Here's a pin to a simple reading game that encourages the kids to practice short and long vowel sounds. Students have to pop the balloon containing the word with the correct vowel sound on it.
I have D'nealian font on my computer at school. I want to make some handwriting sheets. Does any one know how to create blank practice lines when using this font?
go heredonnayoung.org has printable handwriting paper, as well as some great ready-made handwriting worksheets and a tool for making your own worksheets in D'Nealean. It is all free. If you are teaching cursive, it is truly awesome, because it has the animated illustration for how to form each letter, both upper and lower case.
Does anyone know if there is a teacher book that's filled with fun pictures with blank talk bubbles so that kids can fill in the dialogue? I really want one but can't seem to find one. Thank you!
htt...See MoreOn 4/10/14, Tracy wrote: > Does anyone know if there is a teacher book that's filled > with fun pictures with blank talk bubbles so that kids can > fill in the dialogue? I really want one but can't seem to find > one. > Thank you! One this site scroll down you will find an area dew here you may make your own talk bubbles
For a c...See MoreIf you teach young children, I have a stunningly simple, ridiculously easy positive –discipline technique that will change your life. Well, would you believe it’ll make your day a little bit easier? (Because if you’re like me, you’ll pounce on anything that promises to make your classroom even the itsy-bitsiest bit calmer.)
For a couple of weeks during this very long winter, I found myself in somewhat of a slump. The children didn’t seem engaged, they were easily distracted, and they Never. Ever. Listened. I often felt like I was at a very noisy party to which I had not been invited. If I’d dressed up as SpongeBob and passed out pizza like Ellen DeGeneres at the Oscars, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Nothing could pry their attention away from their 24/7 talkathon.
Then one day, as I was leaving a class (I teach music classes for preschool and kindergarten), I heard myself say, “So, next time we’re going to be better listeners, right?” Yes, yes they nodded. Suddenly it struck me...
PollyI have always loved Saxon math. The district purchased Math in Focus about 4 years ago. It is terrible! We were given the option to use what we think is best so Math in Focus is sitting in storage untouched. I wish that I saved Saxon.
Looking for ideas on teaching first grade vocabulary. My students are struggling with their weekly vocab--keeping these words as part of their sight word vocab. Thanks for any ideas. Robin
How are you choosing their words and how many are they given every week? In what context are these words given to them?
Some examples of the words they're being given would help as well. And are your kids a very mixed group of readers? Are any of your students able to decode the vocab words and retain them?
If it's your entire class or near to that is not retaining these words, that's one thing. If it's a weak reading subset of your class that's having trouble, that's another.
The vocab words they're given should be at their instructional level - most of your class should be able to decode the words. Are these words that exist in the kids' spoken vocabulary?
Some reading programs simply aren't logical. They don't set up any logical sensible order to the vocab words assigned.
If your kids can decode and read shake, lake, rake then as vocab words they should be able to make the leap to 'shaken', 'raked' and 'bakery' , fake, wake, and even make- do.
They should also be able to sound out - hake - but few if any 1st graders will have their word in their spoken vocabulary. Nor will they have any opportunity to run across the word 'hake' in their reading or be able to speak it at home and have the word understood. In that case, their brains may very well struggle with the word hake a few weeks later.
Tim Walker is an American teacher teaching in Finland. His insights and comparison of US vs Finland school practices is highly informative and thought-provoking. Click below to read his latest post about "specials" in Finland schools (Click on his author byline to access more of his articles about teaching in Finland.)
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I can attest that it's not always a grinding halt - there are some individuals whose brains just do not learn phonics, just do not despite lots of tutoring - Orton Gillingham, Wilson etc. etc. - just do not ever read phonetically. My husband is one - he reads by sight and certainly more slowly than those who are phonetic readers.
Some people are born left-handed, others right-handed and some like my husband and son and some students I've had over the years are born with dead space in that part of the brain that would learn phonics and learn how to decode. Conversely, I've had students who know how to do it intuitively without ever having been taught to do it.
But yes, it's a burden. But they can still improve as readers - their reading skills do not have to come to a grinding halt. Practice, practice, practice doesn't make perfect for them but like everyone else it does make them better readers today than they were yesterday.
My experience has proven that rarely do students who were > taught sight words first ever give up the idea that words are to > be instantly recognized, and seldom do they embrace and use the > tools that phonics provides for decoding and independently adding > words (via usage) to their sight vocabulary once they pass the > first couple of hundred sight words.