Small Groups Reading Instruction (AKA Guided Reading)

So you've got your guided reading books and you read the book with your group. Now WHAT?  Do you need some games and activities to target certain reading skills? I've got you covered for grades K-3.  Each pack comes with over 50 games, activities, graphic organizers, and teaching tools. There are games and activities for comprehension, vocabulary, fluency and phonics.

Kinder and 1st Grade

Here are a few items included (remember there are OVER 50). 

2nd Grade

I am a first grade teacher, but I use everything in the 2nd grade pack as well because I had some really high readers this year! Some of the items overlap with K/1, so please be aware of that. 

3rd Grade

I had one of my favorite teacher-friends Brittany help me create a pack that is perfect for 3rd graders. I use this pack with my highest readers and it's helped me teach skills to them that I would not have even thought to teach (#firstgradeteacherforlife). The games that help reinforce the skills are fun, effective and the students love them! 

Using Fancy Nancy to Teach Fancy Words

In the Language Standard of the Common Core (specifically the vocabulary and acquisition use), our students should be expanding their vocabulary!

  My students this year just love Fancy Nancy and so I thought why not incorporate synonyms into it!  They've been using their fancy words SO much lately. I'm almost sick of hearing the words humungous, spectacular, fantastic, and superb.  :)  Almost.

Of course, we start off reading Fancy Nancy to introduce Fancy Words (and we continue reading different Fancy Nancy books all week).  I even have some princes in there to get the boys engaged. Here are some fun things we did all week to work on our vocabulary acquisition (that's a fancy word for learning big words).

 We read Fancy Nancy and my students help me make an anchor chart with synonyms:

After the book, we did a little craftivity.  We took the words that we learned and made wands with them (of course I called them wizard wands for the boys and princess wands for the boys).  They wrote their favorite fancy word on the star and drew a picture of the meaning of the word.

This is our Fancy Word Wall (also included in the packet).  My students came up with *most* of those fancy words up there!

To make sure my students are applying what they've learned, I challenge them to use fancy words in their journals. And when they come up to conference with me after journal, if I see any fancy words used correctly, they get to circle them with MY "magic marker". SO precious!!!

Check out my Fancy Word Activities pack {here}!

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3rd Grade Guided Reading Mini-Lessons

Does guided reading in 3rd grade seem daunting or maybe even boring? Or maybe you catch yourself doing the same thing every day? Are you ready for a switch? The 3rd grade team at my school is LEGIT and I idolize them (second only to my team, of course). SO... I teamed up with one of my favorite 3rd grade teacher-friends Brittany and we made this 236 page pack JUST FOR OUR 3RD GRADE FRIENDS! She's going to use it lots in her classroom and I know you will too. I actually had some super high 1st grade readers who could have benefitted from this last year.

This pack is full of ideas to help you plan for your guided reading mini-lessons for 3rd grade. These lessons are perfect for your small group, but many can be used in whole group!  This goes great with the Common Core State Standards and goes with ANY book (informational and narrative).  Included in this pack:

*Comprehension*
Narrative Spinner
Informational Spinner
Narrative Story Board
Informational Story Board
Comprehension Question Rings
Questioning Necklaces
First, Then, Next, Last
Making Connections Posters
Informational Text Feature Posters
Comprehension Questions {Graphic Organizer}
KWL  {Graphic Organizer}
Venn Diagram {Graphic Organizer}
Question Words {Graphic Organizer}
Sequencing Events{Graphic Organizer}
A Story Takes Flight {Graphic Organizer}
Author's Point of View {Graphic Organizer}
Cause and Effect {Graphic Organizer}
Moral of the Story {Graphic Organizer}
Book Club
-Job Card
-Book Club Bookmark
-Book Club Booklet
Making Inferences Task Cards

*Word Work/Phonics*
Consonant Blend Chart {for remediation}
Spelling Pattern Chart {for remediation}
Spelling Pattern Posters {for remediation}
Vowel Chart {for remediation}
Consonant Digraph Chart {for remediation}
Vowel team Fill-In {for remediation}
Decoding Word Questions
Decoding Word Bookmarks
Word Parts Posters (prefix, suffix, root)
-re, un, dis, pre, mis, er, est, ful, less, able
Word Part Riddle Board Game
Word Stairs Game
Multi-syllable Freeze
Monster Munch Game

*Fluency*
EARS Posters (expression, accuracy, rate, smoothness)
Fluency Rubric
Fluency Self Rubric
Silly Voices Cards
Sight Word Zap
Word-O
Fry Phrases {Remediation} (8 lists)

*Vocabulary*
New Word {Graphic Organizer}
Super Word {Graphic Organizer}
Word Wizard Poster
Word Wizard Book
New Word Fold and Cut

Teach Kinder or 1st Grade? 

