Reading Archives - The Candy Class

17 04, 2019

Nine Games to Use with Grammar Task Cards

By Jolene M|2019-04-17T13:17:24-04:00April 17th, 2019|Reading|0 Comments

I’m excited to show you nine different games (including a freebie) that you can use to make your grammar task card activities more hands-on. Let’s face it. It can be a challenge to constantly teach rich content that is also engaging and fun for students. Task card games tap into children’s love and need for PLAY, which is the most powerful learning modality there is! Pairing games with task cards will help students to practice a variety of grammar skills and other content. While I will discuss using these with grammar task cards, these games will work for any task cards in any subject.

game ideas to use with task cards

It’s important for task card games to be simple and easy to remember, so that students can work independently. The game is not meant to overshadow the task cards, but to reward students with a playful action every time they complete one.

Game 1: Walk the Block

For Walk the Block, students complete a task card and move around a game board. The first person to go from start to finish wins. You can repurpose old game boards or make your own using cardstock and dot stickers. Students will eagerly draw task cards as they race to the finish line. In this activity, students can discern between complete and incomplete sentences. Once they complete the task, they can move a space.

Game 2: Splat

Splat is what happens when a bubblegum bubble pops and sticks to your face. In this one-player game, every time students complete a task card, they get to cover up a splat on the game board. You can use pink pencil cap erasers as the game markers to match the bubblegum theme. This activity is great for when a student needs to work solo.

Here students can fix up sentences by marking words that need a capital letter and adding ending punctuation. They then can cover up a splat on the game board.

splat task card game

Game 3: Speed Race

Speed Race is a multi-player game that students love. After completing a task card, students move one space on their race track. The game is over when all students make it to the finish line. Students can enjoy using small toy cars as game markers.

For example, students can complete a preposition task card and move a space.

speed race task card

Game 4: Chunk the Cookie

Chunk the Cookie is a simple but sweet game for one player. When students complete a task card, they add a chocolate chunk to their cookie. The goal is to make the cookie as chunky as possible! You can easily make this game using brown construction paper and black pony beads too.

In this example, students can mark the word that needs a capital letter and then add a piece of “candy” to the cookie.

chunk the cookie task card game

Game 5: Sprinkle the Cupcake

Sprinkle the Cupcake is similar to Chunk the Cookie, and students will be hungry to play this one! After completing a task card, students add a sprinkle to their cupcake. The more sprinkles there are, the more learning is taking place. When students complete all the task cards, they can pretend to eat their cupcake.

For example, students can identify a complete and incomplete sentence. Ten students can add a “sprinkle” to the cupcake.

sprinkle the cupcake task card game

Game 6: Treasure Hunt

Treasure Hunt is a multi-player game that takes students on a hunt for hidden treasure. When students complete a task card, they move one space on the gameboard. The game is over when all players reach the treasure. Shiny pennies can be used as game markers too.

This example shows how students can mark if the picture is plural or not. After that, they can move forward on their treasure hunt.

pirate task card game

Game 7: Space Race

For Space Race, students play with a partner. Each time students complete a task card, they cross off a number starting at ten and count backwards. Once they reach blast off, they win!

One example is students can sort one of the noun task cards with the appropriate category. Then they can take a turn moving their rocket forward.

space race game

Game 8: Space Launch

Space Launch is similar to Space Race, but this time it’s a one-person game. After completing a task card, students cross off a number on the blast off countdown starting at 20. Once the countdown is complete, their rocket can launch, and they win!

For example, students can add the correct ending punctuation and countdown.

space launch task card game

As you can see, these games are simple yet centered around things students love like race cars, cupcakes, and rocket ships. You can create games with seasonal themes or make games that match your social studies and science units too. You can also add costumes to the games such chef hats and aprons for Chunk the Cookie and Sprinkle the Cupcake and pirate eye patches for Treasure Hunt. With playful elements, students will want to play again and again, and thus develop concept mastery.

If you’d like to try adding games to grammar task cards, you can find my Kindergarten Grammar Task Cards bundle here. It’s Common Core aligned and includes all nine games I’ve shared with you today, plus 15 different grammar task card sets and anchor charts. The task cards can also be purchased separately. Each task card set contains a single player game and a partner game.

Game 9: Tic-Tac-Toe

This is the classic Tic-Tac-Toe game with a task card twist. In this partner game, players take turns choosing task cards. After completing each task, players record an “X” or an “O” on the gameboard. After one player gets three in a row, students can start a new game of Tic-Tac-Toe. The game ends when students use up all the task cards.

If you’d like to try this Tic-Tac-Toe game for free, sign-up for my newsletter here. Please note, the task cards in the picture are not included. However, read on for how you can receive some free task cards too.

Once you sign-up for the newsletter, you’ll receive many other freebies, teaching ideas, sales announcements, and more. Click on the image or here to sign-up!

If you would like to read about more grammar ideas, make sure to check out my post here. It also gives information on how you can receive a free set of noun task cards for kindergarten, a set of verb task cards for first grade, and a set of verb tense task cards for second grade. (This grammar post is in the works, so it is coming soon!)

Thanks for stopping by The Candy Class!

16 04, 2019

Ideas for Teaching with Phonics Posters

By Jolene M|2019-04-16T17:59:35-04:00April 16th, 2019|Reading|0 Comments

Today I’m going to share with you nine teaching ideas to use with your phonics posters. As you all know, an alphabet, displayed horizontally across a wall, is a standard feature in most elementary school classrooms. But have you ever asked yourself what purpose is it serving? How are my students (and I) using it, if at all? Is it contributing to student success and independence? Let’s remember, wall space is precious real estate in our classrooms.

Ideas for teaching with phonics posters

One way to make your standard alphabet wall more meaningful is to add long vowel sounds, digraphs, and blends. You can even rename it “The Sound Wall.” After all, sounds are the foundation of reading and writing.

Consider this: A preschooler who only knows the 26 letter names, knows just that. But a kindergartener who knows just six letter sounds (s, a, t, i, p, n) and how to blend them can read over 30 words!

