Fun with Phonics // AR -- OR //

I think phonics may almost be my favorite part of our day.
I absolutely love teaching sound patterns to kids. You can get SO creative and make it super FUN!

The past 2 weeks we have been working on the sounds of AR and OR. 

{Most of these activities can be found here  and here from Smitten with First}

Of the sounds taught all year, these are my most favorite!

 Before I told my kids what our new sound was for the week, we read How I Became a Pirate.

It's such a hoot! Then I pulled up their (any my) favorite YouTube phonics song...Pirates say "ARR".

 

We wrote down as many words as we could think of that said "AR".

We made pirate hats with all of our AR words.

I set the timer for 3 minutes and challenged them to remember and write as many AR words from our chart as they could. After 3 minutes, they chose 1 AR word and used it in a sentence on the inside of the sentence strip. You better believe they wore them all day long! 

One morning, we went on a treasure hunt with our magnifying glasses for AR words.

The words are so small they have to use their magnifying glass to read it and record it!

Moving on to OR.

Again, we wrote down a list of all the OR words we could think of.

There were a lot more than we thought!

We made this fun little smORe afterwards.

They chose one word from the chart and used it in a sentence.

 Probably their favorite activity of all, spelling practice with OReo's!

You better believe I bought and extra bag for an extra snack : )

#teachingwithfood

Don't fORget to check the links above for FREEBIES from Michelle!

OUCH! Did you say freebie!?

I love when learning lends itself to cute little memory tricks like this one we learned last week.

In phonics, we learned about the sound 'OU' and called them our "ouch words".

I was astonished at all the words they came up with....on their own...on day 1!

We recorded our brainstorm on a band-aid anchor chart to anchor our learning.

I found a cute poem in Shel Silverstein's book of poems called Band-Aids.

Precious poem that talks about a boy who uses band-aids just because he likes them.

We wrote down why we use band-aids on our 'What Makes You Say OUCH!' paper.

**Download this for FREE {HERE}**

The following day, I had them choose 4 things from their paper that made them say ouch, and we turned them into an 'OUCH' poem...the the shape of a band-aid of course!

To top of our week of OU words, students will go on a word search with the books in their book box and find as many words as they can that follow the phonics pattern. 

This helps me to understand who grasped the phonics pattern and who doesn't.

Students who find words such as "should, could, would, trouble" obviously need a re-teach.
I'm hoping all the connections made to the real world really anchored their learning!

ARe you ready fOR phonics?

I just adore teaching phonics!

There is always a way to have a "play on words" when teaching the skills. 

Up this last week was OR and AR.

I found these super fun ideas from a blogger friend Michelle over at Smitten with First.

I introduced the OR sound with my easy-peasy "smORe" chart. 

That had our tummies rumbling, so why not spell words with OReos!

YUM!

While we didn't have a full fledged Pirate Day, we did practice our pirate voices quite a bit.

My kiddos loved this "Pirates say AR" video (click on picture for link). 

We may have listened to it every day!

We became acquainted with Captain SmARty also as he brought us many AR words on his treasure map.

Head over to Michelle's blog for mORe phonics ideas!

AR ideas

OR ideas

Meet my Friend Silent E

It's about that time...time to make the switch from short vowels to long vowels.

By now my firsties have a fabulous understanding of the short vowel sounds. 

One may think they would come from Kinder with a mastery of them, but that's just not true.

So we hammer it in for 6 months! 

So when the introduction of Silent E comes, here's how I roll it out!

We love to sing!

So a song it is!

I found this last year on Jodi's blog Fun in First Grade I absolutely loved it.

Check out even more ideas over on here blog HERE.

Next up we watch a little Brainpop Jr. because well who doesn't like Annie and Moby!?!?

Time to get up and moving. 

So we play a game that where we change the sound of the vowel from short to long.

With our a partner, we then go on a word hunt where they have to find 2 words that follow the pattern {A_E}. They record them on a sticky note.

Last, we come together and share our words as a class while recording them on our anchor chart for the word pattern.

This FREE practice page below goes along with the game I mentioned above.

Students add a Silent E to the word, change the sound, and use it in a sentence.

Perfect simple assessment!

November, Turkeys and FREEBIES, Oh My!

