Curriculum

A Bat Cave Classroom Transformation

September 29, 2019 by Jodi Leave a Comment

If you’ve been around here for awhile, you’ve probably come across my Bat Cave Day Classroom Transformation. It is one of my absolute favorite days in my classroom. My first graders get so excited and talk about it for the rest of the school year.

One of the questions that I am usually asked is, “What all do you do during your Bat Cave Day?” Well, I am a huge believer in making learning fun, but meaningful. Even though it is a fun day, I still want to jam-pack it with learning. This year, I wanted to add in even more reading, math, and writing based activities into our Bat Cave Day, so I created this Bat Cave Day activity packet.

During our Bat Cave Day, my students bring in flashlights from home, and we work in the dark all day. They love this extra bit of excitement. Throughout the day, they will be completing six bat-themed centers. (Batty Math, Spin & Add, Bat Writing, Batty Vowels, Roll to Color Short Vowels, and Fact or Fiction)

I really based these centers around skills that my first graders are currently working on or need to review. This allows us to continue our academic learning, even though we are adding some extra excitement to our day.

My students will be rotating in groups of 3-4 students to complete each of these centers. Afterwards, we will complete some of the other activities in this packet including ABC order, vocabulary practice, writing, and more.

For the actual classroom transformation, I keep it pretty simple. I purchase black tablecloths from Dollar Tree to place on our tables and in front of our classroom windows. I also have some plastic bats that I purchased years ago from Dollar Tree that I use every year. You can see everything that I use for my transformation in my Amazon store. I promise you that you really do not need to spend a lot of money. The ONLY thing I buy for this each year are the tablecloths, and honestly, if I just purchased cloth ones, I could actually reuse those every year as well.

If you’d like to check out the Bat Cave Day packet, click on the picture below.

Read more about our Bat Cave Classroom Transformation here.

Remember to pin the image below to save for future reference.

Sight Word Notebook

September 1, 2019 by Jodi 2 Comments

There is nothing more tricky than sight words for many kids. While some students pick them up quickly, others need tons of repetition and practice. I am constantly trying to add sight word work into my day to help those students that need the additional practice.

I love using this Sight Word Notebook with my class. My students really enjoy these activities, and the variety of skills gives them the repetitive practice that they need.

These Sight Word Notebooks are available with the 220 Dolch Sight Words or the first 300 Fry Sight Words.

The Dolch Sight Word Notebook includes 44 lessons (5 sight words per lesson) and the Fry packet includes 60 lessons (5 sight words per lesson.)

Each lesson includes the following activities:

Read, trace, and write the sight words.
Color the Sight Words
Roll and Write the Sight Words
Use the sight words in a sentence
(One of the 3 activities) Color-by-Code, Mystery Code, or Sight Word Search

I have also included a clickable Table of Contents that allows you to easily find a particular sight word that you may be looking for.

These are great to use in a whole group at the beginning of the year or as a small group or individual work as the school years progresses. You could also print and bind these for each of your students to work through, or put them into a “Sight Word Folder” to keep track of their progress.

My students’ favorite part of the Sight Word Notebook is the last activity on each page. Whether it’s the Color-by-Code, the Mystery Code Words, or the Word Search, they love completing this last part.

What are teachers saying about the Sight Word Notebook?

“As with ALL of your resources, this is top-notch! Sight words are SO important, and this helps to make them fun and interesting! Thank you!” -Christine B.

“I am so happy that the focus is on more than one sight word at a time. This is well done and does not look babyish for older learners still working on sight words.” -Carol B.

Check out these Sight Word Notebook by clicking on the links below.

Dolch Sight Word Notebook

Fry Sight Word Notebook

I hope this helps your students master their sight words this school year. Remember to follow @funinfirstblog on Instagram for more great ideas for your classroom. Feel free to pin this image for future reference.