As students learn more and more word patterns and phonetic rules, you can reflect their learning on your ever-growing sound wall with phonics posters. This is just one way to make your wall space interactive and meaningful. Keep reading for even more ideas to support your early readers using phonics posters.

Idea #1: Daily Review

Choose the phonics posters you want to focus on for the day and lead the class through a review of the sounds. This is a great morning meeting routine and can help wake up sleepy brains and bodies. Reinforcement can be done with a chant. For example, when I point to a poster, together we can say, “Adventurous anteater a-a-a, busy beaver b-b-b, cut the cake c-c-c.”

Idea #2 Kinesthetic Review

If you want to add a kinesthetic component, you and your class can create a hand motion or body movement to go with each sound. For example, for “Kk” when students chant “kind kangaroo k-k-k,” they can jump up and down three times while saying the /k/ sound.

Turning Phonics Posters into Phonics Cards

Did you know you can easily turn your phonics wall posters into smaller cards that can be used for a variety of literacy activities? There are a few ways to do this depending on the size and format of your posters.

If your posters are in digital format:

You can reduce the size of each poster and print multiple posters to a single page by adjusting the settings in the print dialog box. If you are printing as a PDF, under “Preview” select “Layout.” Then click “Pages per Sheet” and choose between 1, 2, 4, 6, 9 and 16. When I first learned about this print option, I was so excited and printed in every size possible!

If your posters are store bought:

You can make smaller cards using the copy machine. Simply put the poster on the glass of the machine, reduce the size, and make a copy.

While it takes some extra effort up front, it will be worth it in the long run because consistency is so important when learning phonics. When students can take what they’ve learned in the whole group (through the phonics posters) and reinforce it at a literacy center (through card games), they are engaging in practice that is meaningful and connected.

If you posters are too large:

You can take individual photos of each one, upload them onto your computer, resize them, and print out smaller cards.

No matter which method you use, I highly recommend that you keep a master copy, laminate your cards for longevity, and make a few extras so you can maintain complete sets of cards year after year.

Idea #3: Using them in Guided Reading

Remember when I said I printed my phonics posters in every size possible? Well, here’s what I discovered.

Printing four to a page is a nice size for laminating, hole-punching, and putting on a metal ring for easy whole class review. This size also works great for guided reading when you want to introduce a certain vowel pattern or digraph in the text as a pre-reading activity.

Idea #4 Write the Room Activities

Printing six to a page is a great size for Write the Room activities. To set this up, hang up a selection of phonics cards around the room. You don’t want to hide them, but you also don’t want to tell students where they are. It’s like a scavenger hunt.

For example, you could hang up the long vowel cards for “ai, ee, ie, oa, and ue.” With a record sheet, a pencil, and a clipboard, students walk around the room, find each card, and complete a task such as drawing a picture, writing a word, or writing a sentence that matches the card.

Idea # 5 Use Phonics Posters as Game Cards

Printing nine to a page creates cards that are perfect for games like Go Fish and Memory.

Idea #6 Take-home Flashcards

With the nine-per-a-page size, you can also give students an alphabet set to practice with at home as flashcards. On just three pages, you can print the full alphabet.

I encourage my students to cut them out, and then tape them around their house. I teach them how to play “sound/letter” tag with their families. When a parent calls out a sound or letter, the student has to run to the poster, tag it and say the sound, and run back to the parent for the next one. It’s great exercise and a fun way to practice at home!

Idea # 7 Word Wall Headers

Phonics posters printed as a smaller size can also be used as word wall headers. If you include digraph headers in your word wall, such as “th,” your students will have a much easier time finding those tricky words like “there,” “they,” and “the.”

Idea #8: Matching Puzzles

Another fun use for phonics cards is to create matching puzzles. Simply cut each card in two. One piece is the letter and the other is the image.

I recommend introducing the puzzle as a whole class activity. With a class of 24 students, you can start this game after you’ve introduced 12 sounds. Cut the cards cut apart, mix them up, and put them in a box. Invite each student to draw out a card, no peeking!

On your signal, students mingle and find their correct match. Once students have made the match, go around the room and have each pair of students say the sound for the class.

You can also use this matching game as a literacy center. Just put 8-12 phonics card pairs in a bag and you’re all set. You can rotate cards in and out as you introduce new sounds.

Idea #9: Phonics Poster Collage

You can take a constructivist approach and make phonics posters with your class. Take a large piece of chart paper and either write the sound you are working on in the middle of it or glue on a phonics card. Tell your students their mission is to fill up the chart with pictures and words that have the designated sound.

Provide your students with the weekly advertisements from grocery stores, pharmacies, toy stores, etc. I pick up a few whenever I’m in a store and save them for projects like this. I prefer these over magazines because the store ads are picture heavy and have big and bold fonts, which is perfect for young learners. You can also provide your students with sticky notes, so they can draw and write their own pictures and words to add to the poster.

If you do a phonics college every time you introduce a letter, you will quickly run out of wall space! Therefore, I like to take a picture of each collage and print it out on an 8.5×11 piece of paper. You can laminate it, hole punch it, and bind it with metal rings to create an expandable class phonics book. Students will love looking at this book with each other. It becomes another form of “I Spy” as they try to find the picture or word they add on each page.

Using your phonics posters in interactive ways will engage your students and provide a solid foundation for reading.

You can find my comprehensive set of Phonics Posters and Chants here.

And if you’re looking for more hands-on activities for teaching long vowel teams, check out my post here.

Lastly, I’d like to invite you to sign-up for my free newsletter. Not only will you get a free set of my Blends Phonics Posters once you join, you will also receive many other freebies, teaching ideas, sales announcements, and more. Get the free blend posters here.

I hope you find these teaching ideas helpful. I’d love to hear the creative ways that you use phonics posters in your classroom. Please share and comment below.

Thank you for stopping by The Candy Class!

