More Exciting News!!

Jazzy Wright, the Communications Coordinator from National Board for Professional Teaching Standards sent an email to congratulate me on the article I wrote for HowToLearn.com and to inform me that they created a comprehensive story about me on their website!

You can view the story by clicking here:

She also let me know that this story is included in their newsletter Accomplished Teacher by SmartBrief.  It was included in today's newsletter, headlined below:

I'm so excited and had to share!!

Now, on a side note, I created and saved a favicon yesterday....or at least I think I did.  Can anyone see it???  I can't L

Fluency Practice-Sight Word Phrase Cards

Here is an activity I use with my small groups to help reinforce sight words, fluency, and reading with expression using the first 300 sight words from Fry's Instant Sight Word List (1980).  According to Fry, the first 300 words represent about 67% of all the words students encounter in their reading.  

I broke the phrases up into sets of 100 with 20 phrase cards for each set of 100.  Each phrase/sentence has a punctuation mark at the end to help encourage students to read with the appropriate expression.  I also give suggestions in the download for how to use the cards such as, "Phrases Around the World" and "Guess My Punctuation." 

While instructing, I spend time discussing the importance of punctuation and what happens to our voices when we see a period, question mark, and exclamation point at the end of sentences.  It always surprises me how many students think that when they see an exclamation point at the end of a sentence that it means the character is yelling.  In turn, I always reinforce that exclamation points mean to read with some type of emotion, and when reading within a text they need to think about the context to see what type of emotion it may be.  When using phrase cards, I allow them to use whatever type of emotion they feel comfortable doing.  

(We also play another game where the students select an additional card naming an emotion.  I did not include the emotion cards, but perhaps they will show up as a freebie sometime soon!!)

Thank you!

Enjoy!

Miss Bindergarten

Check out Kinder Kraziness for a free Miss Bindergarten Unit!

While you are there, check out her blog!

She has many cute ideas!  I love her idea of sight word and letter tickets!

Thank you!

Exciting news!

I have some news to share with you!


Late last week I received an email about writing and submitting an article.  Summer learning loss was one of the topics.  So I went ahead an put together some practical tips for parents to incorporate reading and writing activities into the summer routines of their children.
And guess what?  It is published!!

You can view it here:

(This is rather exciting for little, ol' me!)


Thank you!

End of Year Scramble

Since my students love scrambled sentences, I created some for them to do while we celebrate the last days of the school year.  They will need to unscramble the words to make a complete sentence and then insert the correct punctuation at the end.

(Click on either picture to go and download the activity.)

Anna over at Crazy for First Grade has a similar activity which is part of her math and literacy center pack called, "The Sweetest Centers".  Her materials are much loved by my students so if you haven't checked her out, make sure you do soon !

Enjoy!

It is official!

I am officially losing my mind.

So this is REALLY embarrassing and I feel pretty silly right now!!!

*blushing*

Last night when I posted about The Moffatt Girls' Fantastic Giveaway I was thinking that it was already Friday!  Oops!!  

What in the world was I thinking?  I missed a couple of days there!  (Guess I have a bit too much on my mind and am a anxious for it to be Friday night when my summer vacation officially begins?!)

So there are more than a few hours left, but I would still get over there to enter the giveaway and check out her amazing blog!!

Again, here are the materials you can win:

Oops!

J

Barrel of Monkeys-Alphabet

Back in March I posted about the Barrel of Monkeys sight word activity as shown below. 

I also mentioned that I made a smaller barrel for my daughter to practice identifying her letters and sounds 

(the little red barrel pictured on the left).  

Today I would like to share with you the monkeys I created using graphics from Scrappin Doodles to put into her little barrel.

I do need to apologize though, because when I save the document as a PDF file the lower case "u" does not behave itself.  It looks okay in MS Word and I am not sure what the problem is when the file converts. Please accept my apologies ahead of time if it does not print correctly, (I am hoping you can just use a black marker to fix it).  The other letters should be okay.  

Any suggestions on how to remedy this?

Thank you for your help and for following my little blog!


