Ms. Berkes will be sharing her three newest books with first, second and third grade classes.  Her stories are engaging and the illustrations are always fabulous!  In her newest book, The Tree That Bear Climbed , she makes a dedication to our school's very own Media Specialist, Trish Purdham!

    

 I will be giving away a copy Animalogy on Sunday night.  I am hoping I will be able to have it autographed for the winner.  No promises though as we have to order books by tomorrow!


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With all the Boo! going around, I whipped up a ghostly game for the kids to practice reading the digraph th in context.  The game includes th at the beginning and end of the words.  There are some challenging words mixed in for those firsties  who are ready:)  If you get Boo!- your cards go back in the pile.  You know the drill!


Our spelling  this week also includes the digraph th.  This is such a hard week for firsties with spelling and reading this digraph.  We need lots of practice and ghostly games are always a hit! Did I mention all this needs to get done in 4 days because Friday is a workday?  YIKES!

                   

Now head on over and checkout Marie's now linky at the Hands-On Teacher in First!  She will be sharing new things every other Sunday.  Lots of fun to be had!

I love poetry notebooks and did them years ago and matched the poem to a super cute craft.  However, with the change in standards, it has been difficult to fit in into our schedule and justify the time spent on it... until now!

I have purchased The Fall Fluency Packet along with October Songs and Poems from Jodi Southard at Fun-in First.   On Monday mornings, I have taken the poem and the illustration page and reduced them to the fit side by side on a page.  The kids cut it in half and glue each half side by side in their comprehension notebook so they can read and illustrate the poem.

      
Then, we share the fluency pack page during reading groups going over the poem and the skills that follow.  This week's poem was finding the rhyming words, identifying a question and recalling details from the poem.  The kids then take the fluency page home to be practiced for three nights at home and returned on Thursdays as part of their homework.

The poetry notebook is part of the read to partner literacy center.  They can practice the weekly poem as well as any previous poem with their partner.  The kids love rereading their favorites and sharing their illustrations with their partner.

We have used the poetry notebooks for a month and I have finally made a cover for the notebooks.  The kids will be so excited on Monday:) You can grab the poetry notebook cover for FREE and then head over to Jodi's blog and TpT store to check out these fabulous packets that connect the poetry notebooks anf fluency to the common core stands and who can argue with that?

We {heart} class journals!  There is something enticing to a six year old about a little inspiration on the front of the journal! Super cute pictures to give them a jumping off point for their writing. My firsties also love checking out what their classmates have added to the journal prior to their entry.



I added the October covers to my TpT store earlier this week for a super bargain price of $1.00 and have been too exhausted to post!  I can't believe it is October already.  I feel like a hamster on a wheel that never stops!  Any Who!!  I would love you to check it out for your  writing center or a class book perhaps!  You can even download the August and September journal covers for FREE!  So grab them as we celebrate Columbus day this week:)



The kids are loving reading centers and I am glad they are up and running smoothly (or at least not so bumpy!)  I will be giving away two copies for the first 2 people who comment!  Don't forget to leave your email:)

Intervention groups started last Monday with first grade.  The kids love switching classes for 30 minutes.  My little bunch of firsties are adorable.  I am working with the decoding group with CVC words.  We are using  Short Vowel Fun by Made in First Grade as well as lots of short vowel games by Doodlebugs Teaching along with our decodable readers. 

Today I ran across a post on Tales from Outside the Classroom.  Tessa shared an activity she used call Teaching Tiles Early Learning Reading Readiness Center by from Educational Insights.

Boo!  Contractions can be a little spooky and scary to firsties, so I made a Ghostly Contraction game that helps practice not and is contractions.  You can download this FREEBIE over at my TpT store.  I would love for you to leave feedback and follow my store:)



I also linked up with Melanie from Graphics From the Pond for a Little Friendly Ghost Linky!  I actually read about it from Mona at First Grade Schoolhouse who has a fantastic telling time packet with these darling little ghosts that is also FREE!


To see more friendly ghost resources, head over to Graphics From the Pond!  You should check out the graphics in Mel's TpT store when you are done there:) 

Have you been on the lookout for complex texts to read to our firsties?  As I was thrown jumped into the common core standards, I have made a conscious effort to read more nonfiction complex texts.  Last week we read Frogs by Gail Gibbons.  She is such a great author who challenges the children to learn and me to be a better teacher.


We delved in new vocabulary, compared text and illustrations and wrote about what we learned.  The kids made flow maps showing the life cycle of a frog.  We read fiction and nonfiction books about frogs and compared them. We even made a cute craft with frog facts inside his mouth.  The frog was found on Pinterest by a fabulous new teacher to our team!  I love how new teachers always come with such super cute ideas!  Thanks Amy:)  Of course, I took a picture of the writing, but it only uploads sideways:(  WHY???



So now we are moving onto bats and spiders this week in our quest for nonfiction texts.  I have decided to do an author study on Gail Gibbons.  She has so many fabulous books for our October units: Bats, Spiders, Fire, Fire!, Halloween and Pumpkins all for the month of October!  They will be great additions to the month which is filled with so many engaging fictional stories.  Who knows, maybe we will learn a thing or two about Halloween:).