It's the most wonderful time....

The holiday season is upon us! The weather is getting cooler, lights are up, carols are being sung, there is no better time in my opinion. This week in our reading groups we had a great time with holiday sentence starters. My students chose 2 pictures from our holiday picture stack. My kinder and 1st grade students told partners sentences or a short story using those two cards. My 2nd and 3rd graders did a great job writing short stories using 3 of the pictures they chose. It was a blast and the kids were giggling the whole time! The story starters can be found at my TpT store below.

Story Starters

I have also included a quick little gingerbread ABC game. Students follow the letters from a to z to get the gingerbread man home.

Alphabet Game

I hope you enjoy the products!

Let me know: Let me know how these worked in your class or other fun games your students really enjoyed this holiday season!!

Happy Teaching!!

Websites

I hope everyone had a nice and relaxing Thanksgiving holiday! I know these past couple days I have felt so thankful for my family, my job, my students, and the opportunity I have to connect with fellow educators through my blog!

Now having said that I just wanted to do a quick share. I have parents ask me all the time about what websites are out their that are educational and fun. With our break quickly approching I know many parents are looking for ways to incorporate learning into their time off. Below is a simple selection of websites that I found that are fun and educational. The only paid subscription is to ABC Mouse. I included that because my son just loves the site and it really doesn't cost much.

If there are any fun sites that you know of please share! I would love to add it to my growing list. : )

Happy Teaching!!

 

                                                           Download this page HERE

The Great Turkey Race FREEBIE

As we get closer to the Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to share a Thanksgiving story with everyone. I read this book to my kiddos and they loved it! It is called "The Great Turkey Race" by Steve Metzger. It is about 3 turkeys who overheard the farmer talking about which "special" turkey would be chosen for Thanksgiving. Thinking that the "special" turkey was really something special they decided to hold Turkey Games to decide who would be the special turkey. Soon they realize just what special means and the 3 turkeys hop the fence on their last event and run away leaving the farmer to eat vegetable soup for Thanksgiving. It is a really cute story and I made a quick MISSING poster to complete with this book. Students are asked to describe the turkey, where they think it went, what they are doing there, and how they plan on getting the turkey back. If you complete this activity with your class let me know how it goes! I would love to see the finished product. 

Happy Reading!! 

The Great Turkey Race FREEBIE

The Reading Trail

As a Reading Specialist it is my job to put on Parent Nights for the parents at our school. This month I put on "Parent Involvement Night". This is a night for parents to come and learn how to best support their emerging readers. What I like to do is work on a "make and take" while the parents are with me. This year I have really been into the whole camping theme (I think it is because I have been dying to go camping). So I created The Reading Trail. It is a simple board game that is easily differentiated depending on the needs of the student. The parents are responsible for writing out their cards based on what their child needs to work on. It may be letters, letter sounds, sight words, or sight word phrases. Whatever it may be the parent will fill out the cards and they are ready to play. Roll the dice, land on a space, read your card, and off you go! Easy peasy. :)

This would also be a fun center game for students to practice their reading skills. It could even be differentiated by student. The sky is the limit!

I hope you enjoy this FREEBIE and be sure to let me know how you like it and how you used it.

Happy Teaching!!

The Reading Trail

Books Before Bed - My first book talk entry

Bedtime with my little ones is one of my favorite times of the day. We get a chance to settle down from our day, chat about what took place, and best of all we get to enjoy a story. I have been reading to my children as soon as I knew I was pregnant. We rarely miss an opportunity to read a book. I would like to use these posts to post about books that interest me, my children, teachers, and of course our students. I will also be including activities to go with each book. So look out for these posts and the FREEBIES that go with them! 

Our first book before bed is "Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up the Wash" written by Sarah Weeks and illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott. My son gets a huge kick out of the silly thinks she hangs on her clothes line. This is a great story for encouraging retell. It is a simple rhyming story that is silly enough to capture children's attention. 

I have included a retell activity to accompany this book. The large pictures are intended for a whole group activity. You can cut these out and have your students pin them to a real clothes line and then have them cut and paste the items on their own sheet which is also included. 

I hope you enjoy this story as much as we did!! 

Mrs. McNosh FREEBIE!!

Happy Teaching!

Thinkmarks

As an educator I do a lot of blog hopping to see some of the wonderful things that educators are doing. I had recently come across "Thinkmarks". Genius. I introduced thinkmarks to my third grade kiddos with wonderful results. When I introduced thinkmarks I introduced a couple at a time. Once we had read, my students go back through the text and put in three thinkmarks. I was shocked at the meaningful conversation that came from them! Not only did we have great discussion, they recalled so much more of the text! I love coming across wonderful resources like this one. Here is the anchor chart I use. Try it out and comment on how it went!

 

Happy Teaching!!