Written by a Guest Teacher

16 04, 2019

End of the Year Writing Prompts

By Jolene M|2019-04-16T19:22:45-04:00April 16th, 2019|Reading|0 Comments

Every teacher needs engaging activities to do with his or her students at the end of the year. If we don’t give them things to keep them busy, the little darlings might drive us crazy because they are so excited for the summer! However, we don’t just want to give them busy work. We want to give them quality assignments that will help reinforce what they have learned throughout the year, and possibly even be something they want to save to look back on one day.

That’s why I love using memory book writing prompts at the end of the year! They are fun and quality activities that keep my students engaged and working. Plus, the students really enjoy looking back on memories from their year. I have created a free resource with these types of writing prompts to help you get started. This post will also provide you with several more ideas for memory book writing prompts that you can use in your classroom.

End of the year writing prompts

#1 Good Citizen Moment

One activity your students can do is write about a “Good Citizen Moment” they had this year. Students will reflect on something nice they did for someone else, like helping a classmate with an assignment without being asked or playing with a new student on the playground. They should give details about what happened and explain how they felt during this moment.

end of year good citizen pic

#2 Funny Moment

The students can write about a funny moment they remember from class this year. They will include details about what was said or details about the events that took place that made them laugh. You can tell them their goal is to give the reader enough detail to make them laugh too!

#3 Favorite Field Trip

The students can write about their favorite field trip from the past year. They will tell when and where it took place, as well as details about things they saw and did there. They should also explain what they found interesting there or why it was their favorite field trip.

#4 Favorite Book

You could ask the students to write about their favorite book that they read this year. It could be a book that they read personally, a book from an assignment, or a book you read to them aloud. They should include the book’s title, author’s name, and explain what they liked about the book. Additional things they could do with this topic is write a summary of the book and include key details from it, or they could write about the book’s story elements such as its main character, setting, problem, and solution.

#5 Favorite Subject

Students can write about their favorite subject from your class. They should explain why it is their favorite, as well as give examples of the things they enjoyed learning in this subject. To be more specific, they could tell a story about their favorite lesson and what they learned from it. For example, they could write about a science experiment that they really enjoyed.

#6 Biggest Challenge

You could have your students think about the biggest challenge they faced this year and how they overcame it. It could be an academic challenge, such as struggling with a particular concept in math, or it could be a challenge in another area of their life. Maybe they overcame a behavioral, social, or emotional challenge. This assignment is great for helping them feel proud of their accomplishments!

#7 Summer Activities

Your students can write about things they plan to do in the coming summer. They should provide details about where they are going, who they will be with, and what they will be doing. They can also describe the feelings they are experiencing about whatever they plan to do, like being excited or nervous to go on a cruise, for example.

#8 Advice for a Future Class

The students can think about what it was like to be in your class this year. They should use their experiences to give good and helpful advice to your next class so they will have a successful year too. Examples of tips they might write are “Always tell Mrs. Smith the truth!” or “Make sure you read for 30 minutes every night.”

I hope these ideas will help you have plenty of engaging writing prompts for the end of the year, so your students will stay busy with something they will really enjoy!

To make it easier, I have created a ready-made End of the Year Memory Book resource that you can download here. It includes all of the ideas I mentioned in this post as well as many others. You can use the pages in the End of the Year Memory Book resource as separate activities, or you can put them together as a memory book that the students can take home at the end of the year.

end of the year memory book

After your students complete the memory books, they could even use the books to create keepsake videos for their parents. Find out how in my End of the Year Memory Video article.

I also have some free end of the year writing prompt pages that you can access by signing up for my free newsletter. You can download them as printables, or you can use the digital option that is in PowerPoint format. You can also easily upload the digital version to Google Classroom.

Click on the picture or here to sign-up for the free memory book!

Also, I have a free tech course that will help you get a simple three-step system in place with using either Microsoft for Education or Google Classroom. You can find out information and sign-up for that here.

Thanks for stopping by The Candy Class! Happy teaching!

11 04, 2019

Fun and Simple Activities for Bossy R & a Freebie

By Jolene M|2019-04-11T18:25:38-04:00April 11th, 2019|Reading|0 Comments

I have some fun and simple activities I want to share to help you teach Bossy R. My ideas can be changed and used to teach other phonemes as well. With so many phonics concepts to teach, it’s hard to find time to create quality resources for all of them, so I like to use things that are pre-made. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s just as much work to prepare other people’s resources as it would be to make my own! That’s why I love finding activities that don’t require much preparation either.

Fun & Simple Activities with Bossy R

In this post, I will share several examples of activities that will make teaching phonics much easier for you because they will require little prep, but will still be fun and effective in teaching phonemes like Bossy R. These activities will build students’ identification, blending, comprehension, and higher order thinking skills. Many of the activities I will discuss can be found in my Bossy R No Prep Free Sampler, which you can download here for free.

Free Bossy R No Prep Printables

The skill I usually start teaching phonics with is identifying the phoneme.

Identifying Activity #1 For a quick and simple activity to help students distinguish between words that contain r-controlled vowels and words that do not, you can call out different words that contain the letter R. When they have the r-controlled vowel sound, students can point their bossy finger!

Identifying Activity #2 Students can find and color pictures that contain the Bossy R sound. You can give students a reference sheet at the end so they can check their work.

The next skill I work on after my students identify and isolate a phoneme is how to blend it.

Blending Activity #1

You can write different Bossy R words on index cards and let the students practice blending the words. This can be used as an activity for individuals, small groups, or as a center activity.

Blending Activity #2

Students can show they know how to blend by completing activities that ask them to connect words to pictures. You can give students a reference sheet again to check their work.

Identifying R Controlled Vowels

Moving Beyond Blending

Towards the end of the unit, students can start demonstrating mastery of Bossy R by completing comprehension activities. These will help them practice reading Bossy R words in context in sentences, passages, or books.

Comprehension Activity #1

You can give students sentences to correct that contain words with the r-controlled phoneme. This not only helps them read Bossy R words, but it also helps them practice correct grammar.

