Bright Ideas for Teaching Blends {Including FREE Resources}

Over the years, I've learned that teaching students to read is a "squishy" process. There are so many skills students have to grasp in order to read fluently with a high level of comprehension.  One set of skills that benefits most students is having phonemic awareness and a knowledge of phonics.
Knowing letters, their sounds, and how they work together can give students the tools they need to attack many unknown words.  I like teaching phonics.  It is usually pretty easy to tell if a student has it or not.  Phonics is a little less squishy than some other aspects of teaching reading.

I incorporate a variety of activities into our weekly work to practice phonics.  For early readers, I think it is very important to continuously work with and review phonics skills.  One simple way I  accomplish this goal is by using picture/letter cards (or posters) with my class.

In my district, we use Wilson Fundations as our primary language program.  It sets the sequence and scope for the phonics that I teach in class.  Foundations includes a frequent review of letters and their sounds through the Letter-Keyword-Sound activity.
I created this set of cards (and posters) so that my students could review initial and final blends through hearing and saying the letters, the keyword, and sound for each set of blends.
I usually use these cards during our group time on the carpet.  Below is an example of how to use the card for Letter-Keyword-Sound practice.

While I'm teaching the blends, I will go over these cards daily.  After we've moved on from blends, I'll pull these out once or twice a week as a quick and easy review.  

If you do not want to fool with the cards, you can use the posters for your Letter-Keyword-Sound work.

Of course, you can use these cards and posters for display or anyway you would like.
For your FREE set of blends cards and posters, click here or on any of the pictures above.

Other ways my students work with blends include...

PICTURE SORTS

WORD SORTS

RHYMING WORD MATCHING

COMPLETE THE WORD & ILLUSTRATE 

These type of exercises are a great way for students to work independently with blends.
If you are interested in any of these print-and-go resources, they are part of my Words at Work packets, available at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  Click here for more details.

     

In addition to the card review and the printable practice, I also incorporate blend work into literacy centers.  I love math and literacy centers for spiral review throughout the year.  Literacy centers give students yet another opportunity to explicitly work with initial and final blends.  

Pictured below are two FREE literacy centers that focus on initial blends.  Click on either picture for a FREE copy of that center.

LITERACY CENTER FREEBIE (LEAFY DAY BLENDS)

      LITERACY CENTER FREEBIE (HOT CHOCOLATE BLENDS)

Students generally catch onto initial and final blends fairly easy.  Giving them ongoing practice with these skills helps ensure that your young learners will not forget these letter sounds and how to use them when decoding words.
I hope some of these ideas will be useful to you in your classroom.
Thanks so much for stopping by.

You Better Shape Up: Activities for 2D and 3D Shapes (Including a FREE Set of Anchor Charts)

Shapes are everywhere and we have just about worn them out.  

Over the past couple of years I've noticed a gaping whole in my 2D and 3D shape resources.  I've needed some hands-on centers for our work with shapes.  For whatever reason, I didn't have time to put anything together, until a few months ago.  

I started working on 2D and 3D shapes centers for my young learners.  I wanted to be prepared when our geometry unit rolled around again.

Here's a peek at some of the centers we enjoyed this year...

One of the centers my students completed was a real world/shape match up.  As you can see, student matched real world photos with 2D shapes.  They wrote their findings on a recording sheet.  They also had to find their own examples of shapes in the real world to illustrate and label.

Students worked on naming the 2D shapes and matching up their properties.  Most of the 2D shapes were super simple for my firsties.  However, they certainly needed extra practice with trapezoid, rhombuses, pentagons, hexagons, and octagons.

After a recent pattern activity, I knew some of my young learners needed additional opportunities to work with patterns.  I put together two pattern centers (one with 2D shapes and one with 3D shapes). The pattern centers served as a great review for many of my students and an opportunity for some remediation for others.

Of course we needed some anchor charts to reference.  I love 2 Super Teachers colorful shape friends clip art.  These clips were perfect for creating a simple anchor chart display.

I also put together 3D shape mini anchor charts.  I printed a set of these anchor charts and used them to label our class set of 3D shape models.

I highly recommend getting a class set of 3D shape models.

 I bought my set at Oriental Trading several years ago.  I paid about $20 (or so).  They have been well worth the cost.  It is extremely helpful to students to be able to put their hands on 3D shapes as they learn about these shapes and their properties.

My students used these shape models with almost all of the 3D shape centers.  They used them with the 3D naming and property matching center.

