New Products

Hi, friends!  It's been awhile since I have blogged.  I have been busy after traveling to Minnesota to see my mother in law's new cabin.  I have also been getting ready for our garage sale.  In between those things, however, I've found time to create some new products!  Today I am sharing them with you!  You can click the cover of each product to view the description and price on TpT.

1.  I HAVE, WHO HAS GAME BUNDLE--I love I Have, Who Has games!  They are fast paced and great for vocabulary development in our kindergarten and first grade students.  I have the games available for individual purchase but you can also grab the bundle to save $$ and receive all future games for free.

2.  PARTS OF SPEECH BUNDLE--These activities are AWESOME for literacy centers!  There is not a lot of prep and they make a great spiral review of nouns, verbs, and adjectives.  Each pack has three sets of cards, (nouns, verbs, adjectives) and you can choose which you want your kids to work on that day/week as a center activity.  The thematic graphics/vocabulary are also great for building word knowledge.  Again, these are available individually but save $$ with the bundle and get all future packs for free.

3.  CVC CUT/GLUE/WRITE--These printables are great for extra practice with cvc words.  Just select the pages you want to use (separated by vowel) and go!  Kids select a few pictures/words, cut them out, glue them, and write sentences with them.  A sentence rubric is included.  Great supplement for any Phonics program!  **All of my Cut/Glue/Write packs are bundled to save extra $$**  I am including the bundle below, as well.

4.  PASSWORD OF THE DAY BOARD--I am so excited about using this in my class this year!  This is a set of the Fry's First 100 sight word cards and letter cards.  This is going to be an excellent review of sight words for my kids each day as they enter the room.  Requiring them to point to each letter and say it is also wonderful practice.  To read about how to put this board together (great summer project!!), click the cover and check out the description on TpT.

5.  EMOJI PARTNER MATCHING CARDS--No more fighting over who your partner is!  Find the match to your emoji and get started on the activity/game!  I'm really looking forward to using these this year!

6.  MONTHLY BINDER COVERS--Who doesn't love crisp binder covers and spines?!  This set of 12 color and b/w binder covers will help you organize your monthly files.  Several spine options included in both color and b/w as well.

7.  COLOR WORD POSTERS--I am super excited to use these in my room this year!  A fresh set of color word posters are going to look great hanging on my cabinet.  I printed 4 to a page so that I have "mini" posters.

8.  CVC STAMPING BOOKS--These make a FUN and simple center!  These are my go-to for literacy centers!  Two versions of the pages included for differentiation.  You choose the vowel(s) you want to include in the book...work on one in isolation or add a few for a spiral review.  I'm also including a link for my favorite letter stamps and ink pads below!  *affiliate*

  

So as you can see, I've been busy creating this summer!  Hope you found some useful new products for your classroom!  Be sure you're following me on Instagram!  I post products half off for the first 10 people!  I'm @mrswheeler 44

xo
Megan

Prepositions

Prepositions.  We learned about them last week.  I was scared.  Some of the CCSS intimidate me.  Is anyone with me here?  I mean, some skills are just cut and dry but others overwhelm me with the how will I teach this in a way that my first graders will understand it thought.  We got through it and my kids can now identify and use prepositions.  I thought I'd share what I did to teach this with you. Here are a few ideas/resources!

I introduced prepositions with these free picture and word cards from my friend Michelle at Teach123.  We also watched THIS You Tube video.  As the week progressed, we read some of the picture book shown above.  One of our favorites was Rosie's Walk.  We made a list of all the prepositions we found in the book and then created our own Rosie hens {inspired by The First Grade Parade}.  We wrote the prepositions found on her feathers.

We also made this cute little preposition book from my friend Jen at Teacher by the Beach.  The kids loved making up their own little stories about their bumblebee!  *I just used a clip art bumblebee and attached it to the back of the book with a piece of tape and yarn.

One other activity that we did is play "Pass the Can."  We used some noun clip art cards that I made. The can went around and each person chose a card and said a sentence aloud using a preposition. The class had to listen carefully and say the preposition they heard in each person's sentence.  Simple but fun and engaging.

I hope that you found some good ideas here!

xo
Megan

Schoolapalooza!

Hi everyone!  I'm here to tell you about an exciting event that me and my friends over at A Class*y Collaboration are having!  It's called "Schoolapalooza" and it's AWESOME!  A big thank you to my friend Kathy over at First Grade a la Carte for organizing this big event for us!!!  Each day this week starting tomorrow, August 18, stop by our collaborative blog and find out about scoring a freebie for one hour only! From 8-9 pm, you will have access to one product from each of us for FREE!  This is a great way to assess our work and fill up your digital files for back to school!  Everything we are offering is great for back to school/the beginning of the year.

