It's time to share what we have been up to this past week and our plans for this upcoming week! Last week was all about dogs and author's purpose.  We made these sweet little dogs to go with our anchor text. I'll let the rest of the pictures do the talking. ;)   The posters and printables below came from this pack . We went through our author's purpose checklist to determine why the author wrote the anchor text. We started learning about sneaky e in spelling last week.  We made these sneaky e puppets to get the kids excited about long vowels.  They loved quizzing their sneaky e puppets at the end of the week on the words before the spelling test.  The original sneaky e can be found here . We are loving these Interactive Journals in math by the fabulous Reagan Tunstall ! Here are our centers from this past week, which are also the same for this upcoming week.  I use the same centers for two weeks so I d...
Just dropping in with a quick little classroom management tip and freebies.  When students come back to school from summer vacation, it seems staying on task can be a bit of an issue.  This year, I decided to have a reward planned for each day.   My classroom has an owl theme, so that's what I went with.  I went to the Dollar Tree and got some prizes I thought they would like, along with a basket and some paper filler.  All day, I remind them about the on task owl basket.  Whoever has done a great job staying on task at the end of the day gets the basket.  And they want that basket so bad!  I try to put about three prizes in the basket.  So far, it has really worked.  But as you know, you have to change the reward pretty often.   You can download the owl printable for FREE above for your very own basket. {graphics by  Teaching Special Thinkers } I will also be using the crazy straw labels again this year.  I have updated them, so be sure to do...
Just a quick little post for you first grade peeps!  I have been asked by many to create supplemental units to go along with the First Grade Journeys Reading Series.  The first four units have been posted on TPT.  Each unit contains comprehension, vocabulary, spelling, and grammar components along with weekly learning centers.  The first grade teachers at my school are using them, so I will try to get some pics of the units in action to post for you first grade teachers. You can click on the previews below for the link to each unit!  And they're 20% off right now! Thank you to all of my readers and TPT supporters!  These four units will be 20% off for the next three days! ...