 

 

Reading Response Activity Part 1

I was recently speaking to a colleague about reading response activities with partners. She explained to me that her students are quick to answer the questions but she wanted them to actually talk with each other about what they had read. After thinking about it for a couple days I decided that task cards were the way to go. After sitting down and racking my brain of all the possible questions that could be asked, I came up with the Reading Response cards. These cards can be printed out for your students to use and the partner portion can be done one of two ways; You can either print off an entire set of partner questions or you can copy the quick version to the back of your fiction or non-fiction cards. This way your students have a quick reference when working with their partner. I plan to introduce these to my kiddos this week. I want to make sure that I model exactly what I want to see in their partner groups and go over each of the questions to ensure they are comfortable with the questions. So stay tuned and I will update on how it went!!

Response Cards

YOUR TURN! 
Let me know how you work with task/response cards in your classroom. Also, if you download my product, be sure to let me know how you are using it in your classroom!

Happy Teaching!! 

Book Pig

Hi Everyone!
I wanted to write a quick post about Book Pig. I often have parents that do not have access to the library in our community (its pretty far from our school) or minimal resources at home. One program that I have come across is Book Pig. It's genius. It is basically Netflix for books. Head to the site, sign up for either 1-2 shipments a month, how many books you want in each shipment, and the types of books you want and voila, books to your door. Once the books are returned you get a new shipment. It is a great resource to pass along to parents looking for some extra books for those avid readers.
Happy Reading!!

                                                                        Book Pig

Class Dojo

Classroom management can be tricky. There are hundreds of different ways to provide rewards and consequences for your class. One way that I recently came across was Class Dojo. Once I heard about it I quickly joined the site and downloaded the app on my phone. Having 90+ students on a daily basis proves to be a little more difficult managing behavior. This app literally changed that for me. I set up my groups and was able to track positive and negative behaviors. It is so simple yet so effective! I know some of my fellow classroom teachers have really enjoyed the positive response they have gotten from Class Dojo, from parents especially. Each parent can log in and see their childs positive and negative behaviors right on the screen. I have linked a Class Dojo FREEBIE below. It is a basic run down and a few forms I created to make Class Dojo as effective as possible.

Class Dojo

Happy Teaching!!

Community Readers Day

Working at a school you want as much involvement from the community as possible. Getting support from parents and community members is wonderful not only for the faculty and staff but for the students as well! It is also a great opportunity to show the community the amazing things we do for our students!

To get the community into our schools I decided we should try a Community Readers Day. This would be a day that members from the community could come and read to any of our classes. They are encouraged to bring their own story, dress up, or bring props.

We contacted local businesses, the sheriff's department, our fire department in the area, local churches, and family members.

I am happy to report our Community Readers Day was a hit!! We had over 25 volunteers who visited 4 classes each. Our readers were animated, brought props, and genuinely loved being in our classes. The teachers reported that all the students wanted to do after they heard stories was READ! The volunteers, teachers, and students were all smiling by the end of our day and asked when we would hold the next Community Readers Day!

If you want to hold your own Community Readers Day I have a few tips. Before the Readers Day we created goody bags for each of them. In each bag we had a pencil, bookmark, little candy, water bottle and raffle tickets. The raffle tickets were for the readers to hand out to attentive listeners and we would chose our winners at the end of the day. We also made the readers a schedule that went with their bags so they would have the teacher name, grade level, and room number.

Before the readers arrived we chose about 5 books based on the grade levels they would be visiting and had them ready for the big day. We also gathered some prizes (2 per grade level) for our raffle winners.

As the readers arrived we gave them their bags, schedule, and books. The day went so smoothly and I can't wait to do it again!!

Happy Teaching!!

Our Community Readers Day poster made by our 6th grade art students

One of our readers brought props for our kiddos to wear

Reader Shel Silverstein

Literacy Centers

Literacy centers can be overwhelming. I know many new teachers that have struggled with centers, I was one of them when I first started! When I was recently asked how to run literacy centers I started to explain and realized how much really goes into management, accountability, and small groups. I created a very basic guide with some helpful forms included. Since I am just beginning my blogging journey, I have this product available for FREE. So check it out and let me know what you think!! ;)

A Guide to Literacy Centers

Happy Teaching!!

Let's Get the Party Started!

Hello!

My name is Candace Campbell and I am currently a reading specialist at a Title I school. I have taught multiple grade levels and love my current position dearly. I am starting this blog in hopes of helping educators. As an educator myself, I am often overwhelmed with how much there is to do, learn, and grow!  To this day I continue to learn something new or come across another educator who blows me away with their creativity and vision. I am hoping to provide some tips, share ideas, and pass on wonderful teaching materials that I have come across in my efforts to be the best educator I can be. I hope you will visit often for updates!!

Happy Teaching!!