Illustration Predictions and Reading Comprehension Freebie

Looking to get your students to take more meaningful picture walks?

Predicting can be very telling of a student's inferring skills.  In this activity students will use this graphic organizer to choose a key illustration from the story to predict story elements including characters, setting, and events.  After reading students will go back to confirm or correct their predictions, reflecting their reading comprehension skills. 

This graphic organizer can be used to practice CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1.7 (Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.).

I first introduced this graphic organizer to my class on my document camera and did a picture walk using an online book.  You can find some great options on sites like MeeGenius, wegivebooks, and KOL Jr. Stories.  We did a picture walk first, discussed which illustration might be a good choice for predictions, and then predicted together.  We read the book and returned to the illustration we chose for prediction.  Finally, we checked our predictions to see how accurate we were and also discussed how we may have come to incorrect conclusions.  After this run through your students should be ready to use this reading response on their own!

I hope you find this freebie useful!

Get it here from TPT or here from Teachers Notebook!

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Pick Apart those Parts of Speech

Have you been teaching your kids the Parts of Speech?  So far my class has concentrated on nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives.  I've introduced them to conjunctions, but they're not responsible for identifying them at this time.  Some of my kids really got the hang of identifying them, and others . . . still need practice.

I've created this fun little center (which I will eventually turn into an early finishers activity) to help my kids pick apart their sentences and see how using various parts of speech help to make complete and interesting sentences.  

It's called Picky, Picky!  Parts of Speech.  I've written 50 sentences to go with the activity, so that's plenty to last your kids many, many rounds.  However, I've also included a blank page for you to add your own sentences that you may want to personalize with names of students and teachers in your class or school to engage the students even more.  If you've been working on a particular use of a part of speech, use these pages to tailor the sentences to the needs of your students!

All you need to do is make copies of the activity sheet and cut out the sentence strips and place them in some kind of container (maybe even a pickle jar).  Students will choose a sentence, glue it into the empty box, color code the words, and count up or inventory how many of each part of speech the sentence has!  Simple as that!  You could even have students write their own sentences in the box if you'd like!

There are 2 worksheet pages.  1 is geared towards grades 1-2 (nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and verbs).  The 2nd is geared towards grades 3-5 (adding adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions to the code and inventory).

Grab your copy from TPT or Teachers Notebook.  Enjoy!

Calendar Math Updated

A couple of months ago I posted a Calender Math Freebie. 

I've been using this as a center in Math every week with my students.  (It's great because the responses are different every day!)  We recently had our 100th day of school, and that's when I realized the glitch.  My calendar center has a section that focuses on counting up to the 100th day of school.  I've now added a 2nd page to the freebie that can be used after the 100th day of school.  It's free for download on Teachers Notebook or from my Google Drive account.  Enjoy!

Click here to get it from Teachers Notebook or Google Drive.

Free Online Books!

I totally have to thank my friend, Eve, for this find. We always compare apps that we've downloaded for our little girls on our iPads, so when she sent me the info for this one I had to immediately download!

The app is called MeeGenius, but its more than just for an iPad! It can be used on the iPad, iPhone, Android tablet, Google TV, or any computer with Internet access! As a regular member you get a handful of books for free that give you the "Read it to Me" or "Read it to myself" option but as an educator, young get something like 70 free titles! There are some really great classics like fairy tales and other fun stories on there all with narration and great illustrations. I'm not sure what your populations like at school, but I am always shocked when I talk with my class about text-to-text connection regarding classic fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Usually 50-80% of my class responds that they've never heard the stories before! That makes MeeGenius a great, at-hand resource for me to help them build that background knowledge. I quickly pull it up on my projector and we read the story!

Another way you could use MeeGenius is if you have a classroom computer of tablet for your kids to use. If I had one of these available during centers, I would have it as a listening/reading center. If choosing the "read to me" option, the words are highlighted as they are read. It's also great for ESL students and students who might need remediation. So many possibilities here!

Here's how to get your free account-
Go to www.meegenius.com
If you come to the welcome screen with the iPad on a desktop picture, look in the top right corner. It says "Check out our school accounts" right above then"Start Reading" button. Click the school account link and sign up using your school email and info. Once approved, you'll get an email confirming and you're set!

(If for some reason you don't get this welcome page, scroll all the way to the bottom of any of the other pages on the website and you should see the option on the bottom menu that says "Work with us"…"Schools and Libraries". Click that and it will take you to the signup page.

Hope you enjoy it, my kids and my daughter love it!

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I know, I know.  It's been quiet on my page for quite a while.  Big changes happening on this end that have kept me pretty occupied, but I had to push through and break the silence to give you a chance to win!

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Enter daily from now until January 31 at Teachers Notebook for your chance to win your choice of iPad mini, Amazon Kindle Fire HD, or Nook HD!

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Silence for Sandy Hooks Elementary