Reading Archives - Page 2 of 6

How to Make Alphabet Worksheets Fun

September 10, 2021 teachersbrain kindergarten survival, Reading

Teachers cringe in primary grades with they hear the word “worksheets”, but we all understand that they are important hands-on tools for developing readers and writers. They truly are the simplest and most straightforward way to give students lots of practice with the skills they need to learn.

Worksheets get a bad rap in my opinion!

If you have worksheets that require cutting, coloring, painting, folding, thinking, and creating, they serve as great learning tools for developing minds. It also gives students a variety of ways to practice their skills so they don’t get restless. They don’t have to be boring! There are so many ways to make them fun.

Center time is a great time to use worksheets.

This is because students can work together to create a group project or individually to learn beginning sounds, letter formation, and practice letter identification. These worksheets and crafts are great for that.

Here are some creative ways to use alphabet worksheets in your classroom

Add playdough to a worksheet to form letters for fine motor skills.
Add them into plastic sleeves and let students use dry erase markers to fill them out. This saves on paper and also gets students engaged because who doesn’t love using those markers?
Have a snowball fight with them afterward. Students will be more motivated to get their work completed and excited to do them! Just tell them when they are done with their worksheet, bring it to you to check, then if all is well, they can ball it up and make a snowball. When everyone is done, let the snowball fight begin!
Add a soccer goal or basketball hoop! This is a great way to get students up and moving. Once they complete their worksheet and have it checked off, they get to shoot a basket or kick their “ball” into the soccer goal.
Make crafts out of them! As mentioned above and in this post here, crafts are so great for little learners for so many reasons. If you are working on letters, have students create something with their letters. For example, turn the letter A into an alligator by coloring or painting, adding googly eyes, and a mouth.

I created these alphabet worksheets as a way to give students lots of practice with the letters of the alphabet without getting bored.

Each letter comes with a variety of activities and ways to practice. It is a complete A-Z bundle so it will be all you need for your reading or writing lessons!

What are your favorite ways to use worksheets in the classroom? Let me know in the comments!

The Importance of Alphabet Practice in Preschool

September 3, 2021 teachersbrain Reading, Teaching Tips

Preschool teaches so many foundational skills for young students that they will go on to use every day. Shapes, colors, and numbers are skills that must be learned before students can start learning the basics covered in later grades.

One of the most important concepts to learn, however, is the alphabet. It’s true that they will cover this in kindergarten as well, but preschool is a great time to get them familiar with the concept so they start elementary school with the skills they need to succeed in reading and writing.

The alphabet can be tricky for students at first.

Not only are there 26 letters to memorize, but you also have to learn the uppercase and lowercase versions of it! The shapes of letters don’t necessarily come naturally to young learners. If not practiced frequently, they could struggle with letter identification through kindergarten or even first grade.

Along with letter identification, it is also important to teach them what sounds each letter makes.

Ensuring that they know the sounds of each letter is an important precursor to learning to read. Students will begin working with sight words in kindergarten so making sure they have a basic understanding of letter identification and sounds will give them a headstart.

Alphabet tracing worksheets are a great way to practice with this age group. This can scaffold students’ writing skills and help with letter recognition and formation. Crafts are also a great way to do this because writing, tracing, coloring, cutting, and gluing help with their fine motor skills.

This Alphabet Practice A-Z Bundle is all you need to help your preschool students perfect these skills.

This alphabet packet includes crafts, worksheets, and activities for each letter of the alphabet. You can use these printables and crafts in centers, whole group, small group, or for homework.

These provide hands-on options as well as worksheets to help with busy mornings. Students will learn how to work independently after the first couple of letter sets are used because every unit follows the same pattern. You will get so much to choose from each week.

These activities will have your students confidently identifying and writing their letters as well as recognizing their sounds. They will be proud of the cool crafts they create for each letter and want to share them with others. It’s the perfect way to get them engaged!

For more creative ways to practice the alphabet, check out my post here.

What are your favorite ways to work on the alphabet with preschool students?