They used the shape models with the stack, slide, or roll center.  Students really liked testing if a shape could stack, slide, or roll.

In addition to labeling our shape models with the mini anchor charts, I also printed a second copy for classroom display.  (If you scroll to the bottom, you'll find a link to a FREE set of these charts.)

All of these activities and many more are available at my Teachers Pay Teachers store in my Shape by Shape {Hands-On Activities with 2D and 3D Shapes} packet.  Altogether there are eight centers with recording sheets, two sets of anchor charts, and a game of I Have/How Has? for 2D & 3D shapes.

You can click on the picture below for more details.

Besides all of our classroom work with shapes, we also read some great shape themed books.  Here are just a few of my favorites...

Captain Invincible and the Space Shapes by Stuart J. Murphy, Shapes That Roll by Karen Nagel, If You Were a Polygon by Marcie Aboff, Perfect Square by Michael, Circus Shapes by Stuart J. Murphy, Friendshape by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns, Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh, and If You Were a Quadrilateral by Molly Blaisdell.
For me, there's nothing like books to hook students' attention and spark their desire to learn more.

Finally, for a free copy of my 3D Shape Mini Anchor Charts.  You can click on the picture below.  If you teach 3D shapes, these colorful little posters make a great reference display and do not take up to much space.

Click on the picture below for your FREE copy of these anchor charts.

Thanks so much for stopping by!
Best.

Ringing In the New Year, Classroom Style

Are you a New Year's resolution person?  Well, I am.  I have had the same resolution for the past few years.  Start going to bed on time.  I'm sorry to say, like many resolution makers, I've already broke it.  We were in school a total of three days this first week back from winter break, I did not go to bed on time once.  Oh well...I'll try again next week.

During our three days back this week, my firsties rang in the New Year with style.  We did some retraining, some reviewing, and some fun New Year's themed activities.  Here's a peek at a few of the New Year's resources our class enjoyed.

We built background knowledge by reading the few New Year's themed books I've been able to get my hands on.  For some reason, there are not very many of them. 

We read P. Bear's New Year's Party by Paul Owen Lewis.  This book is a counting book about the animals arriving to Polar Bear's party.  (If you would like a copy of a free activity I used with this book, a few years ago, you can click here.)

We read Squirrel's New Year's Resolution by Pat Miller.  This story is super cute.  It does a good job explaining what a resolution is.  It follows Squirrel as he tries to figure out what his resolution should be by asking the other forest animals about their resolutions.  I like reading this book in class just before we do any resolutions writing or set any goals for the New Year.

Another New Year's themed book I shared with my first graders was The Night before New Year's by Natasha Wing.  This edition of The Night Before... books is true to form as it stays consistent the pattern of The Night Before Christmas, but inserts the symbols and traditions (this time) from New Year's.  It's a great jumping off point for students to share their family traditions for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

New Year's Day (Celebrations in My World) by Lynn Peppas and New Year's Day (Holiday Histories) by Kathryn Imler are two nonfiction explanations of New Year's.  They are a great way to explain traditions and facts about this holiday.

Shante Keys and the New Year's Peas, by Gail Piernas-Davenport, is a wonderful book to use with your young learners.  This rhyming story tells the story of Shante as she visits neighbors to borrow some black-eyed peas.  She learns about different New Year's traditions from around the world from her neighbors.  I love this book.

Throughout the week, as we read these stories, we created a New Year's anchor chart to display and reference in class.

Having the anchor chart helped students with a couple of writing assignments they completed about New Year's.  One of the writing assignments went along with a cute New Year's craftivity we completed to share our resolutions.  Our New Year's Kids look totally cute as a hallway display and the kids love, love, love the blowouts.

If you are interested, this writing craftivity is available at my Teachers Pay Teachers story.  You can click on one of the pictures for details.

We started our January math and literacy centers this week.  Some of the centers are New Year themed.  The one pictured below is a review of the short and long a sound.  

It's amazing to me how improved my students are with centers at this point in the year.  They are so much more independent and willing to problem solve each month.  It's really rewarding to see.

Below is a FREE New Year's math center that I've incorporated during our center time during the past couple of years.  Students practice matching the numbers that are 10 more, 10 less, 1 more, and 1 less.  If you would like a free copy of this center to use with your class, click on the picture below.

Another free New Year's math resource you may want to check out is my Out With the Old and In With the New: A Happy New Year Math Mini Book.  This little booklet features word problems that review some of the skills that we've covered so far this year.   I'm all about holiday inspired math mini books as we continue to learn how to tackle word problems. 

