Anyone else love a quick and easy escape room?!?! Students love working in groups to solve a mystery and I LOVE when my students are engaged, learning, talking and having FUN! I also love it when something is PRINT AND GO! This escape room activity is perfect for the...
Anyone else LOVE the book Balloons Over Broadway? Learning about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is perfect for the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving break! And also... Macy's added some AMAZING videos this year to teach students about the balloon design process!...
Decoding is the process of reading words! AUTOMATIC WORD RECOGNITION is the ability to recognize a word without having to take the effort to sound it out. In the world of READING FLUENCY... automatic word recognition in our students is a huge goal! Automatic word...
After pre-reading comes the FUN PART - READING! You can read all about pre-reading HERE! Reading is when my little learners apply what they have learned! They apply knowledge of sight words, phonics skills, decoding, vocabulary skills, word identification, and reading...
Sixteen years ago... I was a first year teacher... I had NO IDEA what I was doing when it came to guided reading groups! I DREADED that small group time! I taught a 1/2 split and my kids were on so many different levels. I couldn't figure out how to organize my...
As a first grade teacher, my goal is for my students to become fluent readers. I want them to enjoy reading, and I want them to leave me and enter second grade knowing that they can pick up any book and read for enjoyment. While fluency is only one key ingredient in...
At the beginning of each school year my goal is for my students to have fun and enjoy reading! My first reading lesson is to teach them that reading is MAKING MEANING. My students learn that they can read a story by reading the words AND/OR by reading the pictures....
SO....I started this blog post back in March. YIKES!!! I was preggo, and tired, and NEEDED this author study for my class! I got it finished, but never seemed to get around to blog about it... ha! So... here it FINALLY is! Why now? Because I used it in my...
I’m a mom, wife, first grade teacher, and curriculum designer. I love teaching and I also enjoy creating resources that engage and inspire our little learners. My goal is to save you time while providing researched based, high quality, engaging lessons and activities that can be adapted to meet the needs of ALL students. I hope you’ll stay for a while. I’m so glad you’re here.