Do you have a house full of clutter? If you do, you might be experiencing some unexpected ill effects. You don’t have to suffer from full-blown hoarding disorders to suffer from the psychological side effects of having too much stuff in your life. Even a reasonable number of belongings, if not well organised, can be […]

Every guy picks up a guitar for the first time with the sole purpose of getting girls. It starts in a dorm room somewhere, as you awkwardly try to make your way through Stairway to Heaven, and, for those with enough determination, it ends on a huge stage with scores women waiting for you to

Have you been wanting to try stations in your Secondary ELA classroom but aren't sure where to start? Read through this quick post where we share 8 station ideas and how to use them with your ELA students.

Ready to create learning stations? They require a purposeful and strategic design in order for the experience to be meaningful. Start here!

Explore rivende's 1955 photos on Flickr!

32 editable sight word games. This pack has earned more than 1,300 four star ratings on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Your new favorite teaching strategy: This pared-down version of learning stations keeps the movement, interactivity and variety while minimizing the prep work.

Your new favorite teaching strategy: This pared-down version of learning stations keeps the movement, interactivity and variety while minimizing the prep work.

Start the brainstorming for your own home business with this list of awesome home business ideas. Some with low start-up costs to stay within a frugal budget.

This post is in response to a followers request. Thanks for your input and suggestions!One of the very first ways to improve intelligibility is to teach a child to use a slower speech rate. When children with articulation disorders use a fast speech rate, often times the number of omissions and sound substitutions increase, syllables […]

Each Monday we collaborate with our building's new and Dual Language staff members for a professional development session based on what they highlight as their needs and/or desires for learning! This week we focused on Daily 5 ideas as all of our staff are currently working hard to get their stations and guided reading up and running! The teachers who attending the session came up with a variety of wonderful ideas and activities that could potentially be used throughout the year in these work stations. I thought some of you may enjoy taking a gander at what they came up with as well! Just a little background... we utilized a strategy many of you may be familiar with called "Round Robin" to gather ideas during our meeting. The staff were given the anchor charts with only the titles and asked to add any activity ideas they were doing, would like to do, etc. based on the title on their paper. We gave each group 1 minute to brainstorm and write their ideas, and then they were asked to pass the poster to the next group. We continued to do this until all posters had made it to all groups. This is a great strategy that you could use with your students as well to assess their background knowledge and/or learning of concepts. You could even do it at the beginning of the year to see what activities they already know and enjoy doing during Daily 5 if they are familiar with it from the year past! This may give you some insight as to what they may want to do in your classroom as well! Alright now onto the posters...keep in mind these were quickly written by our staff and we discussed them a bit after as well, so not everything may make perfect sense! But feel free to ask questions in the comments if you have any and I would be happy to try my best to answer! After our meeting, I also took some time to type up all of their ideas onto one page for them to hold on to and refer to throughout the year. You are welcome to a copy if you'd like- just click on the image below :)! (Graphics: Scrappin Doodles, Priscilla Concepcion)

Looking for some bossy r phonics pages? These Color the Chunk pages are the perfect way to help readers practice looking for bossy r chunks to read words. Find all our free Color the Chunk Phonics Pages or grab our Color the Chunk Phonics Bundle! *This post contains affiliate links. **The free download can be found at the ... Read More about Color the Chunk – Bossy R Phonics Pages

It’s a myth that blindly memorizing every letter in a sight word is the only way to learn it.

Cooperative learning can be a powerful learning strategy, but only if it works well. These small changes can make group work more effective in your classroom.

Looking for a fun way to practice those tricky CVCe words? This CVCe word work center is here to help! Simply print and play.

Your new favorite teaching strategy: This pared-down version of learning stations keeps the movement, interactivity and variety while minimizing the prep work.

No, you’re not going to ignore their misbehavior. It’s just that . . . well, let’s back up a little. When you first receive your roster for the coming year, it’s normal to want to get the lowdown on your new class. It’s normal ... Read more

Looking for guidance on how to write military fantasy? This article will help you!

