Ready to Organize Your Writing Folders? Free file!

Are you looking for ways to organize your student writing folders?  I have a PLAN for YOU!

Many years ago I had made writing folders for my older students.  The other day, when I was "cleaning" out my catch-all drawer, I stumbled across them again.  SO, I cleaned them up and made a free file!  SWEET!  These are GREAT for any grade level!

Swing by my blog to read more!

You can read more by clicking: WRITING FOLDER Organization FREE FILE!

What If You Had Animal Teeth?

We sure love the What If You Had Animal Parts book series!    Swing by to see how we turned this book series into a 4 week, close read!  We dig in deep so students can learn, but have fun along the way!  Click HERE to read more!

Suiting Up for Next Year!

Hi y'all! It's Michelle Hudgeons from Smitten With First! 

Well, I don't know about y'all, but the official countdown has started in our room! #9moredays!! I cannot believe summer is right around the corner! We have had lots of conversations about how we are "suited" up and ready for summer AND 2nd grade! 

 Today, we made a list on the board of all the things we have done this year to prepare ourselves for the next grade. Afterwards, each student chose one thing that they really felt like helped them "suit" up for 2nd grade.

After they completed their writing, they decorated their suits! 

They thought these suits were too funny! I always love how they turn out. 

You can find the suit craftivity here. 

Poetry Fun in First Grade!

Burning Popcorn!

 I hear the kernels popping in the microwave.

I see yellow light in the microwave.

I smell the butter on the popcorn.

I feel spit falling down my chin.

I taste burning popcorn.

Ooooooooooow!

This is an example of an ADORABLE sensory poem written by one of my first graders a few years ago.

All year long it's about punctuation, sentence structure, capitalization, editing, revising, etc. This is the time of year where I let it all go and let my students just flyyyyy and enjoy writing poems. Poetry writing isn't a standard of ours, so I don't critique it the way I do other writing genres. Instead, I spend a couple weeks teaching all sorts of poem types and model how to write them. Then, I give my students plenty of paper, we brainstorm ideas... and boom! They write, write, write!

I love how excited they get about writing poems and it adds such a spark to our writing block!

Throughout the weeks we learn how to write:

Sensory poems

Feelings poems

Acrostic poems

Cinquain poems

Shape poems

Color poems

Haiku poems

All of the templates and teacher examples can be found in the unit I created a few years back:

Fun Scarecrow Ideas and a scarecrow writing freebie

Hello Friends,

This is Cindy from Kinderkay Love Those Kinders. I thought I would share with you a few scarecrow activities and projects.

We had some fun this week creating paper scarecrows and then writing about them. I am lucky at my school to be able to have a garden with a REAL scarecrow. I took my students out to the garden and using our senses we discussed what the scarecrow might see, hear, and smell.

 We then went inside and wrote about it. The kids also followed step by step directions to create these cute paper scarecrows. I hung them in the hall for a cute Fall display!

 You can find my scarecrow writing resource below.....

Another fun scarecrow project that I like to do each Fall is a scarecrow directed drawing/painting activity. This is not my original idea. I found it a few years ago on Pinterest, but when I searched for the link, it had changed since I last pinned it. The site can be found HERE if you would like to do a search. The kids first sketched their scarecrow with its arm stretching out. We discussed how we were not drawing the WHOLE scarecrow; just PART of it. (Great for teaching PART and WHOLE). They sketched with pencil and used a black Sharpie to trace over their pencil lines. After tracing, they used watercolors to paint it. We let it dry and THEN, they carefully cut around the black lines on their scarecrow and glued it to blue background paper. They made paper crows and wrote one letter of their name on each crow with white crayon. They really turned out striking when they were complete!

This scarecrow literacy game is a fun way to count words in sentences. Even if kids cannot read the words, they can count them and that number is used to move around the board. Kids collect corn as they progress through the gameboard "field" and try to NOT let the crows take their corn!

This game is included in my Five Fall Scarecrow Math Centers resource....

I like to tie our Living/Non Living unit into our scarecrow unit. We did this fun Scarecrow Living and Non Living activity on our classroom bulletin board.

