Mother’s Day is three weeks away! That makes it time to start thinking about and having students start creating a gift for their mom or other important female (grandma, aunt, like-a-mother etc.) in their life! As a mom, I always loved when my kids would bring home their Mother’s Day gift from school. They would come home with big grins […]
5 Marvelous Mother’s Day Gifts to Make in the Classroom
10 Best Short Videos for Teaching Phonics Rules
We want students to retain what we are teaching them. A great way to do this is by using videos! And what’s better than that, is a video with music! Typically, I play a video at the beginning or the end of the lesson. I will play it either as an introduction to what we are going to learn or […]
The Most Important Thing for Increasing Reading Fluency
I hope everyone got the opportunity to get some much needed R&R over Spring Break! If your Spring Break just started, lucky you! Well, I am back to work tomorrow and looking forward to it for the most part. I don’t love getting up early, but I do love working with my students. And with that, I want to share […]
The Importance of Teaching Syllable Types
I was not familiar with syllable types until recently. Reading came naturally to me, so I never really thought about words and word parts having a finite amount of combinations that can be taught. After beginning training in LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling) last year, I was introduced to the 6 syllable types. Teaching the 6 […]
March is Reading Month: 10 Awesome Activities
March starts at the end of next week and that means my school is gearing up for March is Reading Month! Obviously, as a reading interventionist, Reading Month is one of my favorite times of the year! I’ll take any opportunity to show students that reading can be fun! During March is Reading Month, National Read Across America Day and […]
8 Last Minute “Oh Crap, It’s Valentine’s Day!” Activities
I can’t believe Valentine’s Day is Tuesday! Now that January has FINALLY ended, February seems to be flying by! With that, I’m going to share some easy to prepare last minute Valentine’s Day activities. That way just in case you forgot or just didn’t have the time to get something together, you’ll have something fun for your students to do […]
Magnetic Letters: A Mighty Literacy Tool
If you teach in the primary grades, it is essential that you have enough sets of magnetic letters and magnetic boards for a small group of students. This is a tool that I use almost daily in my reading small groups. You can do so many quick, meaningful actvities by having students use magnetic letters! By using magnetic letters you […]
Ten Low-Prep 100s Day Centers
The 100th day of school is coming up! For many of us it usually occurs in February, right around Valentine’s Day. In fact, one year I combined our 100s Day celebration with Valentine’s Day. Since 100s Day activities take a little bit of advance preparation, I thought now would be the perfect time to share some ideas for simple 100s […]
Top Ten Turkey Day Freebies
I can’t believe November starts in just a few days! And after that it’s only three more weeks until Thanksgiving break! We’re almost there folks. To help you hang on until we get there, I’ve compiled a list of my top ten turkey day freebies from around the web that are easy to prep, keep students engaged, and still present […]
7 Materials to Strengthen Fine Motor Skills
Recently, I wrote a post about the decline of the quality of handwriting in students today. You can read that one here. In it, I mention that students need strong fine motor skills to be able to hold and write with a pencil correctly. I want to elaborate on that today. Children start developing fine motor skills from a very […]