Fluency Poems

March 24, 2019 by Jodi Leave a Comment

Reading fluency is the ability to read accurately and with expression. What better way to practice reading fluency than by using poetry? Poetry has a rhythm and melody that is perfect for practicing reading fluency. We all know the importance of rereading when it comes to practicing fluency, but rereading can be boring. Using cut apart poems is one of my favorite ways to have my students practice reading fluency.

I give each student a mixed up poem. They cut the strips apart and work to put the poem into the correct order. Guess what they have to be doing the entire time that they are working on putting the poem in order? They have to be rereading it and rereading it over and over again. They also reread it with a rhythm and expression that helps them to figure out the order of the poem. While they are putting these in the correct order, we can discuss rhyming words and how they will align in a poem. This activity also lends itself to discussing capitals and punctuation. The students can get clues about the order of the lines by looking at where the capitals and ending marks are on each strip.

Want to try using fluency poems in your classroom?

I created a packet of 20 fluency poems that can be used in whole group, small group, or in an independent work station. Each rhyming poem comes with a color and black/white version of the completed poem, mixed up poetry strips, and a matching sheet for gluing on the final poem.

I personally always begin using these in a whole group setting. After students get the hang of it, I like to copy the poems and put them in an independent work station. The strips can be laminated and reused if you want to save on paper usage.

Click on any of the pictures above to head over to my Teachers Pay Teachers store and check out these poems.

Writing Mini-Lessons for the Entire Year

September 14, 2018 by Jodi 6 Comments

When you hear writing instruction, do you want to pull your hair out, or do you get excited? Let me be honest. For way too many years, I wanted to pull my hair out. It wasn’t necessarily because I didn’t enjoy teaching writing. It was because I was overwhelmed with the task at hand, and I had no idea where to start. I knew that writing mini-lessons were the way to go because my students needed to spend the majority of their writing block actually writing. Not listening to me talk. Even though I knew that I needed to do writing mini-lessons, I still felt overwhelmed. Which skills should I focus on and when? Was I hitting everything that my 1st graders needed? Over the past couple of years, I have began piecing together a writing curriculum using mini-lessons for my students. It took me awhile to get it just right, but I am THRILLED with the results.

These writing mini-lessons are grouped into months and can be projected for your students as you go through a lesson each day. Simply open the file, and click onto the day’s lesson. Each lesson takes 5-10 minutes max. Then, the remainder of the time is spent on practicing their writing craft using what they have learned from that day’s lesson. Students will not become better writers by listening to a long writing lesson. They HAVE to be writing, so I wanted these to be short and sweet with a very clear focus.

Where do students write?

This file also includes monthly journals that can be printed for your students to use that follow along with each mini-lesson for the month. The lessons themselves all start with a “We can” statement. The journal pages contain an “I can” statement to show their writing focus for that lesson. This format also allows me to stay focused when I am analyzing their writing. I am definitely guilty of looking at a piece of writing and trying to fix it ALL. These “I can” statements allow me to focus ONLY on that particular writing lesson objective.

This includes 180 mini-lessons for your entire year of writing instruction. These truly have been a GAME CHANGER in my classroom. I no longer dread writing time. I look forward to it because I know exactly what I will be teaching and looking for in their writing for that day. Take a closer look in the video below.

If you need to make your life easier when it comes to writing instruction, click the picture below to learn more.

Editable Word Work Activities

August 29, 2018 by Jodi Leave a Comment

Word Work is such an important skill to practice in the primary classroom. Word Work, or word study, is often considered “spelling practice” in classrooms. While word study does involve learning to spell words, it is not your traditional spelling practice of simply memorizing words for a spelling test. Word Work involves learning the patterns and meanings behind our written language. Whether or not you do “spelling” in your classroom is up to you and your school district. My district uses spelling words and gives spelling tests. My goal is to make them the most useful for my students. Instead of focusing on memorizing the spelling words each week, and then forgetting them right away, I want my students to understand the patterns in our spelling words. Our spelling words are related to our phonics skill for the week, plus a couple of high frequency words. We practice these words during our independent Word Work stations, in our whole group instruction, and small group instruction. I created these Editable Word Work activities to use each week with my students.

