Sight Word BUDDIES!

Happy Thursday everyone!! Today I'm here to show you one of my absolute favorite ways to practice sight words! 

In my classroom we try to make sight words a PRIORITY. It is part of our morning routine. Students even have a designated notebook just for sight words and they love it!

We practice several sight words every week. But our sight words notebook focuses on ONE sight word a week. You know... those difficult sight words that give us teachers some serious headaches ... (What is it with the word busy that my students seem to have a hard time with EVERY YEAR!!! haha) And yes... you've guessed correctly... the word BUSY was one of the first words we covered in our sight words notebook at the beginning of the year. 

Our sight words notebook includes activities like rainbow words, scrambled words, word searches etc... (more on that later). 

But then... I ran into a problem... Fridays... OH Fridays... how I love/hate you. 

In my school Fridays is the day to test, focus on data, fluency, progress monitoring reports etc... so I have to spend a lot of 101 quality time with my students,.. problem is... this is NOT to be done during my guided reading time... yikes! 

I started using my sight word buddies during this time.

                        Click here to check them out

 I had to model the first couple times and let me tell you, my students LOVE them! I simply pass the pieces for their sight word buddy of the week and they know exactly what to do! Plus, my teacher heart is happy because I know I'm giving them meaningful and not busy work! 

My kids love designing their sight word buddy when they are done... their creativity amazes me! They've added all sorts of crazy hair, hats, purses etc...! AND! they get to write about their sight word buddy when they are finished :) 

I just LOVE it when I see my students engaged in something that has been transformed into meaningful and fun! 

How do you teach sight words in your classroom?

                        

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When a Lesson Goes Wrong......Idioms

Today was our second day back. Its been wonderful but I'm EXHAUSTED!!!

This week I had a great terrible idea... Introduce idioms to my students............... AWFUL! 

Lets admit it... not all lessons go as we plan. And well... this was one of those. 

I had everything planned out and ready to go... We were going to read one of my favorites: Parts by Tedd Arnold. We were even going to read More Parts on Friday. 

Everything was ready, books, anchor chart, even the copies of this perfect Idioms worksheet from Ginger Snaps I found on Pinterest.

                                      (Find it HERE)

I started my lesson talking about some idioms that we use in Spanish (I teach a bilingual class). We sat on the carpet and I started reading. Let me tell you, there's nothing worse than expecting tons of giggles from students and getting nothing but... crickets! 

It was obvious... my students (most of them ELLs) were not understanding a single thing about Idioms. I was so disappointed and frustrated at the end of the day! I decided to take a step a back and forget about my Amelia Bedelia unit for next week. I can only imagine how that would go! haha 

Today was a brand new day and I gave it another try. This time we started simple with a pocket chart that I bought on amazon a couple of years ago... I completely forgot I had it!!! 

We will work with one of these every week. 

Hopefully we will be able to revisit Mr. Tedd Arnold's books and Amelia Bedelia next month. 

In the mean time... I will be talking about idioms all day every day!!

Go slower next time... lesson learned... 

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