Digging Deeper…Our NEW Word Wall

So, today I got the chance to take a quick peek inside of my classroom! Now, my creative wheels are in overdrive and I’m growing more excited by the minute! As much as I’ve enjoyed having a little down time, I’m ready to start prepping our learning space.

One of the first things that will be going up in the room this year is our word wall. The best thing about taking a look into the room is seeing the blank slate. It’s a new chance, a new opportunity to do something great…to work with a new batch of kiddos…to grow and change and become better!

Our word wall is going to be one of those things that changes for the better this year!

At the beginning of last year, our word wall looked like this. Each week, the class and I added 5 new words (given that I remembered to print them) to the word wall. To facilitate a little visual “pop” and to help me stay organized…I used neon Astrobrights to run copies of our sight words. I love ROY G. BIV order! I love it so much, I use it to organize things in sequential order by grading periods. Our year is divided into 6 of them. During the 1st 6 weeks, the words were added on pink, then orange in the 2nd 6 weeks, then yellow in the 3rd 6 weeks and so on. This helped me to ‘at a glance’ be able to keep track of when words were introduced throughout the year.

We’ll be using neon again this year, but instead of the focus being on classroom organization…the focus will be on student learning!

 

Word wall headers have been prepped and the Astrobrights are on deck and ready! Our word wall is growing up! It’s maturing and being organized to focus on phonics! You might say….well, duh! But….wait! Let me tell you HOW!

There will be 3 categories of words on our word wall. The first category will be sight words that can be used to generate other words. These words will be copied onto neon cardstock. For instance….take the word drink. You can use the rime to rhyme and create other words like….link, mink, brink, pink, sink, wink, blink, or think. With before…you can use the rime of the second syllable to rhyme and create…chore, score, shore, snore, core, or bore. Get it? Of course you do…YOU rock!

Because these words will be on brightly colored paper, students can use the color, the rime, or the shape of the word to help recall them, use them, or spell them by analogy to create new words.

The second category of words will be those that are the outlaws. The naughty ones….the words that don’t always follow the [phonics] rules and can not be used to generate other words. They will be copied onto white paper. White….like glue, to help them stick in students’ memories! These words will have to be memorized by sight! After copying each of these words and cutting them from white paper, they will also be framed in black.
 

The last category of words, will be vocabulary words. These are the words that may be required in our curriculum’s specificity or words that are important to students but are not a part of traditional sight word lists. They will be copied onto tan/manila paper and cut to the shape of a rectangle…another visual reminder/distinction.

Our word wall will continue to be interactive in the sense that we will USE it! We’ll hang the words together, we’ll play word games, apply movement to our spelling activities…and when that age old question arises… “HOW DO I SPELL…?” We’ll make reference to words that can be manipulated to guide the spelling of others.

One other additional BIG detail…the background of the word wall will be black. LOVE! Black and white is our running class theme, so our word wall will fit right in!

The alphabet line will be hung in ABC order from A………..allllll the waaaaaaaaaay to Z, in ONE single line…so it will quite literally be a word WALL, lol! After hanging the alphabet line close to eye level, sight words will be placed in a vertical line above each letter…about 5 per week…WITH KIDS. Vocabulary will be hung below the letter and changed out according to need throughout the year.

Cutting the words to their shape will be another visual tool to help students remember them. The black background really creates a clean look. I love the way the neon pops! Even the outlaws stand out in their little black leather jackets!

I’ve had word wall on the brain all week and will be excited to get my hands on those golden keys on Monday morning to begin prepping it in the classroom!
 

This is a small shot of what our much bigger word wall will look like and I have to say, I think it’s going to change the way our kids use the word wall in a great way!

You know, one of the reasons I found this opportunity to dig deeper during word wall time so exciting is because our trainer presented it with the enthusiasm of a kid with a brand new toy! I can only hope to have a fraction of her energy and excitement once we're back at school. If you had never used a word wall before in your life…attending her training would make you want to run out and hang one up as fast as you could!

