meomeoim

Yikes!  This cold has taken its toll on me this week... I even missed my Wednesday linky party!  I thought I had scheduled the post but I managed to leave it as a draft so it didn't post! Anyway, a few months ago I made this cute spelling practice book for my class, and it has made a world of difference for my students.  One of my parents even said, "Thank you for sending the book home.  He never wanted to practice his spelling words since they weren't printed on a sheet that said 'homework' and now he has no excuse!"  My kids love bringing in their book each Friday, and I love how well they're doing on their tests. I still do lesson plans in class for spelling, but this book has made a major difference in getting them to practice at home! This editable book allows you to input your own list of 5 or 10 spelling words. It has special instructions to encourage your students to practice writing their words at home every single night! Just type in the da...

I have been putting off updating my word wall for so long, but I've finally done it!  I've spent nearly two full days on these fabulous word wall sets and I am so excited for them! First things first, let's start with a fun freebie!  These alphabet picture cards have super cute pictures on them, and the vowels are a different color border than the consonants!  So fun!  Now... before we move onto the word wall sets, let me back track to one of my first posts... spelling success!  Each time I introduce a new word to the class, we put the word on the word wall and one lucky student gets to wear a crown that has the same word/picture on it.  I attach the word to the crown via velcro for easy storage. Anyway... each of my word wall sets have two copies of the word... one that is the perfect size for your word wall , and one that is the perfect size for a word crown !  Each of the sets is $4, and they're available at TPT by clicking the pictures below! I...

Do you know those ideas that evolve from a passing thought? This is one of them! My principal got us us poly spots to do some exercise and movement in the classroom, and I used them occasionally, but not too often. One day at a staff meeting, my principal asked how we could use poly spots to teach across the curriculum. This picture links you to Amazon if you want to buy some poly spots or read more about them... they're $15 for 6 of them (yikes)! Off the top of my head, I could think of a few ideas for math but ELA?!  It took a bit of thinking but here's what I came up with! I print our current sight words on index cards in all different colors, and I print enough so that each child has five cards.  It ends up for a lot of cards!  I only print one set for each month so I'm not printing them too often! When I do the lesson, I give each student a poly spot and five cards (the cards are stored with 5 cards together of the same color together for time/organization purposes...

I started something this year which has made a MAJOR difference in my classroom... word crowns.  I use these crowns in two ways... for new words that we're adding to the word wall and to review words for the spelling test. First, let me talk about the new words.  New words get a fancy crown... like this gold crown below (from the dollar store of course!), or a crown with bunny ears, or a crown made from bulletin board trim. Every crown has re-adjustable velcro in the back of it (you can kind of see it on the right half of the photo above).  This lets me store the crowns easily and easily adjust them for different students from day to day. There also a small piece of velcro on the front of each crown that I attach the word to... I figured this was easier than storing 100 crowns throughout the year (each with their own word) and it allows me to easily put a picture with the new word. Once we introduce a new word, the student gets to wear it all day on their new crown  ...