Trick or Treat Blog Hop

Welcome to the Trick or Treat Blog Hop!

This blog hop will run from October 24th - October 31st.  Each blogger will share a classroom tip (a trick) and  have a freebie and a giveaway (a treat!).  So after checking out this post, be sure to click the button to "hop" to the next blogger for more tricks and treats!   

One of the best "tricks" I have for hooking elementary students who are tuned out or just not interested in an activity is to bring in my Word Monster. 

"A what?" you might be asking. 

A Word Monster!  Much like the Cookie Monster loves cookies, this friendly little guy LOVES words, letters, and everything reading and writing related.  

Don't tell my students, but Word Monster is actually just a small cardboard box (probably from Amazon) covered in blue paper, stamped with vowels, and has taped on googly eyes and teeth. 

Even with those humble orgins, Word Monster has taken on a life of his own.  If students are struggling to focus, Word Monster might come over to watch them work.  He's also up for listening to any story, especially when a student needs a reading buddy.  Plus, he will eat anything with writing on it, but he has one rule: you must read him the letter/word/sentence/short passage before you feed it to him.

Word Monster is a great motivator, especially for those students who don't love reading and writing.  You can easily make your own Word Monster, or if you're brave, you could have your students each make their own monster! 

If you or your class make a monster, I would love to see them!  You can e-mail me pictures at: iheartliteracy@gmail.com

And for one of the best parts of Halloween: the treats!

FREE during this Blog Hop only!

Halloween Rhyming Words Cut & Paste (which comes with three different levels to easily differentiate instruction) will be FREE for this blog hop.  Grab it between October 24th and October 31st 2015 and have some rhyming fun with your students.   

Halloween Rhyming Words

Along with this Halloween flash freebie, I'm holding a giveaway for the Community Helpers Activties and Centers pack (great any time of the year).  Enter below for your chance to win!

Community Helpers Activities & Centers Pack!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don't forget to hop over to the next blog:

Hop to the next blog!

TPT Seller Challenge Week Two: Dare to Dream

It is Week 2 of the TPT Seller Challenge with the ladies over at Third in Hollywood, Sparking in Second, Peppy Zesty Teacherista, and Teach Create Motivate. 

The challenge for Week Two?  Dare to Dream 

I have four "dreams" or goals for TPT.

1) Inspire Others - I hope that my products and resources inspire other teachers and most importantly inspire students to expand their thinking and creativity.  

2) Continuously Push Myself to Be a Better Teacher - TPT and creating new resources inspires me to be a better teacher and to helps me strive to come up with interesting and creative ways to spark students' interest and motivate students to learn.  

3) Pay Off Student Loans - I love teaching, but I do not love the loans that I had to take out to become a teacher.  TPT is helping me to pay extra toward my loans each month.  I might not make much some months (especially these summer months), but that doesn't matter.  Slowly but surely those suckers are going down.  

4) Fund My Children's College Funds - Full disclosure: I do not actually have children yet.  One is on the way and we plan on having more in the future, and one goal my husband and I have is to help our children pay for college.  We may not be able to pay 100% of their college financial needs, but we hope to save enough to make any loans that they do need to take out manageable so that they can focus on other life, savings, and retirement goals.  

These four "dreams" help keep me grounded and motivated, and I look forward to what the future holds for me and this TPT journey.  

Tricks and Treats Blog Hop

October is my favorite month!  Crisp air, pumpkins, hot tea, big sweaters with boots, Halloween - what's not to love?

To help celebrate the amazing month of October, I've partnered with several other bloggers to bring you the Tricks & Treats Blog Hop: a smorgasbord of goodies to kick off the month!  I'd also like to give a big thank you to Mrs. Plemons for hosting and organizing the blog hop.  

Okay, let's get down to business:

Tricks

Here are two fun tricks to incorporate movement into teaching phoneme segmentation. 

Start with three sound words:

1)  Have your students follow your lead and use your body to sound out words.  Touch both hands to the top of your head for the initial sound.  Touch two hands to your stomach for the medial sound.  Then, touch two hands to your feet for the final sound.  After modeling for students, have them give it a try themselves.

*This technique is great for helping isolate initial, medial, and final sounds too!

2)  Hop out the words!  Place green, yellow, and red sheets of paper on the ground in a line.  Give students a word like "cat" and have them hop to each sheet for each sound in the word.  Hop on green and say /k/, hop on yellow and say /a/, and hop on red and say /t/.  