And guess what? There will be no more having to remember to prep my words for the week because I’ve typed my entire list for the year! No lamination...just print, cut and hang! That’s one little thing that makes a big difference checked off of my list for the entire school year! Check out this little diddy in my TPT store to check it off of your list too!

First grade friends, you can click HERE to grab your list. =) What BIG change are YOU looking forward to this year?

TPT Challenge Accepted! {Makeover Madness}

Just give a product a facelift they said. Add a little something new. Update it! It’ll be easy! Well, one product deleted and completely recreated later…..it was fun and so much more than just a little facelift! =)

I’m so glad I jumped into the TPT Seller Challenge that started this week! At first, I wasn’t sure which product I wanted to tackle first….BUT then, I went to a two day training. In the midst of the training, my creative wheels started turning and I knew EXACTLY what I needed to change…..and quickly! The training was over writer’s workshop with a word wall component. Not just any old run of the mill word wall though…..a new {to our area} word wall system!

Like most of you, my word wall was set up like this at the beginning of the year….in two neat rows, divided between M and N. Well, once upon a time ago….in a PreK training we were advised to hang our word walls horizontally in ONE long alphabetical row from A to Z. Some of us did, space allowing….BUT most of us continued to utilize our word wall in the formation above. It’s worked…it’s been updated to be manipulative. It’s become interactive. NOW….it’s being revolutionized! Which leads me to the product that I made over! Stay with me….I promise we’re going somewhere with this.

Next year, when I go in to set up my word wall…that writing goals chart will have to find a new home because letters WILL be arranged horizontally from A-Z. In addition to adopting the new structure, the background will be black. High frequency words will be posted above the alphabet strip and vocabulary words will be added below the alphabet strip. Different right? There’s more…

With there being two types of high frequency words, differentiation will [visually] come into play. Decodable sight words will be printed on neon paper and cut to the shape of the word. Phonetically irregular words will be printed on white paper and framed in black to the shape of the word. Vocabulary words will be added onto rectangular cut manila paper…below the letter. My classroom “theme” is black and white with pops of color soooo, hearing this started my heart to leaping and gave an educational reason to the color students will be seeing on the word wall.

…and it inspired my makeover item! A couple years ago, I created the little book above as a resource for our writer’s workshop folders. The old one is on the left. The NEW and IMPROVED one is on the right!

Instead of it being sized to fit into one of the side pockets of the folder, its now been edited for hole punching to fit onto the prongs running down the middle of the folder…to use as a resource to record and find spellings of frequently used words.

Notice the difference on the inside?!!! HUGE! THIS will also be how our word wall will look…..so, the book students will use to record new words will be a reflection of the wall we post them on! Lines will help with organization and they will have the alphabet with accompanying symbols to assist as a formation reference. Mind blown! If you can’t tell….I’m a little excited about the upcoming change! We’ve only been out of school for a week and my head is spinning with ideas to begin preparing for the new year!

Sometimes, friends' names can be a little hard to spell. There’s a space for those names and subject specific words at the end of the book.

Makeover…..done!

I just uploaded this cutie to my TPT store and because I’m so excited about how it turned out, I listed it as a forever FREEbie! Click HERE to grab it! Stay tuned…inspiration is flowing. More is in the works to accompany this….

See ya next week, when we continue the challenge by daring to dream……..BIG!

Five for Friday~I wrote a book…!!!

Hi~, peeps! How are ya? Another whirlwind week has flown by and I’m linking up to share a little of our week at Doodlebugs Teaching. Hang around for a little while and take a dive under the sea with us! Ready?



This week, we took a dive or two into non-fiction texts about sea animals. With it, came the introduction of digraphs. ANNNNND, I did something for the very first time that I’m soooo excited to share with you!!!

I wrote a book! A real, little….teeny, weeny sight word reader, BUT……HEY, I wrote a book!


My sweet emergent group is really struggling with sight words. We review them each morning during calendar, they’re reviewed at the beginning of each small group, and we visit the word wall 3 times a week to play sight word games {among many other ways we incorporate them each day}.  I kept racking my brain for a new way, a different way, something above and beyond to help my babies gain the sight word knowledge they  desperately NEED! ….AND VOILA!!!