These Word Work Activities allow you to use ANY words that you would like for your students to practice. Your students can practice spelling words, sight words, or word families. The possibilities are endless. Simply type in your list of words and 12 Word Work Activities are automatically generated for you to use in whole group, small groups, independent word work centers, or homework. See how it works in the video below.

What are the Editable Word Work activities that are included?

There are 12 Word Work activities that can be used with 10 words and 12 of the same activities that can be used with 5 words. This allows for easy differentiation for your students who are not ready to work with more than 5 words at a time. You will find the following activities:
•Rainbow Write
•ABC Order
•Spin & Write
•Writing Sentences
•Using Different Tools
•Roll & Color
•Pyramid Writing
•Wiggle Writing
•Roll & Write
•Roll & Read
•Tic Tac Toe
•Secret Code Words
•Flash Cards

“This is a brilliant idea!! Type the list once and instantly get 12 differentiated activities. I can’t wait to use this in my classroom. This has to be one of my all time favorite downloads.” -Darlene

This is truly a huge time saver in my classroom because I can use any list that I want to use for my students. It is easy to differentiate for my students to work on sight words, word families, or spelling words. I also included activities that can be used with 10 or 5 words, which allows me to cut my word list in half for struggling students.

You can learn more about these Editable Word Work activities by clicking on the picture below.

Book Tasting for Primary Students

April 15, 2018 by Jodi 4 Comments

I cannot say enough about how much I loved our Book Tasting Day! My students were so engaged and the discussions that they were having about different genres of books was absolutely amazing. I wish that I could have recorded their conversations. It was truly a melt my heart teacher moment.

How do I host a Book Tasting in my classroom?

I like to set the stage when I am doing an activity like this, but I also don’t want to spend a lot of money or a lot of time doing it. Let’s face it….life is busy! I purchased red checkered tablecloths, glass vases, fake flowers, and battery-powered candles from Dollar Tree. I also purchased a class set of chef hats off of Amazon.

The day before our Book Tasting, I pulled books in six different genres from my classroom library and our school library and put them into book baskets. I personally used the genres biography, nonfiction, fantasy, realistic fiction, fairy tale, and graphic novel, but you could use any book genres that you want for this activity.

On the day of our Book Tasting, we discussed genres. We talked about how there are different genres of movies, tv shows, and books. We reviewed some of the genres that we would be “tasting.” Then, I passed out the Book Tasting trifold. They filled out their reading information. Then, we were set for our tasting.

I told my students that they were required to visit three different genres of books. They could not pick more than one book from one genre. I knew that if I did not make this rule, many of my students would have stayed at graphic novels the entire time. As they browsed, they were to choose a book from the tub of their choice, look at the cover, and flip through a couple of pages. Then, they had to decide if this would be a book that they think they would enjoy reading.

Holy engagement! I could have watched them do this for hours. They were so into this activity. I absolutely loved hearing their conversations and reading their thoughts and feelings about the books. It was truly amazing! When they finished, they filled out the back of their form to rate and review the book tasting.

For the rest of the day, we completed more “restaurant themed” activities. They acted as waiters and waitresses and took each other’s orders off of menus, which they loved. We also completed many other writing, reading, and math activities.

This will DEFINITELY be an activity that I will do every single year from now on. The students loved it and it really increased their enthusiasm for books and reading, which is a win-win situation.

If you would like check out the printables that I used for our Book Tasting, click on the picture below.

If you use these and host your own Book Tasting, I would absolutely LOVE to see pictures of your day. You can email them to me or share them with my by tagging me on Facebook or Instagram @funinfirstblog.

Feel free to pin the picture below to save this idea to use anytime in your classroom.

A Bat Cave Classroom Transformation

Sight Word Notebook

Fluency Poems

Want to try using fluency poems in your classroom?

Writing Mini-Lessons for the Entire Year

Where do students write?

Editable Word Work Activities

What are the Editable Word Work activities that are included?

Book Tasting for Primary Students

How do I host a Book Tasting in my classroom?

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