 This scarecrow sorting activity is taken from my Living and Non Living resource....

You can find a TON of scarecrow activities from Deanna Jump if you click the picture below. These scarecrows are ADORABLE!

Hang on my friends........ You also can find MORE adorable scarecrow activities from Erin at Eberhart's Explorers.... Cute, cute ideas!

Erin also has a close read resource for "The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything" which you can find by clicking the image below. I just started using this resource today and am so excited to try it out with my kinders!

So, that's it for now, my friends!

Happy Fall to YOU ALL!

PUNCTUATION TIPS & TRICKS FOR PRIMARY KIDDOS

Happy Monday to all you alls out there.  It's Kelley Dolling from Teacher Idea Factory.  I am coming at you today with a punctuation post.  K-2 teachers (and even in the higher grades), battle that sentence starting capital letter and the end punctuation mark all year long.  If I only had a dollar for every time I asked a little kiddo, "Sweetie, how do you start/end your sentence?"  I know you all are with me.  We say it until we are blue in the face. 

Despite all of this, in the past few years things have actually eased up for me a bit.  I'm not saying that I never have to utter that dreaded, "How do you . . . " sentence, but I am saying that a few tricks that I pulled out of my bum in recent years (or months) have stuck with quite a few kids . . . thus saving me from having to sound like a broken record during writing time :)

MOVE IT

I am all about adding that kinesthetic movement to lessons . . . it creates an emotional response for kids and drives attention.  Not only does it help lessons and standards "stick," but it also adds a super element of fun (something every primary kiddo needs).  

With all of this said, I have incorporated movements into my kinds of sentences lessons. The kids read sentences we have written together during whole class writing instruction and punctuate them with silly movements.  I don't think I am explaining myself all that well . . . let me show you. 

Meet The Period or Full Stop (for my Australia pals).  

This one is a quick popping noise as you gently punch the air.  

Meet The Exclamation Point.  

This one is filled with excitement and feeling (duh).

It's all about the facial expressions and voice pitch too. 

 Meet The Question Mark.  

Confusion is the key to this mark.

The dippier the face . . . the better :)

Hopefully, this visual does a better job of explaining what I am getting at this morning.  (I just poured my second cup of Joe . . . I have to be getting a little clearer.)  So, after we add more details to silly sentences like this . . . 

Or, practice writing different kinds of sentences like this . . . 

We body spell our sentences like this . . .

If you like the flavor of these movement ideas . . . check out the rest of my Punctuation Has Personality Pack.

UNDERLINE IT

This is so simple, but it has hooked a few kids into remembering. About a month ago, I started asking my kids to underline the capital letter and the punctuation mark as I was teaching detailed sentence writing. This simple idea has worked with a handful of kids this year.  I currently have one kiddo who actually reminds me to remind the group to underline. #thanksbuddy (See the picture of the sweet girl in the section above . . . she nails the underlining trick.)

PEN IT IN

I just discovered this gem of an idea . . . the kids use a blue pen to start a sentence. Um, duh!!??  Primary kiddos dang near cut of a limb to have the chance to write in pen. I know my babes aren't going to forget to grab one to start a sentence. The cool thing is that this process is temporary.  Once students get into the routine of using capital letters, you transition away from the whole pen it in thing.  This new idea blows my mind. 

I am going to host a Cool Blue Capital Day next week and will start implementing the blue pen routine during independent writing time during my center rotations.  Cool Blue Capitals comes from the one and only Flutter Girls. It's brilliant I tell ya.  Check out there post HERE . . . it's well worth the click :) 

CAPTAIN QUESTION MARK

Backward questions marks just bug me. It has to be a teacher who loves writing thing, but a misplaced "hook" makes me cringe.  Well, this one came to me on a morning commute about three years ago and it has proven to be a show stopper.  The kids EAT this one up and you will rarely have a paper with backward question mark. All you need is a pirate hook and two kids willing to ham it up ;)

Before we get down to business with any practice, the kids will be introduced to "Captain Question Mark!" Here's how I use this one . . .

