St. Patrick's Day and Tricky CVC/CVCe Words

*Disclaimer - I may be losing my mind.  I was all excited to make this great post about St. Patrick's Day stuff.  Then  I realized that I just did a St. Patrick's Day post just a few days ago.  How in the world did I forget?  So now I've gone back and edited the first post.  Taken out the duplicates and redid the post.  I'm obviously am thinking way too hard.  It's a miracle I manage to keep it together at school.

One of my 1st graders is starting to show a lot of progress with her decoding skills.  She's just now gotten to the point where she can pretty much read any CVC word without sounding it out.  Soooo exciting to see her progress!  Some of my other 1st graders and my Kindergarteners need more practice in decoding CVC words, so I made them this game.  Click on the picture to go to my TPT store where the game is $2.

My students have loved playing my Silent E in Space game, but we've kinda worn that one out.  Or at least, I'm tired of it!  So I made another similar game called the Magic E game.  It's made to help students read words like this that they find really tricky:

bit ~ bite

rid ~ ride

spin ~ spine

Click on this picture to check it out in my TPT store where you'll find this game for $2, also.

I'm also thrilled to learn that I'm going to be getting a Smartboard installed in my room here soon!!!!  Yeah!!!!!  I know my students are going to love it!  

Remember that tomorrow will be a big sale day on TPT!  

Graphics by: Scrappin Doodles and Digital Bake Shop

Leap Year Sale!!!

Since Leap Year only comes around once every 4 years, many TPT sellers are having a HUGE Leap Year sale on 2-29-12!

All of my products will be 20% off on Leap Year AND you can get an additional 10% off if you enter the code L2P9Y!!!  I don't know about you, but I'll be filling up my wish list with a bunch of stuff I've had my eye on.

In order to get ready for the sale, I'm working on some new games that I'll have uploaded between now and Tuesday.  I'm finishing up a game that focuses on the 'sh' and 'ch' digraphs and about to get started on a spring time sight word game.  Here's a link to my TPT store to check out what I have so far:

Check out Erica Bohrer's post by click on her button below to see a list of other great TPT sellers who are also having a sell!

I'm also linking up with Second Grade Shenanigans who's hosting an awesome Linky Party that has a whole bunch of TPT shops offering a Leap Year sale.  Tuesday's definitely day the buy all those things on your wish list.

Graphics by: Digital Bake Shop and KPM Doodles

Permission to Pin

Thanks to Laura Candler from Cork Board Connections for pointing out some important info regarding bloggers and pinning on Pinterest.

Please feel free to pin any of my photos or images!  I LOVE Pinterest and all the GREAT ideas I've found on there.  If you'd like to follow me or check out my boards on Pinterest, click {http://pinterest.com/angeliagg/}.  I've got 34 boards and over 1,800 pins right now!  So that could keep you busy for awhile!

St. Patrick's Day Activities (freebie) & Diphthongs

Well, St. Patty's Day and Diphthongs is an unusual combination, but that's what we'll be working on in the next few weeks.

My Kindergarten and 1st grade students continue to work on learning their sight words.  I just got a new 1st grade student who has really been struggling with committing sight words to his long term memory.  I've decided that I need to revamp how we practice sight words.  I'll be breaking out my Heidi Songs DVDs and my Snap Words Sight Word Cards this week along with continuing to play our sight word games.  I hope that this combination of all 3 will help him learn those sight words!

I've revamped a St. Patrick's Day game I made last year (before I even blogged) into this new and improved version.  Click on the picture to get yours from my TPT store.

While I was thinking about St. Patrick's Day, I thought my 3rd graders might be challenged by this Making Words activity, which also happens to be a FREEBIE for you!  Click on the picture to get your free copy from my TPT store.

My 3rd graders have started learning how to read and spell diphthongs.  I made these 2 games for them to practice reading these words.  Click on the pictures to be taken to my TPT store.

When Pigs Fly - An 'oi' & 'oy' Game

Clowning Around - An 'ow' & 'oy' Game

For those resource teachers out here in blog land, can you tell me what you use to as grades for your 1st grade students?  I'm now teaching reading and language arts to a group of 1st graders, and I am responsible for their grades.  I can't use the gen ed basal tests with them since their reading skills are so low.  I am doing SRA Reading Mastery with them, but there is nothing to pull grades from as an assessment.  I need something, but I just don't know what to use yet.  Any advice would be appreciated.

Graphics from: Scrappin Doodles, Digital Bake Shop, and Goodness and Fun.

Author's Purpose - I'm PIE'd Out!

Boy have we spent some time in my classroom talking about author's purpose!  We spent 2 weeks talking about author's purpose.  We watched a song I found on Teacher Tube.  We've read books and discussed the purpose.  I've used a ton of resources from Read Works and the October Author's Purpose lesson from Polk County Schools.  I made 4 anchor charts that I constantly referred to.  Here's some pics to show you:

For some reason, I can't get them to all go together in one row......right now I'm too tired to try and fix it! So please forgive me!  I was pretty happy with my handmade charts, but I decided to make some cuter ones!  Plus, some people may not want to go through the hassle of making their own charts.  If you'd like to check out my charts, click on the picture below.

We also did a lot of group work practice with author's purpose.  I made these cute practice pages for my students to work on in pairs.  I was really surprised with some of the great conversations my students had while they tried to decide what the author's purpose was and what information/characteristics backed up their decision.  Click on the picture if you would like to check these out more.  There are 9 passages in total with 3 each for persuade, inform, and entertain.

And we also did this author purpose sort that I'm giving to you guys as a freebie!

Now can you see why I'm about PIE'd out!  It's been a WHOLE lot of author's purpose in my classroom.  This has been a really tough skill for my students.  I hope that they do well come FCAT time on it!  How do you teach author's purpose in your class?

Graphics from: Scrappin Doodles, Digital Bake Shop, and Erin Bradley Designs

14 Days of Love!

I'm super excited to be teaming up with Ana from Ingles 360 for 14 Days of Love!  You'll want to make sure you stop by her blog every day from now till February 14th to grab all the amazing freebies that will be offered by some top-notch bloggers!

In honor of love and Valentine's Day, I made this super cute Shot in the Heart Kindergarten sight word game.  I don't know if my students (can you believe I only have 1 girl on my whole caseload?) will appreciate the cuteness of Valentine's Day and give me the appropriate ooohhh's and aaahhh's I'm looking for though.  Luckily, my 6-year-old daughter saved my ego as I was making the game by telling me how everything is "just sooooo cute."  

Click on the picture to get your very own FREE copy!  I'm sorry, but this item is no longer a freebie.  You can check it out on at my TpT store by clicking on the picture below.