Comprehension Activity #2

Students can identify Bossy R in passages they read by underlining them when they find them.

R Controlled Vowel Reading Comprehension Passage

Incorporating Higher-Order Thinking

After students have mastered a skill, I like to challenge them and give them activities that require higher-order thinking. An example of an activity that can help with this is for them to create their own short, silly stories using Bossy R words.

writing with Bossy R

I hope the ideas in this post will make teaching phonics easier. You won’t have to take out a lot of time to prepare or create materials, but you will still have fun and effective activities to teach phonemes like Bossy R.

If you want teaching ideas for other skills like segmenting and spelling with Bossy R, check out my other post Building Up with Bossy R here. It goes into more depth by talking about other focused skills such as isolating Bossy R, segmenting Bossy R, subbing Bossy R, and more. Additionally, you can find all these skills covered in my Bossy R No Prep Printables pack found in my TPT store. It includes 85 no prep printables covering everything from identifying to writing with Bossy R. Link here to learn more.

Click here or the picture to link to the Bossy R No Prep Resource on TPT

Also, you can receive many of the activities I discussed from my Bossy R No Prep Free Sampler when you sign-up for my free newsletter here.

Thanks for visiting The Candy Class! Happy teaching!

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8 03, 2019

How to Teach Guided Reading: Prereading to Word Work Extensions

By Jolene M|2019-04-16T19:23:49-04:00March 8th, 2019|Guided Reading, Reading, Reading Strategies|0 Comments

Planning how to teach guided reading can be an intimidating task in the beginning. My first year of teaching, I was extremely nervous that I was going to fail. I had never taught a child how to read. Would I be able to do it? While I was far from perfect and had lots to learn, I ended up finding joy watching students take flight while reading.

Without a doubt, guided reading is my favorite thing to teach, so I am going to share today how to teach guided reading. I will also include some tips and ideas that can be helpful to those looking for ways to improve their guided reading teaching skills too.

How to Teach Guided Reading

Before I jump in, I want to mention that I am a firm believer that students should read for the majority of guided reading. Other activities are to support their reading growth, and those should be short and sweet.

To show you how to teach guided reading, I am going to show you the framework by going over each component of a guided reading lesson, with tips and resources for each.

Prereading Activities

Before you begin to plan, keep in mind that prereading activities should be kept to a minimum of 5-7 minutes. The goals of prereading activities are to get students engaged with the text, teach new words, and review or introduce sight words that will help support them during reading.

introducing new sight words

Whenever there is new sight words to introduce from a book, this is the time to do that.

mix and fix it word work activity

If you are retargeting sight words from a previous guided reading lesson, you can review those sight words during this time as well. That will allow students to notice the words you just reviewed as they read. One way to review sight words is to have students mix up the letters of a word in a soup bowl and put them back together.

Missing Letters Sight Word Activities

Another activity is to have them look for the missing letters. It is also helpful to have the students write the sight word.

Additionally, it is a good idea to introduce new vocabulary during this time too, but remember to get to the reading. Don’t plan to do all these activities in one lesson. Completing one prereading activity will do, so keep the words you review to a minimum to stay on track with the time.

You also want students to get acquainted with the book. Asking students about the topic, taking a picture walk, or having students make a prediction about the book based on the cover are some ways to introduce the book.

If students will be reading the book again later, asking reading comprehension questions, such as questions about the characters to peak the student’s interest in the story.

Teach a Reading Strategy

While I have heard some teachers say to teach the reading strategy after students read, I believe it makes sense to teach it before they read. This gives students the opportunity to apply it while it is still fresh in their mind. Would you remember to apply a newly taught skill the next day? Probably not. Teaching the reading strategy first means they will have a chance to apply it meaningfully. Being able to apply a concept immediately, always encourages successful retention.

Reading strategy explanations should only take about three minutes. You want to introduce the strategy, model it, then have the students practice it quickly.

An example of how to teach a reading strategy:

We are going to hop through part of the book. I am going to read the sentence (Read a sentence from the book but make a mistake on purpose that makes the sentence wrong.) Now that does not make sense. I am going to hop back and reread because I might have made a mistake (Reread the sentence correctly.) Now that makes sense. I used the Hop Back Rabbit reading strategy. (Show the anchor chart or poster and discuss it.) When something does not make sense while we are reading or we realize we made a mistake, we can always hop back to reread. (Have students practice the strategy by choral reading a sentence from the book. Then pause and say, “Let’s hop back rabbit.” (Have students read the sentence again.)

As you can see, teaching the reading strategy does not need to consume the lesson. The key is to hop back and review that reading strategy every now and then to reinforce it. Pun intended.

The best way to provide a visual to support the reading strategy is to use a poster or anchor chart. Posters can display the reading strategy as you teach it. These are also good for reference while reviewing strategies.

An anchor chart can ask a question to get students thinking, and their responses can be recorded too if desired.

This activity with the anchor chart is great for introducing reading strategies for the first time.

Guided Reading Anchor Chart for Reading Strategies

Prompting Strategies During Reading

You can reinforce reading strategies with the feedback you give to students as they read independently. When a student makes a mistake and keeps on reading, you could say a prompt. An example is to say, “Hop back rabbit to reread it.”

It is handy to have some prompts on hand for reading strategies, so you know just what to say to quickly guide students to apply that strategy. Remember, don’t take over their independent reading with a lecture. A quick prompt is all that is needed to redirect.

Performance Assessment During Reading

Performance assessments during guided reading are to simply observe students as they read and record it. Checklists and running records are the two assessment tools to use for this. Performance assessments will let you evaluate students and their reading levels, saving you a ton of valuable guided reading time. They also tell you when your student is ready to move on to the next reading level.

Level A Mastery Checklist

Now sadly, sometimes schools want us to apply several formal assessments that don’t always provide much value in actually guiding our instruction on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes, we must do what we are told because, at the end of the day, we still have to make a living.