Organization does not have to be difficult, nor does it have to be expensive. There are so many neat ways that you can repurpose things that you find at your local Dollar Store. From organizing the kitchen and bathroom to taking care of laundry clutter, there are many things that can help you to be more organized.

In this post, I'm going to share TWENTY word work ideas for sight word practice in your classroom. Before I begin the fun, I want to quickly explain how my

I can say that I am so HAPPY that this stressful week is over. My husband and I are in the process of buying our first home, which we LOVE, but there have been a few hiccups with water in the basement after a spring rain.... but TODAY... all is settled and great! Whew! I am linking up with Doodlebugs in the special WORD WORK themed Five for Friday. One of my biggest challenges this year is my management of the Daily 5 structure in my classroom. I struggle between giving the kiddos too much freedom (last year) and not enough freedom and variety (this past fall). I finally feel like I've hit my stride and it comes with the introduction with my word work organization in January. I try to keep the Word Work activities fun and hands-on!! I love when my kiddos come in at the beginning of the week and ask "WHAT'S FOR WORD WORK?" They used to ask this same question in the form of, "What's for lunch?" I figure if word work is ranking above lunch now, I MUST be doing something right! ORGANIZATION: Here is a peek at my word work organization board, Across the top are the 5 word work centers for the week. Each student is in a color group (based on their guided reading group... that way I can differentiate the centers based on reading abilities). When we are ready to start word work, students look at what their group is doing that day, they get their supplies, and they can sit anywhere in the classroom. THEY LOVE IT! (and because they love it... I have very few behavior/redirection problems, which frees me up for my reading groups) I take pictures of the word work materials to make the center labels. You can see from the photo that I don't always have time to make the new labels after I introduce the new center... I write on a blank laminated card with a Vis-à-vis marker. The backs of the word work labels have Velcro so that I can switch the centers each week! The word work supplies are always organized on the top of our classroom library book shelves. My "teacher's helper" make sure that everything is ready to go in the morning and that is it all put back nicely when we are finished! WORD WORK FAVORITES: BEADS Every week, student focus on 7 phonics related words (based on a common spelling pattern) and they have 5 sight words (from the pre-primer and primer dolch word lists). As we go this year, I have been making laminated cards with the words on them. This allows students to easily complete their work anywhere in the room... they just bring their little word card with them. Last year, I would write the words on the board, but then students couldn't always see them from the spot that they chose to work in. One of our favorite centers is stringing letter beads on pipe cleaners to spell our words. EASY!! Just a little prep to put the bins together... I initially had the beads organized into the above organizer... but it was too hard for the kids to get the beads out of them. I recently switched to putting the beads in old pencil boxes and it works great!! I also have a choice of big or small beads! WORD WORK FAVORITES: FLUENCY FOLDERS I recently used Cara Carroll's Rock Your Fluency packs to put together Fluency Folders... I posted about this about a month ago... Check out this LINK to see my previous post about fluency folders... I do have to say that these are a class favorite (and totally worth the cost!) WORD WORK FAVORITES: WORD SORTS Students sort word family words into categories and record. I put the word cards and the word family heading cards into a tub. Students spread out on the floor and sort the cards. If they finish early, they write sentences with the words on the back of the paper! LONG VOWEL WORD SORTS are available in my TPT store! Here's a freebie of the Long U Word Sort! WORD WORK FAVORITES: PRINTABLES Stumbled across this great set of word work printables last year and THEY ARE FREE!! Click the link to check them out on Mrs. Mabe's TPT Store! Enjoy!!

Use station activities to improve reading comprehension! Get your students

The kids and I have been talking about words with ing added on the end. My youngest has just started coming across these words in his reading and his big sister was showing him how to break the wo…

If you’re looking for some free phonics clip cards, you’re in the right place! Here, you’ll find over 100 of them…all FREE! I just love clip cards, don’t you? They can be used over and over again, they can easily be made self-checking {read more about this below}, and they help learners work on those fine ... Read More about 100+ FREE Phonics Clip Cards

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As your child learns to read, they're going to start coming across contractions. They might look a little tricky when they first come across them, but

These compound word puzzles are an easy way to bring some fun learning to your literacy centers! Pair them up and watch a word appear!