Sight Words Made FUN In Elementary

June 25, 2021 teachersbrain kindergarten survival, Reading, Teaching Tips

Learning to read is one of the biggest goals in the early grades. It sets the foundation for their entire education experience! To do this, we start with the basics, letter recognition, letter sounds, blending sounds, etc. Then we move on to a crucial step- sight words!

These words are words that students practice and become so familiar with that they recognize them instantly and don’t need to sound out. This helps them become more comfortable and fluent readers in less time.

But how do we teach students sight words in a way that they will remember?

We practice every day! The more students practice them, the better readers they will become. This can be done by practicing reading them in class, writing them out, creating sight word chants “T-H-E THE” to get stuck in their head, sending home sight word lists for students to go over as homework, and assigning books with sight words in them for students to read.

These are all great ways to practice them on a daily basis. However, if you are looking for something to really take it up a notch, I have you covered. Get students so engaged in learning their sight words that they won’t even realize they are learning because they are having so much fun with my Sight Word Escape Room!

This Mystery Sight Words Escape Room is perfect for kindergarten and first-grade students.

Use these step-by-step instructions to guarantee student engagement while they learn about sight words to solve a classroom mystery. With little prep, your students will work as a team to break into a box, which breaks them out of the classroom as they beat the clock!

Included in this resource you get one PDF file with step-by-step instructions, a link to incorporate a video to hook your students into the mystery, and 3 pre-made clues for your class to solve. The other file is an editable PowerPoint to make it easy for you to add your own team names to personalize the experience and allow the students to take ownership of the lesson. You can also change the mystery letters to create your own sight words, sentences, and riddles.

This escape room is guaranteed to be a hit with your students!

Looking for more fun ways to practice sight words? Check out my post here!

What are your favorite sight word activities? Let me know in the comments!

Fluency Practice Ideas That Are Actually Fun

April 9, 2021 teachersbrain Reading

In early education classrooms, fluency is a major part of the reading curriculum.

In order to comprehend text, students must be able to read with speed and accuracy. If they are unable to read fluently, they can become so focused on decoding or recalling words that they will lose the meaning of the text. When reading out loud, fluency also becomes an important part of conveying meaning to the listeners.

So- how can teachers provide effective instruction in fluency in their already cramped schedules? Read on for some of my favorite strategies!

One of the easiest ways to increase fluency is by re-reading passages.

As students become more familiar with a text, they can add speed and expression to their reading. This strategy is important to introduce in the early grades so students will become comfortable with re-reading as texts become longer and more difficult.

A similar tool for teaching fluency is to use small phrases that children can read, re-read, and add onto. Once they are able to recognize the short phrase as one unit, they can add more words to make complex sentences. Again, repeated reading of the same phrases will increase speed, accuracy, and confidence.

Another tool in my fluency arsenal is the use of homonyms.

Homonyms are words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. For example, a bat is an animal or a piece of sports equipment. Helping students recognize homonyms will not only improve their fluency but increase their comprehension. I like to use a “word web” with the target homonym in the middle. Then, as a class or independently, students can add words to the web that connect to the different meanings. Keeping the word webs for review later is a great way for students to increase their recognition of homonyms in later texts.

Perhaps the most fun way to increase fluency skills is with reader’s theater.

Children are able to read and re-read their parts before “performing” the script. They can improve their speed, accuracy, and especially expression in doing so. As they read along with a group, they can hear their peers reading with fluency as well. It’s a lot of fun to perform short scripts in front of the class, and provides an opportunity for students to become comfortable speaking in front of a group.

Are you ready to use all of the strategies in your kindergarten or first-grade class? Grab my Reading Fluency Activities today and your entire school year of fluency lessons will be ready!

This bundle includes sentence building worksheets, word webs, mini-books, and reader’s theater scripts for each week of the year. It also includes fluency assessments so you can track what your students are learning. Using these activities weekly will lead to fluent readers who are confident in their skills!

Looking for more reading strategies? Check out my post here!

What are your favorite activities for fluency practice? Let me know in the comments!

fluency