daily 5 Archives | Lucky To Be In First

November 3, 2016 Leave a Comment

Short Vowel Ideas to Make Learning Fun!

I’m always looking for new ways to mix up how we practice our short vowel words. I get bored looking at their work sometimes, so I imagine they get bored doing the same activities all the time! {Tell me I’m not the only one!}
So today I’m sharing my favorite activities for working on short vowels!

Short Vowel Word Searches

Once in a while you need your kiddos to pick up their pencils {or crayons!} and prove what they know! Well, who says it doesn’t need to be fun? These Short Vowel Word Searches are an educational spin on what they’d find on a kid’s meal menu!

Short Vowel Word Mats

Each week during the school year we focus on a word family. At the beginning of the year, we spend a lot of time on short vowels! The kids “show what they know” about word families by completing these Word Up! Word Mats.

They need to make words using the letter tiles and determine if the words are real or nonsense words.

Short Vowel Poems

At some point in the day, we chant our short vowel poem. I have NO idea where these poems originated {please share the source if you know!} but I do have them as a FREEBIE over on the Lucky to Be in First Facebook page!

Make sure you’re looking at Facebook from a desktop computer. You’ll find them in the “Fan Freebies” tab {along with a few other goodies, too!}

Check out these helpful directions from Traci of Dragonflies in First for printing these posters larger!

Short Vowel Task Cards

I’m always changing up our activities during Daily 5 to make sure that my students don’t get bored! Recently, I added these Short Vowel Task Cards to the mix.

It includes two versions for each vowel sound so you can differentiate for your class. The top picture shows how students are asked to write the beginning and ending sound.

In the activity below, students are asked to write the vowel sound and the final sound.

As with any phonics activity, you hope your students can independently work on, it’s important to review the pictures so students become familiar with the words!

Word Family Workouts

The latest addition to our Phonics repertoire are these Word Family Workouts! This one paper covers a bunch of skills: word recognition in various fonts, ABC order, and sentence writing!

Check out these Word Family Workouts over on TpT!

Slainte!

October 25, 2015 2 Comments

5 Ideas to Mix Up Your Daily 5 Work on Writing!

Looking to mix up your Daily 5 Work on Writing time? I’m here today to share some new ideas to mix it up and keep it fun!

If you are anything like me, you love to get cards! I try to send cards to everyone for every reason – birthdays, showers, or even a quick hello! I’m trying to instill this same love of writing cards to my first graders! We LOVE to write cards – to our parents, to our custodian, our principal and each other!I photocopy a bunch of blank cards and leave them at our writing center to grab-and-go!

We also write a lot of thank you notes, too! Scribble Stories are a fun way to get kids to write creatively! I have a stack of papers that have random doodles. The students simply add on to the picture and start writing. I give them a lot of freedom to write with these papers. It can be a true story, made up or just a fact they want to share about whatever they’ve drawn! At this point in the year, we haven’t yet gotten to writing letters. However, we’re gearing up to write to our Pen Pals very soon! This paper helps kids follow the proper format of a formal letter. I’ve included a “blank” version, as well as a version that includes the Dear/From already written to make it a little easier to start those letters!

List Writing is a big favorite in our classroom! With this blank list, the students are allowed to make a list about whatever they want – sports, foods, candy, days of the week and so on. I also grab a lot of list ideas from my Listmania Pack! There are 100 pre-made lists included in this pack! I leave a bunch each week in our writing center and the students can grab a paper that strikes their fancy!

And last but not least, The Weekend Report! This is a great way to help organize kids writing into three simple boxes – Friday, Saturday and Sunday!

Looking for more ways to perk up your Word Work? Click on the picture to find 5 great new ideas!

Slainte!

October 18, 2015 Leave a Comment

5 Ways to Perk Up Your Daily 5 Word Work!

Are you looking for new ways to perk up your Daily 5 Word Work routine? Look no further!

I’ve been doing Daily 5 for almost five years now. I love that it gives students a choice in their own learning! However, after many, many days of this routine in my classroom over the past half-decade, I’m kinda bored with some of the choices! So, I thought I’d share how I mixed up my Daily 5 time a bit more this year!You may remember way back in February that I visited the Ed Expo in Atlanta. One of my absolute favorite discoveries was Touchtronics Letters {and Numbers!} created by one very smart man, Duncan!

He figured out how to make an iPad interactive with “magnetic” letters! The kids absolutely LOVE this new way to work on their phonics!

Even if you only have one iPad in your classroom – these letters are SO worth it! I created a Roll & Do die to give your students TONS of options!To make, you’ll need to print out the the die and assemble. I’ve included a colored version and black and white…along with an editable version for you to add your very own options!

If they roll an activity that requires writing, they can write all of their weekly words on My List of Words worksheet!
I have a stack of these ready to go so students can simply grab the worksheet and a die and get going! Another easy to set up and fun to use Word Work idea is sand! I went to the Dollar Tree and grabbed colored sand and plastic storage containers. The kids simply take a list of words, a fancy pencil and a bucket ‘o sand!

Touchtronics Letters Daily 5 Word Work Lucky to Be in First

One of the major skills we need to be teaching our little people these days is keyboarding! My goodness – I am afraid printing will even become a lost art in 20 years!

Students love this fun “keyboard!” I just printed out a few copies onto colored cardstock and they got peckin’ away on the keyboard. {I would laminate these little keyboards before dirty little fingers get on them! Lesson learned!}

Making our own word search is definitely a fan favorite in my classroom! The students simply grab a word list and a blank word search and get to town! Later in the day, they are able to solve each other’s word search {if we have extra time!}

Are you wondering what words I use for these activities? Well, I’ve got two options for you!

Racing Through Sight Words

These lists are colored coded! The “red” car has the first 20 words of the Top 100 sight words and they progress in color through the list!

Words for the Week!

Each week I type up the Words of the Week for my class {taken from A Year of First Grade Homework!} This file is editable, so you can simply type your words right onto the page, print onto colored paper to jazz it up and laminate!