Treats

Here are some Halloween and fall inspired treats for your classroom:

Freebies:

You Oughta Know About These Sight Word Games and Activities

What time is it?  Blog Hop Time!  I'd like to give a BIG thanks to Jasmine at Buzzing with Mrs. McClain for hosting and organizing the You Oughta Know Blog Hop.  

So what do I think you oughta know this month?  I think you oughta know about sight words.

Yes, sight words.  In the earlier grades (K-2) sight words are mainly comprised of the most frequently recurring words in English (a, the, of, is, in, like) as well as words that break away from common phonics rules (was, people, have, friend).  

As students progress through the grades more and more words should naturally be added to their visual sight word bank.  These are words that students have encountered enough times that when they glance at the word they know what it is (cat, dog, mom, dad).  

By 2nd or 3rd grade, most students should have a large bank of words that they just know as soon as they see them.  However, this is not always the case.  Sight words (especially the ones that break rules) can be tricky for some students.  Also, just because a students is in 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade does not mean they have mastered all common sight words.  Plus, with new academic vocabulary demands as students age (think science, math, social studies, etc.) students are expected to grow that sight word vocabulary and read a wide variety of words on demand.  

So what can you do if you have students who need help devoting words to memory and building that sight word bank? 

Well, I think you oughta know about these sight word games and activities:

1) Sight Word Password: Make a "Password of the Day" or a "Password of the Week."  Every time students walk in or out of your room, they have to read the "magic password."  It builds in quick but fun  practice.

2) Sight Word Rubbing:  Simple and fun!  Use glue to spell out sight words on small pieces of paper.  Students then place a new piece of paper over the words and rub a crayon over the bumpy edges to reveal the sight word.  


3) Sight Word Parking Lot:  This is a great activity for boys and girls who love cars and trucks.  Print off or make your own "parking lot" and students park their car over the word you read.

4) Flashcards:  For some students using flashcards and doing daily drills with the cards can do wonders.  if you make two sets of cards, students can also play games like go fish and memory.

5) Star Sight Words:  This one I love.  I've made up my own batch of Star Sight Words - they look like fancy word wands!  In my class, students can grab a Star Word when they read a book and count how many times they find that word.  I also like to cut out newspaper articles and let students search through the article and highlight their star word as many times as they can find it.


6) Sight Word PowerPoint: Create a PowerPoint with your own students holding up large poster board-sized signs of your sight words.  Then run through the PowerPoint with your students - they will LOVE seeing themselves and it will help motivate them throughout the activity.  

7) Bowling for Sight Words: How fun does this look?  I think it would be best for small groups, and it could also be great for indoor recess! 

8) Sight Word Stomp: Spread sight word flashcards around on the ground.  Call out a word and the student(s) need to find it and stomp or jump or hop on it.  Lots of fun and lots of movement so it is best for small groups or one-on-one.


9) Sight Word Building: Do you have students who are very hands on and love to build things?  Well this is the activity for them.  Use open block letter sight word mats and lets students use cubes or Legos to form the letters of the sight word.  





Do you have a favorite sight word or vocabulary building activity?  If so please share it in the comments section below.  

An InLinkz Link-up

You Oughta Know About... These Back to School Ideas!

It's that time of year again! Back to School!

For me Back to School time is both exciting and nerve-racking: there are so many fun ideas to try, but there is so much work to do.  Here are a few ideas that I've collected from around the web, that will hopefully make this year a little smoother and easier, so we can focus on the fun with our students and less on the other craziness that comes with teaching:

Organization & Management:

Have computer cords everywhere?  Need quick access to a USB cord, charger, or other cord?  Try this fun idea:

LEGO Cord Holders

Don't have enough space?  Need a little extra room for papers, markers, etc.?  Try some hanging baskets:

From The Kindergarten Smorgasboard

Have kids who just can't sit still in their seat?  I know I do!  I love these wiggle seats.  It's kind of like sitting on a small exercise ball.  Students need to focus to keep their bottom in the seat rather than squirming out of it.  I've seen wonders for a child's ability to focus his mind on a task while his body is focused on one of these:

Wiggle Seats (You can order them from many places, this is just one site.)

Words to Keep in Mind:

This is one of my favorite sayings in class.  It really helps put things in perspective for students.