1. Pick one student to be Captain Question Mark and give him/her to toy pirate hook.
2. Point out that the hook looks a lot like a question mark.
3. Select another student to play the part of Peter Pan and give him/her something to "fight" with -- I used an old lightsaber.
4. Invite your two babes to pretend fight in front of the class.  You can hear a pin drop when you do this . . . sell the sizzle my friends :)  
5. Point out how the HOOK is facing all of the action.  
6. Then, instruct the Captain to turn his/her back on Peter.  Point out how the hook is NO LONGER facing the action.
7. Let Peter safely "take down" the Captain.  It helps if you pick a real ham for this part.  Last year my sweet little gal got poked in the back and put on an Oscar-worthy performance.  She flopped on the ground, rolled around, and played dead.  It was classic!
8. Once you "put the lid back on," follow this up by saying that Captain Question Mark ALWAYS has to face the action (i.e. the sentence).  Use the play hook to help punctuate a question that you wrote on the board.  This extra visual helps solidify it.

This is one of my favorite lessons of the year.  The kids are absolutely delighted and it helps eliminate most, if not all, backward question marks.  I know it's a grand statement to make, but there is just something about the memory of Captain Question Mark that triggers appropriate punctuation.  

To read my whole question writing post . . . CLICK HERE :)  It's an oldie but a goodie.  I always extend my lessons with a whole pirate theme now.  It just works for the little guys.  

COMPLETE SENTENCE BUDDY
Finally, a little art project highlighting all of the elements of a complete sentence is the perfect way to draw in a few "littles."  Stephanie Stewart has a Complete Sentence Buddy Freebie that I run with every year.  It's cute.  It's simple.  It makes the best learning-based bulletin board.  AND . . . kids "get it."

If you want to snag Steph's fun sentence craft, hop on over to her TPT Shop. What do you have to lose . . . why not try it??  It's FREE for goodness sake :)

Alright, there you have it.  A post all about reducing basic punctuation errors. All in all, these tricks have worked well for me over the years.  Again, I am not saying that these will solve ALL of your basic punctuation issues for EVERY student you have or will ever have.  However, each of these tricks will hook a handful of kids in a different way and save you from putting the "How do you start/end a sentence?" on constant replay.  

If you are looking for additional sentence writing and/or punctuation resources, pop on over to my shop and check out my WRITING section.  I have to say that writing is my absolute favorite subject to teach and I have oodles of "out of the box" and VERY kid friendly ideas and activities to share with all you alls.  Here are just a few . . . 

      

      

Thanks for visiting us today.  I'll see you in a few months with something fun. Until then, catch me over at Teacher Idea Factory.  Big hugs and a very merry October to you :)  

Fire Safety Ideas and Freebie

Hello!  It's Reagan from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits and I am excited to share fire safety ideas to make learning important fire safety procedures both fun and academic.

For a morning activity, our students made these easy sentence strip fire fighter hats so they could show their respect and enthusiasm for our local firefighters.  We just gave each table a couple of tracers in the shape of a fire hat front and some red construction paper.  

Firefighter at the math table :) 

Here are more ideas for your fire safety day/week!  I love this cup idea from Lalymom.  To make this academic, I would cut up some math story problems or worksheets and tuck them inside each cup.  Students have to "put out the fire" by completing the activity in each cup!  How fun is that?!

by  Lalymom

This is a wonderful vocabulary/writing idea from crazy speech world!  

Each student makes their own fire out of fire safety vocabulary!  I love this! 

 Jenn at Crazy Speech World

In my classroom last year, we did a shared writing story.  Because students have so much interest in this subject it makes the perfect writing springboard!  I read a fire safety book and then asked if anyone had ever touched anything too hot before.  Hands shot up across the carpet.  Then I engaged them in a shared writing story.  Each student wrote a different sentence while their classmates wrote it on a whiteboard and helped spell.  

We also enjoyed using fire safety cards and activities from my engaging writing units.  

Possibly our favorite activity was a little sequencing activity we did as a class.  Here's how it went. 

Grab this sequence activity here free.

Here are some fun food activities and videos to really round out your fire safety week!

Taste of Home

from scouting web

Here are some videos to play with your students as you complete a hands on fire safety activity like the food activities.