When it comes to St. Patrick’s Day, Jamie O’Rourke is one of my favorite characters! Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato to focus on cause and effect.   CLICK BELOW TO GRAB YOUR FREE LESSON: I thought I would offer a free read aloud lesson for this St. Patrick’s Day favorite. Just click above to […]

This post is also featured on the TpT blog. What is higher order thinking?  When I am talking about my students and higher order thinking, I am talking about the ability to use critical thinking skills to transfer their knowledge in order to solve a problem.   Well that wasn’t the most simple way to […]

Having your first graders dive into writing poetry can be a tricky thing, but it is so much fun if you really give them plenty of freedom! During poetry month it is nice to take a break from our very structured writing units and let loose with a little poetry! I created a writing poetry […]

Looking at how characters change throughout a story. Comparing characters. Completing a character study. These are some of my favorite skills to teach in my first grade classroom! I wanted to share some of my go-to read aloud books for teaching these skills!   When I teach character changes I love using: Julius, The Baby […]

I am always on the hunt for new, fun phonics games! Teaching the same phonics patterns and skills over and over can be difficult for both my students and for me as the teacher to try and have students practice these skills without getting bored.    Before we play phonics games, there is always a direct […]

When I teach phonics in my classroom, it usually has 2 parts. I quickly introduce/review a phonics pattern with the whole group (for example, long vowels with silent e). I will model how to read words and apply the silent e. Then I will have students read aloud real and nonsense words with that phonics […]

I am so happy to share some brand new, silent e fluency passages I made… and they are FREE! These phonics “read & illustrate” passages are the perfect way to assess students understanding of what they are reading.   There are 2 activities for each of the following phonics skills: a_e i_e o_e u_e   […]