You can’t minimize the time spent on those required formal assessments. However, performance assessments will minimize your need to opt out of guided reading due to time constraints. Since performance assessments are quick, they allow you to get the information that you need daily to guide your day to day instruction.

Assessments for Guided Reading

Though sight words, phonics skills, and more can be assessed through observing students as they read, some other assessments will need to be done to evaluate skills that may not be measured by performance assessments. For example, you might still need to do an assessment for things, like sight words, but you can do them less often if you are completing performance assessments. Minimizing your assessment time will help you get more guided reading lessons completed throughout the year. More guided reading lessons mean your students have more time to grow their reading skills.

After the Book

After students have completed independent reading, it’s time to zone in on reading comprehension. This can be done with a prompt or by simply asking students to tell you about the book in their own words. You only need a few minutes dedicated to this part of the lesson to make sure that they understood the story.

Extensions that Support Guided Reading

About ten minutes, give or take, should be used towards activities that support reading growth. These activities should include guided writing, word work, or phonemic awareness activities. You don’t have to include all three components with each lesson, but it is good to include two if time allows. You can also make a schedule, alternating between activities, to make sure you are covering them all on a regular basis.

Guided Writing Dictated Sentence

Guided writing is not the same as writing workshop. It should consist of a dictated sentence that incorporates sight words and graphemes that students are currently working on at their reading level. On the first day, students can build the dictated sentence. The next day, students can write the sentence with support. You can also have students write the sentence without support if you think they need more challenge.

Dictated Sentences for Guided Writing

Phonemic awareness activities play an important role in supporting reading growth.

Beginning Middle and Ending Sounds

If students have not mastered their alphabet, this is the time to work on that with them. Alphabet charts are a quick and easy tool that can be used to reinforce letter recognition and sounds. Alphabet books are another great resource. You can make it tactile by having students trace the letters with their fingers. During alphabet activities, you simply focus on a letter or two at a time. It is always best to start with the letters in a student’s name if they don’t already know them.

Sorting Letters by Characteristic

Other phonemic awareness activities should include rhyming and syllable activities. Asking students to identify words that rhyme by putting their thumbs up is a quick activity that can be done in a minute or two. Another effective activity is to have students clap out syllables.

Phonemic Awareness Activities

Word work tasks are also an important extension to support students with understanding phonics concepts. As a tip, I like the concept of using mats because they don’t involve prepping and managing a million pieces. They are easy to whip out quickly and to put away too! Plus, they are still hands-on and engaging.

Blending Words Activity

Some examples of word work activities include subbing sounds. This word munch activity has students spinning for a letter, covering up the first letter in the word, and substituting the sound with it.

guided reading letter subbing activity for word work

Another activity is to have students sort pictures by sound. You do need picture cards for this activity, so it does involve a little prep. If you laminate them, you can reuse the pictures cards for sorting every year.

Sorting by Beginning Sound

Word building is also a good activity to use for word work. You can actually use this activity to practice sight words too.

Building Sight Words

guided reading word building activity

Word work can be having students swap out letters for other letters to create a different word. I like to call this Extreme Word Make-Over. For example, sad gets changed to bad. Then bad gets changed to pad. Pad then gets changed to pat. Then pat gets changed to bat. This reinforces the concepts of beginning, middle, and ending sounds.

These activities will help students strengthen their word decoding and word recognition skills. It helps students extend the guided reading lesson with guided writing, word work, and phonemic awareness activities.

Knowing When to Move Students Up a Level

Having a mastery checklist for each reading level will easily guide you when it comes to pairing students with the right reading level.

Between occasional assessments and performance assessments, you can check off what students have mastered using this mastery checklist. Simply bump students up when they have sufficiently mastered that reading level.

Being Successful with Teaching Guided Reading

Keeping routine and consistency with these practices each day will allow students to grow their reading abilities. It’s important to constantly monitor progress and regroup as needed to best support student learning and growth.

Click to link

To better support teachers, I put together a resource that includes all the activities and tools needed for guided reading levels AA-D in one large mega bundle. It includes everything, but the books! Literally, it is full of over 1,700 pages. There are many activities in a one page mat format. I tried to keep it as low prep as possible without compromising on the quality of the activities. Click here or the bundle picture to follow the link to the resource.

It is my hope that this bundle will help support teachers through planning and teaching guided reading to their students. It was created with a lot of love.

Click to link

If you would like to test drive my guided reading bundle, I have a decent size sample that you can receive for free when you sign-up for my free newsletter. You can do that here. Make sure to check your downloads folder for it! Click here to sign-up!

Also, make sure to check out some of my other guided reading posts here, here, and here.

Now before I close out, I also want to let you know about my f ree tech course. This free course shows you a simple three-step system for setting up the use of technology in your classroom. With the abundance of tech options out there, it can get overwhelming in the primary grades. The key is to wisely pick just a small amount of tools and add on from there later on if desired. This course will help you get a system in place, includes some free tech resources to utilize with the system, and even includes short student tutorials to get your class on board. Find more information about it here.

Thanks for stopping by The Candy Class. Be blessed!

Jolene Mathew from The Candy Class

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20 07, 2017

Strategy Share: Teaching Story Elements

By class|2019-03-12T21:05:59-04:00July 20th, 2017|Guided Reading, Reading, Reading Strategies, Strategy Share, Teaching Strategies|0 Comments

Hi everyone! Today, I wanted to share some teaching strategies for teaching story elements. These ideas are meant to pair with fiction read alouds. Although, I will offer some ideas for guided reading too. I also will include a freebie to help implement these ideas.

First, let’s go over the basic story elements that you would teach in a kindergarten or a first grade classroom. These elements are the characters, setting, and plot. The plot can be easily taught with a simple summary of the beginning, middle, and end or B-M-E. You may be familiar with the five finger retell that includes character, setting, and three details from the story or B-M-E. If not, now you are 😉 Now, let’s jump right in!