P.S.  My summer vacation officially begins in 2 days!!

Happy Father's Day!

Just wanted to take some time to wish a Happy Father's Day to all of the fathers out there.

A special wish goes out to my wonderful husband who is also the best daddy in the world to our little princess.

We are two lucky ladies!!!!

Happy Father's Day!!

Word Ladders-Blending CVC Words

This past spring I had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Dr. Timothy Rasinski at the New York State Reading Association Conference.  In addition to being one of the top researchers in reading fluency, he told us all that one of his "gifts" is having the ability to create word ladders.  If you provided him with two words, he said he would be able to create a word ladder within 48 hours!

I do have some of his Word Ladder books which my older students enjoy, but I wanted to create something for my kindergarten students to practice blending sounds as they change the initial, medial, and final letters.

Here is a sample of what I came up with:

The students start with the word on the bottom and then change the letters as they climb up the ladder.

I just posted this Word Ladder, along with two others in my TPT store. 

What do you think?

Spooky Monsters!!

Do you like monsters?  Friendly monsters of course.  

And what about slime? 

Just in time before our little monsters come out for Halloween, I created "Monster Match" which mirrors my "Pumpkin Letter Identification".

Another First Giveaway!

Annie, the author of an incredible blog called The Moffatt Girls, is holding her first giveaway!

Go and enter her giveaway and take time to look through her posts.

They are AMAZING and I promise, will be well worth your time!!

Fun in the Sun!

Want to have some fun in the sun?  

Here is another game board I created to help reinforce letters, sight words, sounds, etc... as you help the puppy escape the danger of the crabs to get to his lounge chair!

Now my question for you, are you sick of these yet??

Thanks and enjoy!

The Winner...

Hi all!  Wow, I can't believe the number of responses!

Because I had over 200 comments, I decided it was best to use the Random Number Generator, only to find out that my comments were not numbered!  Yikes! 

Luckily I remembered how Kristen from Ladybug's Teacher Files posted a tutorial on how to number comments. 

Thanks for saving me, yet again Kristen!!  

(If you are just starting out blogging, you really need to check her out.  She has wonderful, easy to follow tutorials and I have learned so much for her.) 

And now for the winners...

The winner for the gift card of choice to Target, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon is Amanda Phillips!

The winner of a little, something special because I reached (and surpassed) 300 followers is Heidi Samuelson!

Ladies, please contact me via email so that I can get your information:

jujulynn66@msn.com

Thank you to everyone who posted for and about my first giveaway.  I had a lot of fun and can't wait to check out all of your blogs!

Have a blessed day!

Just a little bit longer...CLOSED

Just a couple more hours to enter my first giveaway!  You have 10 pm to enter.  Remember to leave a separate post for each entry.

Also, I see that I am now close to 300 followers!  Wow!!  If I hit 300 followers before 10 pm, I will choose a second person to receive a little, special something.  

In the meantime, enjoy a picture from this morning of my little drummer girl.  

(You can click on her to enter the giveaway if you haven't entered yet!)

Thank you!

My First Giveaway! CLOSED

I thrilled to have over 200 followers and am celebrating with my first giveaway! When I began blogging a few months ago, I was so nervous that no one would find my posts valuable!  I appreciate all of your comments and feedback and have such a great time going through all of your wonderful blogs!

Since most of my materials are free, I am going to give away a gift card for either Target, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon (the winner's choice)!!

You can enter 4 different ways:

1.  Become a follower my blog, or let me know you are currently one.

2. Follow my TPT store (which is newly created and I hope to expand).

3. Post about my giveaway on your blog, and leave a link back to your blog so I will know.
4. Add my button or blog to your blog roll.


Please leave a separate comment for each entry.
The winner will be chosen on Monday!!
And again, THANK YOU!!!

Woooo hoooo!

I am so excited to have almost 200 followers!!

Things have been on the busy side here, plus Blogger has been giving me some trouble, so I haven't been able to post much.

Please keep your eye out for an upcoming giveaway!  (My first!)

Thank you all!!