Oh how I LOVE this time of year.

Routines are in place, rotations are abounding, readers are blooming...

But most of all it leads to fun themed filled learning experiences. 

Let's talk Turkey!

Decorations:

My team and I turkey'fied' our hall this past week.

We each took a different color feather and had our kiddos trace their hands. 

We change out our picture each month and this month WE are in the Turkey's roasting pan! AH!

Math:

We've been putting our addition and subtraction knowledge together to make fact families. We created fact family turkeys. The numbers to make up the family are on the turkey's head and his tail feathers are actually the facts!

Here's a little extra practice we do with dominoes...

{Click on the picture to download the FREEBIE}

Phonics/Spelling:

To review blends I give each student 4 feathers and have them look through their books in their book boxes for words that have that  blend in them. They record the words on the feathers, I have them read me their words, they outline with marker and create a turkey with them!

{Find the FREE template here from Cara Carroll}

Writing:

Alliterations, or tongue twisters, are one of the most fun things to teach!

Kids love them and what they come up with is even better.

You really get to see how creative firsties can be!

To start this activity, we first brainstorm a list of "T" words.

 

Each students has to do the following:

1. Name their turkey with a "T" name

2. Give their turkey an action

Here is my example I share with the class:

Student work:

"Teddy the turkey threw the tiger at the teacher."

We obviously LOVE turkeys!

It's My Birthday and Five for Friday!

What better day to have a birthday than Friday of course!

And what better way to celebrate than with a little 5 for Friday.

My birthday is today and I'm throwing a 20% off my ENTIRE TpT store to celebrate.

So go get your shop on for the next 3 days to help me celebrate!

Time for a little flashback to last Friday for Halloween...my wonderful team and I participated in the character parade our school has annually. We were Cat and the Hat and the Things.

(I'm on the far left)

Then my teaching bestie and I decided to ditch the blue wigs and put on a much cuter and comfier second costume for the day...

We spend this past week reviewing digraphs. Each day we focused on a different digraph. We went on word hunts, recorded our words, and turned them into anchor charts!

In math this week we introduced positional words and used them to sequence events in the story Duck on a Bike. This cute lesson is from Lindsay Keegan.

We've spend quite a bit of time with non-fiction text and discovering schema. 

We talked about what we are "specialists" on and what we have LOTS of schema about.

They took their "specialty" and turned it into their first non-fiction writing piece and I have been BEYOND impressed!!!

Don't forget to stop by my TpT shop and to hop on over to Doodlebugs to link up!

Adding Suffixes to Silent 'E' Words

Honestly, I would really just like my firsties to take the skill of recognizing the pattern of silent 'e' and apply it when reading when they leave first grade. Low and behold, they are always expected to go far beyond what is reasonable.

 

We talked about "dropping the E and adding ING" to words that follow the silent 'e' pattern.

 

To help my students visualize this and in hopes of making it a little more clear to them we used popsicle sticks in one of our phonics lessons this week.

 

 

I called out a word.

Example: "Spell the word tape."

We changed the word by adding 'ing'.

Example: "Change the word tape to taping."

 

They were not allowed to erase the 'e' but simply covered it up with a popsicle stick to show  that all it really was doing was disappearing. The vowel sound wasn't going back to its short sound just because the 'e' went away.

 

They thought it was magic and LOVED playing with sticks!

Who knew phonics was so fun?

Teaching Adjacent Vowels

If you read my blog you know I'm a sucker for anchor charts and make one every chance I can get!

We started learning about adjacent vowels the last few weeks so I knew I had to make an anchor chart to go along with the great video we've watched (and begged to watch) almost everyday!

 

 

If you haven't showed this video to your students and you have or are going to teach adjacent vowels, this video is too cute and gives a great visual example of what happens when there are vowel pairs in a word.

{Picture will take you to YouTube video}

 

We read the story The Kite from Days with Frog and Toad because it has many words with vowel pairs in the text.

 

My kids always love to hunt for word patterns in books from their book box.

That's just what we did. They had to find at least 4 or more words with adjacent vowels.

They wrote them down on kite tails.

They then designed their own kite and added their words. 

 

 

We added the words that actually followed the vowel pair patterns to anchor charts which we hung in the hall beside our kites. It was high flying fun!