Strategy #1: Main Character vs. Other Characters

It is important that students are able to identify the main character in a story. One way to make this concept visual is by illustrating the main character as huge and the other characters as small. It’s a visual that will help young learners because they are very concrete with their thinking. Then when they are reading, they can try to picture who is the big character in the story. This will help them to understand the roles the characters play in a story.

Strategy #2: Character Feelings Sticky Map

This pairs well with a story where the character’s feelings change in the story. On a board or chart, divide up three significant events from a story. Ask students, “How do you think the character felt when _______ happened?” Have students draw up the character’s face on a sticky note and add it to that section. You would do this for each event in the story. You can then draw out the discussion more by asking why they think the character felt that way. Lead them to site clues from the book and to make inferences from their own experiences such as “I would be sad if my friend moved away.”

Strategy #3: Thought Bubbles

Have students pretend they are a character in a story. Ask the students, “What would you think if you were the character?” Have students either illustrate or write their thoughts on a thought bubble. For fun, you could take a picture of the student, cut it out, and place it on a bulletin board with the thought bubble.

Strategy #4: Make a Sticky Map

Section off areas for the characters, setting, and B-M-E on a board or chart with arrows between each section to connect them. Then lead students to draw up the characters. Place some of them on the chart (all if you have room). The other students can put the sticky on their shirt for fun. Lead students to discuss the characters as you create the sticky map. Do the same for the other story elements.

Strategy #5: Create a B-M-E Mural

Divide the class into teams B-M-E. Each team focuses on drawing up that part of the story with the characters, setting, and event taking place. If you have a rather large class, you might want to do more than one mural. Once done, have each team present their part of the story. If you want to organize it more, you can assign students each a roll for each team such as character illustrator, setting drafter, story teller, and so on.

Strategy #6: Puppet Retell

Yes, this is something that has been around for years, but I also think it is something that has been well forgotten in the last decade or just not used very often! Puppets are a fun way for students to retell the plot of a story, identify the characters, and recreate the setting. With this, have students make the character puppets. They can simply draw them up and attach to a popsicle stick. Then have students illustrate the setting. Students can work in pairs if you like with this project or even in a small group. Then let students retell away using the five finger retell strategy. (Note: I found these awesome popsicle sticks with a sticker that make it easy to have instant puppets. I bought the colorful ones locally in a craft section of a store near me. I could only find the plain ones on Amazon. You can find those here: Jumbo Craft Popsicle Sticks with Self-Adhesive Tips Please note, this is an affiliate link that is of no additional cost to you and that pays me a very small commission that goes toward the monthly costs to host this blog.

Strategy #7: Graphic Organizers

Okay, totally very common, I get it. However, these are very important, so I had to include it. Plus, I include a graphic organizer in the free download for you, so if I included it there, I had to cover it here. 🙂 Now graphic organizers can vary. Some can just focus on the character. Some can just focus on B-M-E. Some can incorporate all of those. When you are first introducing story elements, it is good to just zoom in on the characters. Who is the main character? Who are the other characters? Then branch out to the setting. Where did the story take place? When did the story take place? After that, you can branch out to B-M-E and start to dig deeper into character traits.

Here is the free story elements resource. I hope you enjoy it! Just fill out this form to grab it. If you are already a subscriber, simply fill it out again to have it sent to your email too.

You can also view my privacy policy here.

Thanks so much for stopping by the Candy Class!

Jolene 🙂

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15 11, 2015

Tips for Increasing Vocabulary and a Free Sample

By Jolene M|2019-03-12T21:06:05-04:00November 15th, 2015|Reading, Vocabulary|0 Comments

Hi everyone! Today, I am going to share some tips on how to increase vocabulary during reading. Vocabulary is so important for deepening reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. It is an essential ingredient for improving student literacy. Once students know how to decode those words phonetically, it is so very important to be able to grasp the meaning of the words they decode to better understand the text. I also have a free vocabulary strategies resource!

Tips for Increasing Vocabulary and a Free Sample

Tip #1: Teach Vocabulary Strategies

Research Tip about vocabulary strategies

Vocabulary instruction should include both direct instruction of words AND vocabulary strategies. This is actually research-based. It can be easy to teach the direct instruction part. We pull out those vocabulary lists alongside the spelling lists each week, and we read some authentic literature while putting a focus on those new vocabulary words from the book.

It is often the other half, vocabulary strategies that do not get a whole lot of needed attention. Sure, there are the occasional lessons on context clues, but it is not enough to get students intentional every day as they read.

Students are reading books and being exposed to SO MANY new words that they might not be exposed to within their own homes, and those moments to learn those new words are lost if students are not fully equipped to apply vocabulary strategies to crack the code to those unknown words.

Now, some might think that vocabulary strategies are simply context clues. However, vocabulary strategies include other strategies besides context clues. They are like a bag of tools students can pull out to crack open those unknown words.

Tip #2: Teach Vocabulary Strategies During Guided Reading or Reading Workshop

Vocabulary strategies are the next step in teaching reading after word decoding. Think about it. Once students know how to phonetically open each word or use other decoding skills to read known words, the next step to being a good reader is to be able to interpret those unrecognizable words that they now have the ability to sound out. I actually broke the strategies into 24 different ones, so students have a bag of tools to help them crack open those words. These strategies can be taught during guided reading, reading workshop, or other small group activities.

Tip #3: Encourage students to Use Vocabulary Strategies During Independent Reading

Vocabulary Strategies Means to Cracking Open New Words Tip

Vocabulary strategies are the means to gaining the skills needed to crack open new words during reading. In addition to guided reading, students should be applying the vocabulary strategies during independent reading too. If you do a reading workshop format, you can actually incorporate the vocabulary strategies there too. What is great about this is you are potentially tapping into their natural curiosity as they stumble across unknown words while reading. This is such an authentic, relevant way to learn new vocabulary. Not only that, but they are going to have a deeper understanding of what they are reading. It’s a two-for-one deal that you can’t beat. 😉

Tip #4: Teach More than Just Context Clues

Vocabulary Strategies encompass more than just context clues

Vocabulary strategies include primarily context clues, but they encompass more than that. Vocabulary strategies are like a tool bag that students can pull out and apply, so they can determine the meaning of unknown words. It includes starting from the basics of just paying attention to those unknown words on up to using various context clues to using dictionaries and online resources.

