Teaching Tips Archives - Page 28 of 38

Sight Word Activities for Kids

December 29, 2019 teachersbrain Teacher's Pay Teachers, Teaching Tips

What are Sight Words

Sight words are words that appear frequently in reading and writing. Most of the words are learned by sight and cannot be easily sounded out. When students automatically know these words, they can focus on more difficult words that can be decoded. The more students see the words and use the words in activities, the more successful they will feel and be at reading. The words begin simple and get more difficult the older students get or as their knowledge advances. Provide students with both home and school activities to get the words to create automaticity. These engaging activities will help students recognize the words, improve reading skills and show students how much fun they can have while learning to read.

Shaving Cream

This one is easy, helps clean desks and the students LOVE it! Add some shaving cream to a table for students to spread around. Call out sight words or have students pull sight words out of a bag to have students write the words in the shaving cream. You can do this in small reading groups as well.

shaving cream.jpg

Pudding?

When parents ask what they can do at home, consider having them add pudding to a sheet pan. The parent calls the words out. The child will write the words in the pudding. If they get it correct, they get to lick their finger! YUM!

Fly Swatter

If you have a word wall that is low enough for students to reach, this is a great game for your students. Word walls are a MUST in elementary classrooms because there are so many great activities a teacher can do with words. Create two teams. Each team gets a fly swatter. Call the word out and the “swatters” have to go swat the word on the word wall. The team who swatted the correct word first, gets a point. Play to 10 or 20 points.

Sight Word Necklace

My students loved to have sight word necklaces. Basically they would have a ball chain necklace that could open easily. Once they knew a sight word, they would add the word to their necklace to share with their family at home that weekend. Students would use the necklace during writing activities too. Have them use the necklace to find their words in books during center time or small reading group time.

Paint It

Have students work pull sight words out of a box. They would write the word. Then, they would paint the word next to the word they wrote on paper. They could use watercolors. You can even use chalk instead of paint. Want to have students think a little deeper about patterns? Tell them they have to do every other letter a different color to create an AB pattern. Grab the FREE Sight Word Download Here.

STAMP IT

Find some letter stamps for students to work on spelling sight words using the stamps. This will help with fine motor as well as spelling. Provide some different color stamp pads for students to use during this activity to keep it interesting.

USE IT

This is a great way for students to build some comprehension while working with sight words. Students will first write the word. Next, they will have to use it in a sentence. This way you can check to see if they understand what they are reading or see if they make need to be taught the meaning of the words.

STOMP it!

Print out the sight words you want students to learn for the week. Scatter them on the floor. Another student calls out a word while their partner STOMPS on it. This is a great activities to do at home or in small groups. Need more activities? Click HERE

Hopefully these activities will give you some ideas when planning for future lessons using sight words. I can’t wait to hear about your favorite activities for teaching high frequency words in your classroom!

Christmas FREE Printables and Lessons for Kids

December 12, 2019 teachersbrain Free Teaching Resources, Teacher's Pay Teachers, Teaching Tips

The holidays are a really busy time for everyone, but ESPECIALLY teachers! This is why I teamed up with some great TpT authors to give you FREE TEACHING CHRISTMAS Resources at you fingertips! Click the photo of what you want to download from TpT! Don’t forget to let the author know how much you appreciate their hard work in your feedback or blog comments so we are encouraged to keep the freebies flowing! Have a great holiday season!

FREE Holiday Printables

$Winter Math Worksheets Free$

$FREE Christmas Multiplication Activities$

$Making Ten to Add Holiday FREEBIE Mega Math Practice CCSS 1.OA.6A$

Alphabet Practice in Literacy Centers

June 12, 2019 teachersbrain Teaching Tips

One of many fantastic topics to teach in kindergarten is the alphabet! Students are like sponges in the classroom ready to absorb anything you put a song to when it comes to letters. As a kindergarten teacher, I was always looking for the most engaging ways to energize my students, so they would quickly learn their letters.

Letter Recognition Worksheets Center Activities for Pre K - Kindergarten

Letter Identification Activities

Sometimes I couldn’t find what I needed, so I would design it myself. I wanted students to have a lot of practice with each letter. In centers, it is not enough for students to write a letter. I wanted to help create a hands-on experience. So, we would use play doh to form letters, trace them on each other’s backs, and use rice or pudding in a pan to form a letter with our fingers. The class’ favorite way to learn about letter identification was to solve mysteries. It could be escape rooms, puzzles, or problems to solve as a classroom to find missing letters from the word wall. Anything that seemed “secret” was a hit!

Escape Room Alphabet Zoo Animal Mystery Pre-K - 1st

Morning Work

Every morning my students would get a morning work tub with different activities. This would provide extra reinforcement with the letter for the week. They could choose a hands-on activity or their Morning Work Journal. Students played games, looked around the room for the hidden letters, and had to find all the letters for the week that were in a large pile mixed with other letters. They loved morning work!

The Next Step

Once students grasp letter identification, it’s time to work on the letter sounds. This is much more difficult than letter identification, but so rewarding!

Alphabet Practice Worksheets — https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Alphabet-Practice-Worksheets-4529912

Classroom Crisis – Teacher Shortage

May 19, 2019 teachersbrain Teaching Tips

Teachers are resigning from teaching in droves! I’m ONE of them. I loved teaching in the classroom. Being in the classroom for 20 years is one of my greatest life treasures. Now, like many teachers, I resigned and work full time out of the classroom, leaving my tenure behind. My field is still in education, but I’m out of the classroom.

WHY ARE THEY LEAVING?

While I can never talk on behalf of all teachers, I can share why I left the classroom. After meeting lots of other teachers who left the classroom, I found that we all had similar stories. The student behaviors are getting worse. You would think that would be the reason we left, but it is not. Helping troubled students was part of our vision. There’s an amount of pride in being able to help a student through their grief, anger, or loss. The reward it high. Some students we never think we reach, but years later, we receive letters of appreciation from them for our hard work.

So why? It is not about the behaviors, it’s about the lack of support from the administration and the district. There are many administrators who don’t have the best interest of the children in mind. Some have used a behavior situation to encourage a teacher to leave who they might not like, or they see that one teacher is talented with behavior problems and overload them with too many. The district doesn’t provide proper training for teachers to deal with severe problems. School counselors are busy doing lunch duty, testing or some other activity that has nothing to do with their job description. With many evaluations today, the teacher gets written up for not being able to handle behavior problems. How is writing a teacher up helping them learn how to handle a future behavior problem?

The lack of support is a helpless feeling for a teacher. Many teachers have had nervous breakdowns from being physically abused from the students and emotionally abused by their district who provide not support to the teacher. When you have to weigh teaching in a classroom with your own personal health, there is really only one option.

Drowning, Ocean, Emergency, Safety, Water, Sea, Drown

PREVENTION?

Yes, this can be prevented to where we can retain our most experienced and qualified teachers. Teachers need to gain the respect of being the professional in the classroom. They need to be taken seriously when they inform administration about behaviors. There should be a plan in place that EMPOWERS the teacher. The plan needs to provide the teacher with the knowledge of how to handle problems, insurance that they are not alone while dealing with severe behaviors, and real training prior to getting in the classroom that is on-going. Our students are in crisis! Our dedicated teachers are leaving! It’s time to fix the problem.

Calm Down Corner Strategies — Calming Down Strategies