{Get your mini-lessons pack here}

Teach 2nd Grade?
{Get your mini-lessons pack here}

Predicting Introduction Kinder and 1st

As we work on more comprehension strategies in my classroom, I've noticed that many of my students don't know what the word "prediction" means!  So, I hurried and created a mini-lesson to help!

First, you introduce what predicting means {guessing is what I compare it to} and use these cards to hang on the board:

Then, you tell them that when they predict what is going to happen in a story, they can say one of the following:

We then read the book, Do you Want to Be My Friend? By Eric Carle.

This is a perfect book to predict! The mouse is looking for a friend. On each page it gives a hint as to what animal he will ask to be his friend {it shows their tail}.  I have my kiddos raise their hand if they can predict what animal it might be. They will say:

I predict...
or
I bet...
or
I think...


After that, we practice our predicting skills!  I use these animal posters and cover up most of the picture and have them predict what animal it is. {so when you download this mini-lesson, you'll have to cut out your pictures and find a piece of paper to cover up most of the picture}

They record each animal on their recording sheet. Afterward, we go through to see if their predictions were correct.

Click {HERE} to download the predicting mini-lesson!

Clipart/Fonts copyright Dianne J. Hook djinkers.com

A Pair of Pears

I just had to share how cute these came out! We have been learning about homophones and so I introduced the topic with the book Dear, Deer and then used Sarah Cooley's Pair of Pears Pack! ADORABLE!

{Purchase Here}

And my favorite of ALL time!  

All of our Instagram Followers {@whattheteacherwants} saw this last week:

PLEASE check out Sarah's Pack:

Poetry Pack {mini-giveaway!}

I am so excited about the new POETRY PACK I just created! 

I have a little secret, I have hated teaching poetry in the past. I personally love writing poetry, but it just seemed so hard to teach. 

Which poems do I teach about? 

How in-depth do I go? 

What resources do I use? 

What do I expect students to produce at the end? 

It just seemed so confusing.

Well, as you know, I will be going on maternity leave sometime in the next couple of weeks. I usually teach poetry in May, but I didn't know how/what to write for sub plans. Like I mentioned, I never had any good resources. I knew that in order to write my sub plans, I would have to come up with something great...

And this, my friends, is my finished product:

This Poetry Pack includes 11 poetry posters. Each poster includes a description of the poem and an poem to use as an example. (All poems are original - written by me.)

This pack also includes a half-sized blank book of poems for your students to create their own published book of poetry. 

This unit should last about 3 weeks. Teach one poem each day and have students work on their own original rough draft of the poem (11 days total). Save some days at the end so that all students can create their own published book of poems. 

I recommend copying the blank book of poems on cardstock and binding it down the side. Your students' finished products will look something I like this: 

Just for fun, here's a little mini-giveaway:

Write a short poem about how much you love What the Teacher Wants and post it as a comment on this post. 

I will use random.org to pick 3 winners. 

Giveaway ends Sunday at 7 pm MTS. 

Winners will be announce on our facebook page.

(Make sure you "like" us!)


Sorry, giveaway is closed.

Scramble!

I got an iPhone a couple weeks ago and I am obsessed with two little fun games: Words with Friends and Scramble with Friends. Both games are so much fun to play! I like the strategy involved, I like trying to beat my best score, I like having something that challenges my brain a little.

This got me thinking about how I could use some of these games inside my classroom. Afterall, they involve skills in spelling, vocabulary, phonics, etc... I knew my students could benefit from these fun making-words type activities.

Here's what I have come up with so far. A game I call, Scramble with Students. It is similar to Boggle or Scramble with Friends, but it is adapted so your students can play. It makes a fun game to play as a whole class, in small groups, or with partners. It would even make a great self-start or fast-finsher activity for students to do on their own.

Here's a free copy of the game board, if you'd like to try it out with your students:

I did this one with my students today and they L-O-V-E-D it! I set the timer for 5 minutes and when it beeped, students had a range of anywhere from 7-21 words on their lists. After we started looking at it as a class, we made a list of all the words we found together and we ended up with 77 {seventy-seven} words!!  They are so excited to try again tomorrow (with a different list, of course) and see how many words they can find!

For the full version that includes 26 different game boards (plus one blank card so you can make your own) click: HERE.

This unit was recently updated!  Here's a peek at the new look!