Tip #5: Break Down How to Use Context Clues Step-by-Step

Vocabulary Strategies Tip to Break Down Context Clues

Breaking down how to use the context clues into steps helps students to apply them appropriately. There is more than one type of context clue, and students need time to let each type of context clue sink in and be applied. An example of a strategy that breaks things down is named “The Case of the Appearing Rabbit”. With this strategy, students are taught the strategy, which is, “Poof! It may appear as an example.” Then a tip is given for students to look for specific word clues that are signals that an example might be present. By looking for wording like “for example” and “such as,” students know where to look for the example.

Tip #6: Teach Students When to Use Other Resources

Vocabulary Strategies Tip on Using Dictionaries

It’s important for students to lean in on those context clues first to help improve fluency and to gain more understanding of the word in its actual context. However, sometimes, they will have to break out a dictionary or use an online resource because the context did not offer any clarity to the meaning. When should students turn to other resources to determine the meaning of unknown words? I recommend letting students know to use other resources if they can not find any context clues, or if they are still unsure of the meaning of the word.

Tip #7: Use Visual Prompts of the Vocabulary Strategy

Vocabulary Strategies Prompt Tip

Give students visual prompts of the vocabulary strategies. If students only employ vocabulary strategies when they are reading to you, they are not practicing them enough. They need to be using vocabulary strategies when they are doing independent reading. Visuals are great reminders to use the vocabulary strategies, and it also helps make them more concrete to understand. You can do this easily with some index cards or anchor charts printed four to a page.

Vocabulary Strategies Cards in Black and White

Tip #8: Students Can Show Their Thinking with a Graphic Organizer

Vocabulary Tip to Show Thinking on Paper

Students can show how they used a vocabulary strategy with a graphic organizer. Not only does this give some accountability, but it creates an environment for more critical thinking and gives room for the meaning to resonate more with them.

Tip #9: Use a Vocabulary Journal

Vocabulary words are meant to be reused and recognized when seen again. A vocabulary journal is a great tool for this purpose. Graphic organizers can be placed in the journal too!

Tip #10: Use Extensions for Discovered Vocabulary Words

Give extension activities for students to apply the words they gleaned from using vocabulary strategies. This way, students can revisit those words later down the road. This actually ties in with the tip above. You want students reusing those vocabulary words, so have them break out their vocabulary journal for some extension activities.

Tip #11: Use Fun Incentives

To keep students motivated with practicing those vocabulary strategies, offer incentives. We are all prone to get off track with our goals, so trackers help students to stay focused with using the vocabulary strategies throughout the year. You can also celebrate their progress along the way when using a tracker. Reward them for their accomplishments. You can differentiate this easily, so everyone is successful with it. They will all make progress in their own way, so set reasonable goals for each student. Make it a big deal. Incentives need not cost a lot of money. The main ingredient is to make them feel special and to cheer them on. I also like to think this helps students to become mature adults who work toward goals and can self-monitor their progress to stay motivated.

Tip #12: Make it Engaging

Make it fun. Engage them from the start. Remember, they will always remember how we made them feel more than what we said (my paraphrase of Dr. Maya Angelou). I set-up a fun intro where you can get into character as you introduce students to the unit with a fun script and visuals. It is a sure way to make them laugh some and ultimately get their interest in learning those vocabulary strategies.

Official vocabulary detectives spend their entire lives using vocabulary strategies to break cases of unknown words.

Engage students with a fun detective introduction

Let’s make it a lifelong adventure of reading and discovering vocabulary. Unlike direct instruction that is limited to the words being taught, vocabulary strategies transcend into skills that can be used throughout life. These are skills that students can carry from grade to grade, and this will enable students to succeed in leaps and bounds in their educational journey.

Of course, you can venture out on your own with these ideas from this post. It took me quit a bit of research to come up with catchy names for the 24 vocabulary strategies that I identified through a lot of my own analysis and through various research-based books. Each strategy is very catchy, so students can easily remember them. If you would like to save time on researching strategies to teach and creating resources, I have everything you need to teach vocabulary strategies throughout the year. It also has a fun detective theme, and covers all the tips I included in this blog post.

You can click on the image below or click here to link to the resource.

You can also test drive the free sample below.

Click on the picture or click here to link

Thanks for stopping by the Candy Class!

Jolene Mathew from The Candy Class 🙂

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12 04, 2015

Oa, Oe, Ow, Oa, Oe The Vowel Teams

By Jolene M|2019-03-12T21:06:06-04:00April 12th, 2015|hands-on, Interactive Notebooks, phonics, Reading|0 Comments

(Sing the title to the tune of a famous boy band song from quite a few decades ago. I won’t say which one, but it you get if right, you got the right stuff, lol!)

Vowel Teams Oa Oe 2

You know how we all see these cute cvc activities all over the place, but then students get to other phonics activities and suddenly…bam, the availability of hands-on centers are too often replaced with worksheets galore.

Vowel Teams Oa Oe 1

One of my wise college professors use to say, “If you can turn it into a game, do it!” Then she would go on to explain how they will learn more because if it is interesting to them, it is engaging to them. If they are engaged, they are learning!

Relevancy is just important! What we view as relevant and what a young child views as relevant is two different things. Most often, they are not thinking about that math they will need when they are 25 to balance the checkbook. Nor are they thinking about how they need to become fluent writers to become a celebrity spy one day, I mean journalist. No way! Of course, they need plenty of writing opportunities. My point is they are not usually thinking they need to improve all their skills, so they can “adult.” To really engage them in learning, its important we get into their world to make it relevant. So what do children find relevant? Things like games, yup, that is relevant.

Enjoying putting puzzles together with their friends. Relevant.

Participating in class discussions with interactive anchor charts. Relevant.