I've updated it through 2025. You can click on the picture below for a free copy of this booklet.

Although New Year's Day has past once we return from break, I still really enjoy finding ways to integrate it into my classroom.  It makes the beginning of the second semester start on a really positive note.

I hope you had a great first week back from break.  Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers to a great rest of the year!

We've Got This (Activities and Freebies for Basic Fractions)

Hi all.
So happy to finally have a chance to touch base about some of the learning we've been doing.  Usually the last three or so weeks of the school year are extra busy.  But, something is going on this year that seems to have caused the craziness to hit a bit early.
Even though summer break is on the horizon, I need to slow down time with my young learners.  This year's class is an awesome group of kids.  However, some of them have consistently needed lots of lots of extra work with various math skills.

For the past few weeks, we worked and worked and then worked some more on basic fractions.  And true to form, quite a few of my little sweeties needed plenty of time and practice to grasp the concept of fractions.
Here are some of the resources and activities we used to understand halves, thirds, and fourths...

I used these simple anchor charts to introduce and discuss fractions.  We referred to them often during our fraction unit.  I took them down this afternoon, whole punched them in one corner, and added them to a ring.  They will be in our anchor chart tote for easy access for quick reviews.

If you would like a FREE copy of these anchor charts, click here.

Of course hands on practice is the best way for students to learn about fractions.  One fun activity we did was to use play dough to show fractions of whole shapes.
I made these quick and easy shape work mats.  Students used the mats to help them form each shape.  Then, using plastic knives, they divided the shapes into a specific fraction.
My firsties absolutely loved this activity.  Some of them actually asked to get it out during a rainy day recess.

If you would like a FREE copy of the shape work mat, click here.

In addition to our work with play dough fractions, we did lots of center activities involving fractions.

Students sorted food items divided into equal and unequal parts.

They matched fractional shapes with the correct fraction number.  

They sorted fraction/shape cards depending if the fraction on the card was correct (yes) or incorrect (no way).

They also worked with some print and go activities.  Students enjoyed making flip books to show what they know about fractions.

If you are interested, this flip book, the centers pictures above, and much more are available in my new packet, Fraction Friends {Centers and Printables for Basic Fractions}.  You can click on the picture below or visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store if you would like more details.

What are your go to activities and resources for teaching fractions?  I'd love to know.  I'm always on the look out for great ideas.
Thanks for stopping by.
Best.

Long Vowels: Simple Ways to Get Started

For the first several weeks of school we spend loads of time working with short vowels.  We read with them, spell with them, sort with them, create rhymes with them, trade them out to create different words . . . you name it, we do it.  But, all of this work is (or at least should be) review.  

Today was our first day of many that we really focused on long vowel sounds.  Over the next few months, we'll spend lots of time learning about letter patterns that make the long vowel sounds.

My very favorite tool for teaching students about reading words with long vowel sounds is the saying, "Two vowels in a word, the first vowel says it's name, the second vowel plays the quiet game."  (There are other similar saying that get the point across as well.  This variation just sticks with me the best).

I say this to my young learners over and over and over.  Eventually they know it by heart.

I made these anchor charts to use as headers on the board as we brainstorm words that follow the two vowels pattern.  I (or the students) write words on the board and then we mark the vowel that says its name and cross out the one that's playing the quiet game.  Over the next few days, I'll repeat this activity using different words that follow the same pattern.

If you would like a free set of these anchor charts, click on the picture below.  There are eleven different charts with different long vowel combinations.  The clip art is from Graphics from the Pond and the fonts are by Kimberly Geswein.

Another simple way to practice this (or any other) spelling pattern is an anchor activity I like to call fold and draw.  Students fold their paper to create boxes.  In each box, they will write a word using the spelling pattern and then illustrate it.  Students can fold their papers twice to have four boxes or they can fold it three times to create six boxes.  

Like the anchor chart activity above, students can repeat this activity again by spelling different words and drawing different illustrations.

One more way we are practicing long vowels is with my recently bundled Words at Work Mega Pack {Word Work for Long Vowels}.  I designed these activities to be consistent as we progress to each vowel.  I want students to focus more on the skill than trying to figure what they are supposed to do to complete the task.

This packet works perfectly for independent assignments in class, as a word work practice, or as homework.  All of the activities are low prep, just print and go.  If you want more details more details, click on the picture below.

  

There are so many ways to tackle long vowels.  I love finding effective, simple, and easy to implement ways to practice this important skill.  I hope some of these ideas will be helpful to you.

Have a great week.