One day this week, I am offering my "September Daily Sentence Editing."  It meets the CCSS Language requirements.  These are fun, daily printables that give students practice with sentence editing.  I have one for every month but tomorrow from 8-9 pm {Eastern}, you'll be able to snag the September one for FREE! It's a great way to try out this type of activity and see if you like it!  I have the sentence edits for September through June.

So be sure to visit the A Class*y Collaboration blog each evening starting tomorrow, August 18th!

xo
Megan 

Nouns & Freebies!

Morning, everyone!  Today's quick post is about nouns!  We spent a week learning all about them.  We used lots of goodies from Abby's "Parts of Speech Centers."  We made anchor charts, read books, played games {the one shown below is from The Teacher Wife's "All About Nouns," watched a Brain Pop Jr., and as a culminating activity, made noun posters with sticky notes!  Below are some photos of our learning!

We also worked on proper nouns!  We've been reviewing them in Literacy Centers this week with my free "Common and Proper Noun" sort.  Click the cover to snag this!

We constantly spiral our review of proper nouns in my "November Daily Sentence Edits." *The entire year-long sentence editing bundle is on sale through the weekend!  It's a great deal!

Soon, we'll move onto plural nouns and will be using Lori's free "Plural Noun Posters!" Click the cover to snag these!

xo
Megan

P.S. Remember: If you purchase my featured product of the month in November, you'll be entered into a drawing for a $50.00 Target gift card!  This month's featured product is my Common Core: Reading Foundational Skills Pack.  It's LOADED with use-anytime activities!!!  Click here to see the post that explains more, or click the cover to be directly taken to TPT!

Daily Sentence Editing

Hello, friends!! How's your week? Did you have school yesterday?  We did not have kids but we had meetings and time to plan!  Hooray to my principal for giving us time!  I feel like all we ever need is time, right?!  I was able to get some things organized and cleaned up.  It's always hard to stay on top of everything, especially when trying to find a balance, which is what I've been trying to do lately.  Sometimes, I have to let stuff go and deal with it another time!

Tonight's post is all about sentence editing.  We are knee-deep in these!  We began in October, when we finished our handwriting books.  We do not have a formal handwriting program; we just use a free one from TpT.  We do a page a day and once finished, move on to our daily sentence editing.  The new Common Core State Standards call for a lot in the "language" department and sentence edits fit nicely into it.  First graders are expected to: capitalize dates and names of people, use end punctuation for sentences, use commas in dates and to separate single words in a series, and read and write common sight words.  When I created my sentence edits, I kept all of these areas in mind.  What I like about my sentence edits is that they are very much appropriate for first grade and second grade.  The students can typically read the sentences with a little guidance.  

We are working through my writing Unit 2: Writing for Others, which teaches a lot of the mechanics of writing {capitals, sight words, punctuation, spacing, etc..}, so my students are somewhat familiar with how to do these things.  I like doing the sentence edits in addition, because it's a constant review, which I've found that emergent readers and writers need!  Knowing when to use a capital letter is tricky, tricky!  

Here's how I use sentence edits in the classroom:  

Each day, I project the page onto our white board.  We read the sentence two times first; once echo and once choral.  Next, I ask for students to look for things that "just don't look write" or "may be missing." They love finding the mistakes!  I correct the mistakes.  Once we've found them all, I write the sentence correctly, with an emphasis on spacing, and draw a picture to match.  Finally, the children are given their own papers to copy the sentence correctly and draw a picture to match.  As they finish, they raise their hands and I come around to check.  I  sign my initials in the bottom box that says, "Checked  by a buddy?"  In another month or so, they will begin checking their papers with their peers.  

*Organizational Tip: I keep all sentence edits in a binder so I can quickly pull them to copy when I need them.  My binder is organized by month and you can check out my blog post about it here.  

I have created a sentence edit pack for September-June.  Each pack is available individually, or as a bundle to save.  The bundle is reduced even further starting today through Sunday!  I hope you'll take a moment to check it out!  

xo

Megan 

Language Resources

Hi everyone! I wanted to share my latest projects with you.  have completed a new series, "Common Core Daily Language Sentence Editing."  These sets are monthly, and contain enough practice pages to do one per day.  I pull mine up on my projector and we do ours together.  Then, I distribute the paper copies to students and their write their own and draw a picture to match.  Finally, they check their work with a friend.  They love doing this.  It only takes 10 minutes or so and is a GREAT practice!  I have noticed a huge improvement in capitals and punctuation in my first graders' writing.  Be sure to check them out!  They are all for sale individually and I have bundled them to save you $$ as well!  I like to keep mine organized in a binder, which is shown below:

Large binder tabbed by month

All packs copied and ready for the year!  Copying will be a breeze!

Sample page from the April pack

In the bundle pictured above, you get everything shown below:

xo
Megan