January and February FUN!

Well I have been MIA for a bit.  I was waiting on my new blog design and decided to take a break. Well the new design didn't work out and I am currently looking for someone new that doesn't have a ton of orders in front of me.  So I decided it was time to go back to old set up until the new one can be designed.

My focus in January and February has been reading, reading, and more reading.  I am not a fan of our reading series, so I have really had to create a lot of materials that we could use in our classroom.  I was so lucky to have a dear friend retire (not lucky that she retired because I miss her SO MUCH!)   She left me a bunch of novel sets that we have been using for our reading instruction.  Without them I would be sunk!  So we have really jumped into chapter books and the kids love it.

To work on work attack, I created a series of powerpoint slides with the national reading vocabulary words on them.  Nothing fancy, but at least they are colorful.  We do a set every morning and the kids are really picking up on them.  I like to have them trade the letters out.  So for the word "jump", I might tell them drop the "j" and make it an "l" and they say "lump".  They think it is a game!  I can really see this helping my lower kids build confidence.  I also might ask them the baseword, prefix, suffix, antonym, synonym, make it plural, or the part of speech.  Anything I can think of to keep them on their toes.  Click on the picture to see more about this product.

We love SCOOT games in our classroom.  I post task cards around the room and the kids get their clipboards and solve the questions.  Here is a an array SCOOT game from one of my favorite TPT authors....  AMY LEMONS!  

We have also broke out a 3rd grade packet for Roll and Read.  They think they are so grown up and can't wait to read the BIG words.  It keeps them engaged while I do my face to face lesson with my RTI friend.  I snapped a few pictures of them yesterday.

Tomorrow is an inservice day for us!  I'm really excited about my presentation this time.  It is all on phonics!  Not something that I am an expert in, but I sure hope it goes well.  I tried to capture the best ideas I could find to teach phonics for 2nd graders.  I will blog about it over the weekend!

Hope everyone has a great day!

Happy Teaching!

Tracy