Hands-on word work activities that tie into what they are learning to read. Relevant.

Doing fun things like feeding sharks and gators as a word work activity in an interactive notebook. Yup, you guessed it. Relevant.

Adding some laughs to learning with some fun puns doesn’t hurt the learning process either. 😉 After all, research shows the connection of our memories with emotional experiences. (I have no research paper to point to on that one. It is researched based though. I recall reading up on it many times in my college days. You’ve probably heard that before too).

Now, I know, I know, I know. No prep printables have their place. Sometimes, you need something for a quick review, homework, for a filler, etc. I get it. I am not saying those don’t have their place, but I am just trying to say its important kids get plenty of kinesthetic, relevent opportunities to master important phonics skills like vowel teams. The main point I am trying to make is worksheets should be kept in moderation, and children need more than just worksheets.

Vocabulary cards are also very handy. They can be used for self-checking and more. Some other ideas include putting them in alphabetical order, games like go fish and memory, matching rhyming words, and whatever else you can dream up. Cards like this are just handy and versatile. 🙂

Now this unit is HUGE. It is over 500 pages! Here is some organization inspiration. Baggies are my best friend, for real. I write on each bag what is inside to keep my sanity. 🙂 I like to keep it all in one spot (in the large coral container, minus the dice. When I plan on using these, I place them in a smaller bin like the shoe box container, and the reading center is ready to rock and roll.

If we want students to become fluent readers and writers, giving them relevant hands-on word work experiences, then we got to keep it relevant to young learners. That is what my vowel team bundled unit is all about. Making it relevant. Engaging. And ultimately, giving students a firm foundation in phonics to enable them to be fluent readers and writers.

You can find these in the store as a big bundle ( 20% off) or you can buy them individually.

Vowel Team Bundle

Vowel Team Word Work Cards

Vowel Team Puzzles

Vowel Team Printables

Vowel Team Interactive Notebook

Vowel Team Anchor Charts

Vowel Team Games

Don’t miss out! Sign-up for email on the right. I post helpful tips, freebies, giveaways, and more!

Thanks for stopping by The Candy Class.

Jolene 🙂

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21 10, 2013

Say What?

By Jolene M|2019-03-12T21:06:11-04:00October 21st, 2013|Interactive Notebooks, Reading|0 Comments

Saturday night, I felt like I was up all night giving birth! Kid you not! And well, I kind of gave birth to an Interactive Reading Notebook for Non-Fiction with cuteness added. Ok, well, not the same…I know, lol, and eating that coconut cream popsicle to keep my eyes opened would make any woman in labor Saturday night probably want to beat me over the head for such a comparison. While I have been laboring with this for the past few weeks with just about every spare moment, I was determined to get this baby out and delivered by Sunday morning, and I thought it would not take that long to finish. Well, one extra hour turned into two as I persisted to finish it, and two into four because I am a perfectionist….until it was 8:30 am and the little interactive reading notebook was finally smiling back at me on the screen…. literally that little penguin was smiling as she held her composition reading journal in her little penguin hands.

Every page is truly interactive! Each page has a moving part. Your child or class can revisit them like an archive throughout the year for review. These journals make learning relevant, kinesthetic (hands-on), visual, and fun, fun, fun!

Don’t overlook the fact that it includes 27 blank templates for personal use! And did you see it has some science activities with it! I tried to make the preview above big if you click on it…didn’t work out, but you can download a pdf preview for free that allows you to get a close up look of the items in it in my TPT store. Just click on the image to lead the way.

Includes photographed PowerPoint instructions. That way you can project them in your classroom. A grayscale pdf and color pdf is also included. Oh, and this baby was 156 pages long!

My little bear is loving his interactive reading journal and has a new kind of excitement for reading these days! Makes it well worth the hard work I put into this baby over the last few weeks! (Oh, and so sorry woman who gave birth this past Saturday and congrats!)

Be blessed!

Jolene

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13 10, 2013

Space, Sight Words, a Light Sword, and a Freebie Link

By Jolene M|2019-03-12T21:06:11-04:00October 13th, 2013|Reading|0 Comments

For learning sight words this year, I have flowed with my son’s interests with space. I did not actually make this adorable space word wall set myself, but I did find it as a freebie from another teacher-author. Spoiler alert: I have the freebie link posted later for this word wall set!

We use the space word wall for placing words he has mastered. That makes the word wall a big incentive to master those sight words. We review those here and there with his light sword as a pointer.

He is very eager to master his words and place them on the wall.

All the words he is working on for mastering are placed in a pocket chart that we review daily. If he does not master a word that week, I keep it in the pocket chart until he masters it. His readers during the week also have the newly introduced sight words for the week. I noticed he picks up a lot of his words that are reinforced in the readers because I threw in some other words, and he did not pick those up as fast. BTW I took the pocket chart pics from the first week of school and the word wall pics recently, so my little bear has mastered all those pocket chart words in the picture! Yay!

Details on making this yourself: I used fadeless black paper that I purchased in a roll from a local teacher store. It is jet black with a gloss, so easy to mount the sight words with mounting putty without damaging the paper should anything need to be moved around. I hung up the paper with the famous Command Strips by placing many of them around the edges. I used the kind for posters.

Space Themed Word Wall was created by Fredia Shumway. She also has some other cute word walls including a pirate, jungle, frog, camping, ocean, western, monster, monkey, bug, and owl themed. She was super generous to provide this space word wall for free. Usually, I am extreme DIY, but I could not resist this cute word wall that has my son hyped up about learning sight words. Click the link below to get to this product. Also, don’t forget to sign-up for email to receive more updated postings from my blog before heading over to her store. I don’t actually ever see your email. In fact, I don’t even see who actually follows my blog, but you will get a nice email saying when I post something new here. And believe me, I love to share, give, and be a blessing to others, so you will not want to miss out on my postings!

Click here to go to Space Themed Word Wall Link

Thank you for stopping by The Candy Class!

🙂 Jolene

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