Engaging ELA test prep activities and lessons, how to make high school English test prep fun, secondary ELA standardized testing ideas

There are TONS of word work activities out there - which ones should you choose? In this post, I share 4 characteristics to look for!

If you have learners who struggle to isolate beginning sounds, these free phonemic awareness games are the perfect fit! Use them in preschool or kindergarten. Use them in literacy centers or small groups. #phonemicawareness #preschool #kindergarten

Help your students master their phonics by integrating daily word work activities. This blog also includes 88 free phonics cards!

To take quality notes, students need to be taught how. This fantastic station-rotation lesson gets the job done, and it can be used with all kinds of other content as well.

Although few really are familiar with the term digraph, its definition, or all of the digraphs we teach in Level 1. Here are tips for making consonant digraph

These editable word work activities are perfect for small groups or centers and help every level of reader as they become stronger readers!

Teaching a diphthong lesson in class? These free diphthong clip cards are a must-try literacy center or word work station.

Help your students master their phonics by integrating daily word work activities. This blog also includes 88 free phonics cards!

Welcome (or welcome back) to another installment of my series on teaching vocabulary to gifted students. In previous posts, I wrote about steps to take before staring vocabulary instruction, including assessing what students already know using a quick and easy self-ratings scale. Next, I wrote about strategies for introducing new words and putting a gifted twist on vocabulary instruction. The whole reason I started researching best practices in vocabulary started when I realized a few things. One, I had gifted students to teach and it was obvious that the regular, run-of-the-mill vocabulary materials handed to me by the district would not be sufficient. Two, had the curriculum been challenging enough for my students, I found it dreadfully boring. If I found it boring, my students would have positively died. And I'm not into creating that kind of emergency in my classroom. And three, I knew the importance of vocabulary instruction and it's far-reaching effects, so it was something I felt I couldn't afford to get wrong. Thus began my own journey into deeper learning so that I could really make an impact in our classroom, while also injecting some FUN! This post goes into a little more depth on the components of quality vocabulary instruction, as well as some of the activities that I used with students to engage them in meaningful word learning and purposeful practice. Just as a quick reminder, a child's vocabulary is a huuuuuuge predictor of academic success in ALL areas. What the Research Says One of the best-known researchers in the field of vocabulary instruction is Robert Marzano. In his studies, he found six key steps were the key to better vocabulary instruction. The first three steps are done with the help of the teacher: Teachers should give students an example, description, and/or explanation of the new term. Students need to restate the explanation, description, or example using their own language. Students should construct a picture, pictograph, or symbolic representation of the term. (If you hop back to my previous blog post, you will find a free download of a graphic organizer on which students can engage in steps two and three). 4. Periodically, students should engage in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks. 5. Students should be asked to discuss the terms with one another sometimes. 6. Students are periodically involved in playing games that enable them to play with terms. In studies conducted with classrooms using these strategies, it became clear that when teachers engaged their students in alllll of these six practices, students usually showed significant gains in vocabulary learning. Other well-known vocabulary researchers, Dr. Kate Kinsella and Dr. Kevin Feldman, point out three things that don't work in their article, Narrowing the Language Gap: The Case for Explicit Vocabulary Instruction: "looking up words in the dictionary, using written context to determine word meaning, unplanned, extemporaneous vocabulary teaching." Instead, teachers should focus on four important ideas: wide reading, direct teaching of important individual words, teaching word learning strategies, and fostering word conscientiousness through various activities that encourage language play, and choice in writing (Graves, 2000) and (Nagy and Scott, 2000). My General Flow of Vocabulary Instruction and Assessment Now that I've shown you some research, and told you a little about how I preassess and introduce the words, as well as how I accommodate gifted learners, I'm thinking you might be curious about how it all fit together for me. A typical vocabulary cycle flows like this for me: Pre-test students on new words by having students complete a self-ratings-scale prior to starting a new list Introduction of new words. If they already know any of the words well enough to define and use in a sentence, they don’t have to study those words. You can find more about how I pre-assess for vocabulary in this blog post. Students add their words to our “Map It Out” cards. We discuss the definitions of the vocabulary words together. Students continue to work on these throughout the entire cycle, starting with the synonyms and antonyms (you can even do this part together) and reserving the sentence writing portion until near the end. The “Map It Out” cards are great for students to keep with them when they are working on the other learning activities throughout the cycle, too! They can always go back to the cards and add to or revise them as they learn more about their words. You can read more about introducing the words and find a free download of the Map It Out cards here. Students add their words to a catalog or make word wall cards for each root or affix. The “Map It Out” cards themselves are sized to fit on a 5 x 7 notecard or in a composition notebook. I like students to keep a record of all of their words for the year to use for reference and as evidence of all the learning they’ve accomplished! Students choose one to three (or more) learning activities (like the ones outlined below) to complete. *The number of activities chosen should be a reflection of how much time students have and the number of activities you think each student needs. Gifted students may require much less repetition than “typical” peers or students with other learning differences so the activities that go more in-depth may be a better fit for them!* Use a quick-check strategy every couple of days to measure progress on learning. I do not use this as a graded quiz. It is meant to be a low-stakes, low-risk tool that students can use to quiz themselves as they are progressing toward mastery. This is a research-based strategy that has been shown to increase retention. Assess student learning following the completion of the activities. This cycle is flexible, but I found it generally took about 7 school days to get everything accomplished. Yours might take more or less time, depending on how much class time you can dedicate to it, and of course, on your students' needs. How I Encouraged Word Play in My Classroom While I definitely engaged students in the super important pre-assessment and direct instruction activities, my FAVORITE part of the vocabulary learning process was definitely allowing students to engage in different activities that helped students achieve deep learning and understanding of their words. This was definitely the part my students enjoyed the most, too. I'll outline a few of my favorite activities here, and maybe even provide a *free* download for you at the end. "WordTube" This activity is a play on the popular YouTube website. Students write each assigned vocabulary word and draw a picture of it on a “WordTube” screen. Then they use the “Up Next” boxes to write the part of speech, identify the roots/affixes contained in the word or the origin if the word does not appear to have Greek or Latin roots or any affixes, and define the word. Students should paraphrase the definition, as this strategy requires more critical thinking and