Spring Themed Sight Word Game Boards

admin April 16, 2015 No Comments

These game boards have certainly been a hit! They are perfect for your spring themed centers or for small group instruction. When you download these game boards you will receive 9 colorful game boards containing words from the Dolch 220 sight word list. There are 4 different spring themed designs. Each game board is also available in a black and white version so that they can be copied and sent home for added practice. The Spring Themed Sight Word Game Boards for the Dolch Sight Words can be found in my online Teachers Pay Teachers store or in the Make, Take & Teach website.

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Robin’s Nest Activities for Beginning Sounds and Word Families

admin April 11, 2015 No Comments

Well, it’s certainly been a long, hard winter. It’s hard to believe that just two days ago (that would be April 9th) it was actually snowing outside. Yikes! Today I was able to take a long bike ride around the lake as the temperature peaked at 54 degrees. Okay, I know my friends living in the southern states and in other countries may think that’s a bit crazy, but it’s par for the course for living in Northern Michigan.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Listening to the birds chirping on my bike ride was quite a treat. Actually, the whole bike ride was a nature’s choir! There were tons of frogs and other creatures also taking advantage of the

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Teaching the Consonant+le Syllable Type

admin March 21, 2015 No Comments

It’s always so much fun listening and watching our young readers figure out those “longer” words. Many of our little ones are pretty solid decoding one-syllable words and are now ready to learn strategies for decoding multisyllabic words. So, really, what is a syllable? Simply put, a syllable is a unit of pronunciation containing a single vowel sound. “Syllabication” is the process of analyzing the pattern of vowels and consonants in a word to determine where a word is broken into its syllables. The ability to break a word into syllables helps students decode those longer words as well as helps the student remember spelling patterns. Understanding the 7 syllable types helps students to become better readers and writers. There

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Easter Egg Activities for Rhyme, Beginning Sounds and Vocabulary

admin March 14, 2015 No Comments

I absolutely love these Easter eggs that Kyle created.  They are so colorful and make for fun and interactive center activities during spring.  I created three different activities for my preschool and kindergarten friends just for learning and practicing the early literacy skills of beginning sounds, rhyme and vocabulary. When you download the Easter Egg Alphabet activity you’ll receive 26 eggs with upper-, lowercase letters and a picture with the beginning sound of the letter.  Just for the sake of organizing the pieces, a label for the activity is also included.  The Easter Egg Alphabet Activity can be found in my online Teachers Pay Teachers store. The Easter Egg Rhyme activity is one of my all-time favorite activities for practicing

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Flipping Eggs – Fun Hands-on Activities for Learning Sight Words

admin February 28, 2015 No Comments

Learning and practicing sight words can be super fun when you integrate hands-on activities.  The Flipping Eggs activity is easy to assemble- simply print the eggs, laminate and then cut out each egg.  You’ll have an activity that will last for years!  Just for fun, the Flipping Eggs activity is also available with green colored eggs. The Flipping Eggs activity for the Dolch Sight Words contains the Dolch 220 sight words printed on the eggs. The Flipping Eggs Dolch Sight Words activity is available in my online Teachers Pay Teachers store or through the Make, Take & Teach website. When you download the activity for the Fry Sight Words you’ll receive the first 225 words printed on the eggs. The

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Resources for Teaching Blends and Digraphs

admin February 21, 2015 No Comments

Many of my first grade friends are now learning common blends and digraphs.  I thought it’d help if I gathered a few of my favorite resources and activities as well as answer common questions for introducing and practicing this skill. What’s the difference between a blend and a digraph? Consonant Blends A consonant blend is when two or more consonants are blended together, but each sound may be heard in the blend.  The most common beginning consonant blends include: bl, br, cl, cr, dr, fr, tr, fl, gl, gr, pl, pr, sl, sm, sp and st.  Blends can also occur at the end of words as in the word “last”.  There are also blends which contain three consonants.  Common three

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Teaching Long Vowel Spelling Patterns

admin February 16, 2015 No Comments

Long vowel sound spelling patterns are quite difficult for students to learn.  First they must understand that more than one letter can be used to represent one sound and then learn the various ways that the sound can be represented in print.  For example, there are 4 common ways the sound /a/ can be spelled: “a” as in “acorn”, “a_e”  as in “gate”, “ai” as in “rain” and “ay” as in “day”.  Students must also learn when to use the spelling pattern for each sound.  For example, the “ay” spelling pattern for the /a/ sound most often occurs at the end of words while the “ai” spelling pattern never occurs at the beginning or end of words.  Whoa! kind of

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Cookie Sheet Bundle for Sight Words, Blends/Digraphs and Word Families!

admin January 20, 2015 No Comments

The Cookie Sheet Activities have certainly been popular with my kindergarten and first grade teacher friends.  They are so versatile- they can be used within small group instruction or as independent literacy center activities.  It’s always so important to incorporate hands-on learning especially for our young and struggling readers and these activities do the trick.  Our  Cookie Sheet Activities for Pre K – K Bundle incorporates the skills of ABC order, rhyme, beginning sounds and early numeracy.  The first grade bundle contains a little more advanced skills.  The first activities within this bundle focus on learning and practicing sight words.  The first sight word activity requires your students to build the words with magnetic letters.  There are 43 templates in

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The Snow is Flying! Grab Those Mittens

admin January 17, 2015 No Comments

Here in Northern Michigan winter can last for months (and I mean months and months).  We often have snow from late November through mid-April.  Well, up in the north, putting on your boots, mittens, hats, coats, and snow pants is an everyday event.  It can take up to 10 minutes to get our little kindergarteners ready to go outside–and then another 10 minutes to get undressed!  Multiply that routine by three times a day–craziness!  Whether you live in a winter wonderland or in warmer parts of the world, the Mitten Match activity is sure to be a hit with your kiddos during the winter months. Last year, my fabulous artist created these adorable mittens.  They were perfect for creating a

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A Strategy for Helping Students Learn to Blend

admin January 14, 2015 No Comments

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile you may know that I’m just a little (okay, a lot) addicted to professional books.  I really love keeping up with the current research in reading and learning difficulties.  One of my favorite authors is Isabel Beck.  I love her book, Bringing Words to Life – it’s the go-to book on teaching vocabulary.  Her most recent book, Making Sense of Phonics: The Hows and Whys is an equally valuable resource for phonics instruction.  I was re-reading the book the other night and came across a strategy for blending that I thought would be helpful for many of my kindergarten and first grade teacher friends.  The strategy is called successive blending. After students

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