 2- tell how she tries to solve them, and finally 3- identify the central message of the story.

I know they are going to love this. 

Grab a copy for yourself  HERE.

oi and oy word work

This week we will be working with the oi and oy sound spellings.

Since our classroom Valentine's Day celebration on Friday is a 1950's theme... I created a a word work pack to go along with the theme.

The pack includes:

20- oi word cards
20 - oy word cards
Read and Write the Room (oi/oy sort)
Scoot (fill in the missing letters)
2 Word Searches
I Have.. Who Has (2 sets of 20 cards)
Game Board

You can grab the word searches HERE for free.

If you are interested in the entire pack, you can find it in my TPT store.

Why I Love Teaching 1st Grade

1st week of 1st grade

Same child...90 days later

PRICELESS!

The Little Engine That Could

This week we will be reading The Little Engine That Could in our reading textbook.

Since we are working on writing summaries, I thought it might be fun to create a summary template that formed a train - beginning with the little engine pulling a bunch of train cars behind it.

This is what I came up with.

I think my students are really going to enjoy creating this one!

Grab a copy for yourself here.

February Reading Logs and Spelling Tic-Tac-Toe

Can you believe it is almost February?

In preparation for the upcoming month I recently updated a few of my homework packet pages... Now I am ready for Monday.

My 1st graders do such a great job on their weekly reading logs and they are really enjoying these new tic-tac-toe spelling activities.

You can grab your own copy of these below.

February Reading Logs
February Spelling Tic-Tac-Toe

Enjoy!

OU and OW Word Work

This week my students will be introduced to the spelling patterns /ow/ and /ou/ as we head into Unit 7 of our Reading and Language Arts program.


Each day we do one or more word work activities related to the weekly spelling pattern(s). Most, if not all of the word work activities we will cover this week are from my "Out and Around with Little Brown Mouse" pack which is available in my TPT store. The word cards from the packet will be used for Move it Monday, Trade It Tuesday, and Walk and Write Wednesday. Click HERE to grab the word cards for FREE.

We will also be busy with 100's Day activities this Thursday and Groundhog's Day and Chinese New Year fun on Friday. It is going to be a jam-packed week. I can hardly wait!