will ultimately help them remember the meaning of the words better. Word Analogies Students create their own analogies for vocabulary words. Creating and using analogies when learning new material is a research-based strategy that requires students to have a deeper understanding of vocabulary words, activates prior knowledge, and helps students bridge the gap between their schema and new learning. There are two ways students can use this strategy-- students can create their own analogies for vocabulary words and complete the entire analogy. Or, students can create partial analogies that they can trade with a partner to solve. For this option, they must also make up an answer key (I suggest they create the answer key first). You'll want to be sure to teach children the different kinds of relationships you can create with analogies--for example, analogies can show part to whole relationships, the can reflect synonyms, antonyms, time sequences, increasing or decreasing intensity, etc. Shades of Meaning For this activity, students generate semantic gradients for their vocabulary words. This requires them to think of or find words that are semantically similar to their vocabulary words and then to arrange the words in order. This activity helps students make meaningful connections between words they already know and their new term. There are, again, two variations of this activity that are fun and useful. For one variation, students would either think of, find (or be provided with) a list of synonyms that align with the original vocabulary word. They would then arrange the terms in order from the strongest expression of the term to words that express the term to a lesser degree. For the second variation of the activity, students think of or look up 5 synonyms and 5 antonyms for the vocabulary word. They place the vocabulary term in the center of the continuum and then arrange the synonyms and antonyms so that they get stronger as they move away from the center. When students are finished, they should discuss with someone why they chose to put their words in order. They could write their rationale instead if no-one is available to discuss. I like to allow students access to both options because some terms don’t really have opposites. Further, I always allow some flexibility with the number of synonyms and antonyms students have to find, as some words—particularly words from content area studies—don’t have many synonyms or antonyms. Also, since these are fairly subjective and there is lots of “grey” area in terms of how the words are arranged, grading these should either be avoided, aside from completion, or rely heavily on the child’s explanations. I highly suggest this activity be completed with pairs or small groups of children to encourage the rich conversations that can occur as they are determining the order in which to place the words. Making Connections Making connections between words really encourages students to think deeply about the meaning of words, and how they relate to other words. This activity is well-suited for small groups of students, as well as the entire class at once if you’re all studying the same words at the same time. Students are each assigned one or two unique words, and then they spend time interacting with others in an effort to find a word that they feel connects with their words. Eventually, students settle on a connection or match. Then, students explain either in writing, to the class, or just to the rest of their group members how their terms are connected. You will want to spend some time with your students discussing the difference between surface-level and deeper connections. For example, students need to look past words having the same number of letters, starting or ending with the same letters or sounds, being in the same chapter in their science book, etc. The activity (and related research) suggest that making deeper connections between words and concepts are really what will help cement the vocabulary into children’s learning, creating long-lasting, authentic learning experiences. Interview a Word This activity is great for helping deepen students’ understanding of words and their possible connotations. One student “becomes” one of the words, and the other student is the interviewer. It is fun to encourage the “words” to show their personality and act as though they were truly embodying their word. My students really enjoy acting things out like this! I suggest doing this activity in pairs or small groups, however, if a child is working independently, he or she can just write down the answers to the interview questions on paper instead of posing the questions for someone else to answer. For this activity, you may find it useful to allow students access to websites such as visualthesaurus.com and www.etymonline.com so they can research some possible answers to the interview questions. As a fun aside, having students make and wear nametags for this activity is a fun way to boost engagement! Create a Menu Students get full creative license over designing a menu for a new restaurant and using their vocabulary words in the descriptions. Students start by deciding on a theme and name for the restaurant. Then they decide the names of dishes to include on the menu, all fitting in with the designated theme. Next, students use all of their vocabulary words to create a restaurant menu. In my opinion, it is not necessary that each menu item use a vocabulary word, as long as they have managed to include all of their words on the menu somehow, using them properly in context. Creating a themed restaurant and sticking to only including dishes that fit the theme definitely requires higher level thinking skills. If you find this to be too challenging for some of your students, you could allow them to include dishes on the menu that do not fit into a particular theme, as long as they are still using their vocabulary words to write the descriptions. If you want to take this to the next level, you could do something like have students design and create an actual (miniature) restaurant storefront, or allow students time to visit each other’s restaurants and “order” something off of the menu. Sound like fun? There are SO many other great ideas for helping your students engage independently with their vocabulary word study. I put three of the above ideas together for you in a free exclusive download if you're ready to give them a try. This freebie is available ONLY to my subscribers and can be found among many other free resources in my free resource library. Click the image below to gain access to your free copy! *Just to be clear, by clicking to get these freebies (and instant access to the growing collection of free resources in my library of subscriber exclusives), you're also agreeing to be added to my email list, where I'll send occasional messages with fresh ideas, tips, and other resources straight to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time.* If you're ready to save TONS of time, you can find these three activities and many more in my store by clicking on the images below. So far, I have FIVE separate volumes of nine activities created and ready to download and print. Each volume includes a table of contents and full-page student-friendly directions for each of the activities. They also include a choice menu for each volume, which allows students to make choices about which activities they work on to learn their vocabulary words each week. It is also a good tool to track completion of menu options depending on how long or how many options you allow students to complete. All three volumes also include a rubric, the "Map It Out" graphic organizer and nine vocabulary activities that can be used with any of your own vocabulary lists. Each volume of my Word Study Activities also has one or two FREE bonuses, from a formative assessment tool to a student activity proposal form to a pre-assessment and self-ratings scale. I also bundled these activities together for big savings. You'll get all five volumes (45 activities!) and the corresponding bonus resources for the price of four volumes! If students complete one different activity a week, there are enough activities in the pack to last the entire year (or longer)! You can access the bundle by clicking the picture below. Let me know if you have any questions! I love hearing from my readers!