Mistakes

Another great saying, especially for older students who will understand its meaning better:

Respect

I just came across this one, and love it.  I'm planning on keeping it for when testing comes around.  Students always feel like they need to do better than the person next to them.  In reality, they just need to do their best and bloom.  

Competition 

First Day/Week Ideas:

During that first week of school, how many times do you get a "What if" question?  Or how many times do you get asked questions at in opportune times?  Here's a great idea to knock those out:

From Kathy Griffn's Teaching Strategies

Want to know how you can help your students learn and grow this year?  Ask them:

From Confessions of a Teaching Junkie

Team building exercises are always a good way to help build a sense of community and rapport with your class and for students to begin building (or rebuilding after the summer) relationships with each other.

From Te@chThought

Sure the teacher makes a big impact on the class, but there is only one teacher.  There are 20+ (sometimes 30+) other people in the room with you.  Those people, your students, make a huge impact on the classroom too.  Discussing what makes a good student, and hanging a description on the wall is a great reference all year for class-decided expectations:

From Using My Teacher Voice

Do you have a great back to school activities, sayings, or organization ideas?  Share it in the comments section!

An InLinkz Link-up

You Oughta Know About... These Awesome Books!

Welcome to "You Oughta Know" - a blog hop devoted to great ideas and resources teachers should know about started by the one and only Mrs. McClain.


What do I think you oughta know?  I think you should know about these awesome books!

The Day the Crayons Quit

By Drew Daywalt

Grades K-2

Duncan wants to color, but every color in his box of crayons has walked out!  Each crayon has written Duncan a letter to explain why it was necessary to strike.  These letters will make your students giggle as they reflect on the life of a crayon.








I'm a Frog! (An Elephant and Piggie Book)

By Mo Willems

Grades K-2

From the Elephant and Piggie series, Mo Willems will make you and your students laugh with I'm a Frog! Piggie baffles Gerald the Elephant when he ribbits and hops around.  Can Gerald understand the concept of pretending?









That is Not a Good Idea

By Mo Willems

Grades 1-3

Like always, Mo Willems delivers in this hilarious picture book.  A hungry fox invites a mother hen to dinner. That is NOT a good idea!









Ungifted

By Gordon Korman

Lexile: 730, Grades 3-7

The only thing Donovan Curtis easily gets A's in is troublemaking.  And when he pulls his most massive prank yet, he knows he's gone too far.  Only a miracle can save him.  And a miracle, in the form of a mix-up, is what he gets.  The punishment Donovan expects is accidentally replaced by an invitation to the prestigious school for gifted and talented students, the Academy of Scholastic Distinction (ASD).  Although Donovan knows he is in over his head, ASD is his only chance to escape the consequences awaiting him.  At ASD he needs to navigate his more than difficult classes, his new teachers' suspicions, and a variety of genius-level students all while trying to make friends, fit in, and hide out.



Wonder

By R.J. Palacio

Lexile: 790L, Grades 4-7

August (Auggie) Pullman is your typical 10 year-old-boy in a lot of ways, with one main exception.  Auggie was born with a craniofacial abnormality which causes his facial features to be severally malformed.  This abnormality has kept him home for homeschooling--until now.  Auggie decides that he will start his fifth grade year, the beginning of middle school, in a private school.  Auggie is a mixture of nerves and excitement as he braves middle school if all the fears of a new student, plus a few extra.





Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

By Steve Sheinkin

*Newbery Honor Book
Lexile: 920L, Grades 5+

Bomb is the fascinating, true tale of America's race to build the atomic bomb, about the Allies endeavors to thwart the Nazi's atomic bomb plans, and about the Soviet Union's efforts to steal information from American scientists.  The story centers on three main people: J. Robert Oppenheimer (leader of the Manhattan Project), Harry Hold (Soviet Spy), and Knut Haukelid (member of the Norwegian Resistance). A great read that intertwines quality story-telling, history, danger, deceit, and scientific genius!




These books are all great for independent reading, as class novels, or as read-alouds.  Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry, and some will make you think, but they all will leave an impression on you and your students.

If you're looking for an easy and effective way to help students with reading comprehension, you can try my Reading Comprehension Sentence Starter Cards.  They are only $1.00 and they help students practice:

• Predicting
• Connecting
• Clarifying
• Questioning
• Commenting
• Synthesizing 

I recommend the Comprehension Cards for 3rd grade and up, but they can also be used as a teacher-led model with younger students.

An InLinkz Link-up