Five For Friday…On a Saturday

Oh my goodness.  It has really been too long.  I don’t know about you but I have not gotten caught up from the beginning of the year craziness.  Couple the new ELA curriculum with SGO goals and PDPs due and a class full of little ones so jazzed about Halloween and you can get a small picture of my current situation.  My class and I are FINALLY getting into a groove but each day has been riddled with some sort of interruption that has been out of my control.  Assemblies, book fairs, picture day…you name it, we’ve had it.  Halloween is quickly approaching and my philosophy is now, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!  Stick around and see what my class has been up to this last week with Doodle Bugs Teaching’s Five for Friday!

This week we introduced the reading strategy of compare and contrast to my firsties.  We started off the conversation with a simple sort for dog vs. cat.  We discussed each card from the sort and looked for key words such as both, different, alike, or not alike.  The kids did a great job with this.  Then, we took it a step further and continued to practice this skill all week.  We worked with a partner to compare and contrast two things in a pair share activity, we compared and contrasted ourselves using our Friend Venns, and we read Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! to compare and contrast the characters and then the two texts.  My students rocked the skill and even started to use it during math and writing!  I’m so proud of them!  If you’re interested in any of these activities, you can check out my Compare and Contrast packet in my TpT store by clicking the image below.

Our word study block is fully up and running and my kids are doing a great job using their schedules and committing to their work each day.  Some of my high flyers are working on finishing up their mixed word family sorts before moving onto long vowels and I wanted to challenge their thinking a little bit.  This week, after we sorted their words by word families, we took a look at our words and sorted them by nouns and verbs.  This showed my students that you can sort their words for the week in so many different ways.  I can’t wait to keep showing them how they can play with their words to discover new patterns! 

Something else that’s working well, is reviewing our vowel sounds at the beginning of our small groups with my Try it Two Ways chart.  We sing it like a song, “A like alligator, A like acorn.  E like elephant, E like eagle.  I like insect, I like ice cream.  O like olive, O like oatmeal.  U like umbrella, U like unicorn.”  I really want my students to try sounding their words out in two ways while trying to tackle those tricky words.  You can check this chart out for just $1 in my store.

I needed to quench my student’s thirst for all things Halloween this week.  Some of my sweeties are struggling to segment their sounds when sounding out cvc words.  So, I used my new Trick or Treat nonsense word game to help them work on this.  I gave them each three Halloween themed erasers to place underneath each letter on their word card.  When they sounded the words out, they had to touch each eraser to make sure they were stretching their words out correctly.  It really seemed to help and I will definitely be continuing this practice with them!

This little one was working so hard on her game day during word study to complete these candy corn short vowel puzzles completely on her own.  When she asked me to take a picture of her with her finished work, I couldn’t say no!  I love that these puzzles allow my students to practice sounding out short vowel words, matching words with pictures, and identifying the short vowel sound that is in each word.  If you’re looking to practice short vowels leading up to Halloween, you can snag these activities in my Halloween Literacy Centers packet in TpT by clicking the image below.

When your curriculum director offers a raffle during a P.D. early morning meeting, you enter no questions asked.  Little did I know that I would be the winner of a TpT gift card!  Woohooo love that she gets what teachers want and need!  I can’t wait to use this baby to fuel my clip art addiction!

Well, that about wraps up my week!  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and are able to relax before this upcoming crazy week.  I hope it’s full of more treats than tricks!  Thanks so much for stopping by!