Last summer I attended a GT training and was introduced to choice boards! I LOVE THIS IDEA!!! I think that students are more engaged and even challenge themselves more when they are given choices. The great thing is....they aren't just for GT students. Choice boards work similar to tic-tac-toe; the student completes 3 activities in a row {up, down, diagonal} They can be adapted for ALL students and actually lend themselves well to differentiated instruction. On Tuesday, I will be attending another GT training specifically on choice boards and differentiated instruction {I'm super pumped about it!} I can't wait to learn more about these learning tools! {I promise to share what I learn!} Choice boards can be set up in many different ways. You can base them off of abilities, learning styles, intelligences, and even levels of questioning. I have found it easier, if I focus on just one of these types. When creating the board, you want to plan out what type of activity each square will focus on. {You don't want to have 2 of the same type of activities in a row} The goal of the CBs are to have equally acceptable activities that you want the students to complete that are similar end products, but have varying ways to accomplish the final product. {For example, you are studying the Alamo. Students could choose activities from writing a diary from the viewpoint of being in the battle, recreating a model of the Alamo, creating a movie, etc.}The wonderful thing about CBs though...students can choose an activity they are willing to complete {taking into consideration their own likes/learning style/intelligence}, but they will have 2 other activities they will need to complete that will focus on other skills that they possibly may need to strengthen {but at the very least they're practicing other skills}! It's a win-win situation! I recently put the choice boards I created for my homework reader's responses in my shop. My students are required to read 20 min nightly, however I found that many of them weren't really reading every night! These choice boards give student's different options to respond to their books, while focusing on varying skills. I've also included 4 blank {editable} choice boards so that you can create your own boards! .....And I used the adorable sneakers clipart to jazz them up from KPM Doodles {love her stuff!} Here is an example template of how to begin creating a choice board based on Multiple Intelligences: Source: Dare to Differentiate Here are some great resources: Dare to Differentiate (AWESOME site for resources!) PVUSD Choices based on intelligence