I thought I would be more excited than them to hand these out on Monday, but guess what?! They were excited too! They really liked having a little book that was created just for them. It  featured the same concepts that everyone else in class were reading about. Instead of having to return their book to the classroom library at the end of the week, they got to take their books home to read over and over and hopefully, OVER again! You should’ve seen their eyes!



After introducing the book and animals that I thought may be a little difficult for them to recognize, we also used them to highlight sight words and mark digraph th. It was our focus skill for the week, and they couldn’t have been happier to be able to write in their books!

Can we color it, Mrs. Dwyer? Can I take it home, Mrs. Dwyer? Are you sure its ok to write in it? Yes, yes……and YES!!! Goal met….happy kids, excited about reading….happy, happy, happy teacher!



My oldest daughter flew in for a quick visit this week, so knowing I would be out toward the end of the week, I tried to pack as much learning as possible in! We used this chart to connect to authentic literature. My firsties are becoming quite the detectives and I-Spy phonics patterns and sight words everywhere! I love it! Here, we made text-to-text connections with WHAT IF YOU HAD animal teeth? Ever think about what YOU might eat if you had teeth like a beaver or a tiger, lol?!



I hate making copies! Not that I don’t use them, because I do {sparingly}…. if I can think of an alternative…a way for students to create on their own, I’d rather them be creative and organize their own thinking rather than provide a worksheet. It’s not always easy and can honestly, be a pain {sometimes}…but I’ve found it to be what my students enjoy and consequently, remember the most.

These little graphic organizers were used to identify 3 details to support the stated author’s purpose for having written the text. We wrote the title across the top, our 3 details on the sticky notes and the author’s purpose across the bottom. Who doesn’t love using sticky notes?!

Click the pic below to grab a copy of our little sight word reader! If you do, leave a comment below to share one of your favorite ways to teach sight words!



Laters, gators! =)

 

I’M BAAAAACK WITH A FREEBIE

Hi, Friends!  How’ve you been?  Things have finally settled down some around here. 

I spent most of today in meetings, so my head is overflowing with information and ideas! What better way to unwind than by heading over to the blogosphere?

Remember those binder labels I told you about? Notice my binders DO NOT have them yet?  I think my printer is possessed! It has picked the absolute worst time to be temperamental! It keeps stopping in the middle of a print job to tell me to INSTALL A PRINTER!!!! What the what is wrong with that crazy thing?!?

Ok, rant over….back to our regularly scheduled programming. Hehehe!

My team met today for the first time! It was fun to sit and laugh and talk and share for a while.  This is going to be a great year! 

See the vowels?

We’ll use these to eliminate, the infamous… “that’s my seat”, “I was sitting there” conversations. Students will be seated at the table in front of the same vowel each time they come to small group.  We can also use them for word play.

Yep! Got the idea from Pinterest! =)

Behavior clip chart is up! I’ll be labeling the clips with student numbers soon.  I’ve decided to use numbers this year instead of their names.  I am believing that the heavens will open up and rain down a class of sweet angels, BUT just in case a clip has to be moved down as a warning….there’ll be no negativity associated with having their name attached to the clip.

Library station is coming together.  I *LOVE* IKEA.  I also *LOVE* putting things together, BUT putting those darn leaves took me 3 days, lol! The first one anyway…..after I finally “got it”, it took me 5 minutes to put the other one together! Hilarious!

AAAAAAAAAND, the Easi Speak that I won from Lori at Teaching With Love and Laughter came in the mail today! It’s so tiny and cute! It looks super simple to use and I think its going to become quite the valuable tool! So, excited!  Thanks, Lori!

Now, how about a freebie for my fab 400?  

Click the picture of the student directions card to grab it.  I hope you find it useful!  Teacher directions are also included in the GoogleDoc. Thanks for hopping by! I’ve just added a couple, three……five things to tomorrow’s “to do” list, so this girlie is off to go get some shut eye!

Bye bye, butterfly!