Cookie Sheet Activities Volume 5: Blends and Digraphs

admin August 25, 2012 No Comments

I’ve been having so much fun creating the cookie sheet activities! Thanks to everyone who has sent emails and comments with suggestions for future volumes.  I love hearing your ideas and it seems like I’ll be busy creating cookie sheet activities for quite some time.  The newest lastest and greatest volume of the cookie sheet activities is designed to teach and practice consonant blends and digraphs.  There are 18 sorting templates!  This activity allows for differentiation as students can sort with either two or four sounds. Click the following link to download two FREE templates and corresponding pictures Cookie Sheet Activities Volume 5 Sorting Digraphs and Blends Cookie Sheet Activities Volume 5 also contains 10 templates where the students must decide which

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Four Types of Reading Assessments

admin August 20, 2012 No Comments

Assessment and intervention is the heart and soul of Response to Intervention (RtI).  Prior to beginning either a school-wide program or developing an intervention plan for a particular student, it is critically important to have assessment data.  There are 4 types of reading assessments that comprise a comprehensive K-3 reading assessment plan.  Each type of assessment is important in its own right and provides valuable information to school teams in the RtI process.  So, take a look at these types of assessments.  How comprehensive is your K-3 reading assessment plan? 1.  Screening-  The purpose of a screening assessment is to identify students who are at-risk for reading difficulties.  Identifying the students early on who are likely to struggle with learning to read is

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Cereal Box Puzzles

admin August 17, 2012 No Comments

Years ago I attended a literacy center workshop and the presenter offered tons and tons of great ideas for activities.  I love the kind of workshops where you leave with great ideas for hands on activities that you can create and use the very next day!  During the session she shared the “Cereal Box Activity”.  I thought this activity was so very clever!  It’s easy to make, has a self-checking feature and it can be used with many skills.  In this video, I created the activity using math facts.  You can create the activity for a variety of skills such as parts of speech, state capitals, and the list goes on and on.  You can also differentiate the activity by limiting or increasing

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8 Great Ideas for Teaching Segmenting and Blending

admin August 10, 2012 No Comments

  Phonemic awareness- the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992) The best predictor of reading difficulty in kindergarten or first grade is the inability to segment words and syllabes into constituent sound units (Lyon, 1995) The research is very clear on the important role phonemic awareness plays in the reading process.  Children must understand that language is comprised of spoken words and that those words can be broken down into separate sounds.  The child’s level of phonemic awareness upon entering school is one of the strongest indicators of how well he/she will learn to read.  The exciting part is that, as teachers, by assessing our students’ phonemic

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DIY Rhyme Magnets

admin August 7, 2012 No Comments

Phonological awareness refers to an understanding of the sound structure of language- that is, that language is made up of words, syllables, rhymes and sounds. So why is it that phonological awareness is so important?  It is because the understanding of how language works is a foundational skill in learning to read and spell.  If children do not understand that words are made up of individual sounds that can be blended together to make words, then using the alphabet to read and write would make no sense.  In fact, research indicates that phonemic awareness is the best predictor of later reading ability, even more than intelligence, vocabulary or listening comprehension! Understanding the concept of rhyme is the first skill in the hierarchy of phonological

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Summertime- A Time for Making Memories

admin August 2, 2012 No Comments

Last week while I was bloghopping I came across DeAnne Davis’ post from First Grade and Fabulous on making the most of the remaining weeks of summer.  As teacher-bloggers it’s often difficult to detach ourselves from our computers.  Sometimes, seemingly, other parts of our lives seem to take a second seat to creating products, Pinterest pinning and blog posting.  DeAnne and her family made a list of all the fun things they want to do for the rest of the summer and now they’re off and running. I will say that I’m not looking forward to the first day of school.  This is mostly because everyone will be asking how the summer went.  Well, I’ll admit, I’m not really sure HOW I feel about this

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Cookie Sheet Activities Volume 4

admin July 29, 2012 No Comments

I can’t tell you how much fun I’m having making the cookie sheet activities! As soon as I finish with one volume, I already have 2 or 3 more ideas for upcoming volumes.  I think I’ve been driving Kyle (my wonderful artist) nuts with all the new art I’ve been asking her to make.  She’s such a trooper.  Despite having two very young children she still makes time to create awesome clip art for me to use in these products.   I love it that her pics are so colorful and eye-catching. A week or so ago I finished Cookie Sheet Activities Volume 4.  This volume targets the skills of identifying beginning sounds in words as well as providing extra practice with those

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Multi-Sensory Ideas for Teaching Sight Words

admin July 18, 2012 No Comments

In order to be fluent readers, students need to be able to recognize sight words quickly and accurately as these words make up between 50-70% of the words we encounter in text.  Students who struggle learning sight words greatly benefit from using a multi-sensory approach to teaching.  The term “multi-sensory” means using all the different senses at the same time.  Using this approach to teaching increases the likihood that the student will remember the word.  When teaching sight words this coming year, try using a variety of multi-sensory materials during your small group intervention or within your literacy centers.  Here are a few of my favorites: 1.  Craft Sand-  Students love writing their sight words in sand!  Admittedly, it could be

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Assessing and Progress Monitoring Sight Words

admin July 16, 2012 No Comments

One of the many benefits of my job is that I have the opportunity to travel to many different elementary buildings.  I know you may be sitting there thinking, “I’d hate that”, but it’s actually tons of fun.  Each building has it’s own unique personality so every day of the week brings a brand new experience.  When I first started my job traveling among the 13 elementary buildings in our ISD, it was plainly obvious that each building had it’s own measure of what they considered to be “normal”.  In fact, the idea of what was considered “normal” could (and often did) vary from teacher to teacher within the same building.  We were quite often faced with a situation where a teacher would bring a child

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Fun Finds at Walmart for Your Small Group Intervention

admin July 11, 2012 No Comments

Horray!  Back-to-school supplies are now in stores!  If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know how I love my Walmart.  So I was thrilled to see great bargins in the school aisle at my favorite store.  Here are a few of items I found that would be great to have in your small group intervention area: 1.  Locker mirrors.  Mirrors are a must in any small group intervention area!  When teaching letters and sounds, especially for those struggling readers, having them watch the placement of their lips, tongue and teeth while making the sounds is very helpful.  These decorative mirrors are only 88 cents!  They are the perfect size. 2.  Dry Erase Boards- Dry erase boards are another

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