I have used the reading workshop model for about 8 years now. It has changed a lot over the years! One thing that has stayed the same is the ‘Respond to Text’ station. This is a time where students get to write about their reading. The station stays the same all year, but the activities in the station change. Below is a list of activities you can add to your ‘Respond to Text’ station at the beginning of the year. 1. Bookmark Book Report At the beginning of the year, some students struggle to finish chapter books. I find that this bookmark book report helps them stay engaged in their reading. The students keep track of the pages they read, and complete activities as they read their book. There is a fiction and nonfiction version available for download. 2. Text Structures Tri-fold Students can use this trifold to ‘hunt’ for different text structures. Just put a basket of nonfiction books at the station and you are set! It’s a great way to get them reading nonfiction books. 3. Choice Board Students get to choose what activities they’d like to complete. This is great because it can be used for the story of the week (if you follow a basal) or the chapter book they are currently reading. You can have the students glue this page inside their reading notebook, or have them staple their responses to this sheet and turn in. Download the Printables: Click here to download the bookmark book report. Click here to download the text structures trifold and choice board. Add editing tasks to your reading workshop block! Math Resources: 1st Grade Tri-Folds 2nd Grade Tri-Folds 3rd Grade Tri-Folds 4th Grade Tri-Folds 5th Grade Tri-Folds Thanks for reading! I hope you will find these printable helpful :) Visit my blog @ Learning With Mrs S. Visit my TPT Store Follow me on Pinterest! Follow me on Instagram! Follow me on Facebook :)

Teaching vocabulary to your gifted students is something you ay have pushed aside, but it is SO important for them! Read this second post in my series about how I teach vocabulary from start to finish!