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Description: This is a simple rhyming activity that should be used for pre-k to 1st grade. The teacher will provide objects in a basket that will pair up, such as boat and goat, and cat and hat. This hands-on activity uses manipulatives to increase play within the classroom as well.
Advantages:
* Increases phonological awareness
* Helps oral language skills
* Learning with hands-on manipulatives is fun and engaging for students
Disadvantages:
* This game will finish quickly, so have backup pairs or another game activity ready.
* Students may be confused on what word the object should be.
* If objects are small, be careful of children biting or swallowing (probably best to leave out swallowable objects all together)
http://theimaginationtree.com/2014/04/rhyming-pairs-basket-literacy-game.html

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Make a simple rhyming activity to help practise rhyming pairs and learn about literacy in a playful, hands-on way! This would be great for both home and the classroom as a go-to resource on the shelf.

We have been practising hearing and identifying rhyming words together recently and focused initially on identifying rhyming strings with word families that all have the same middle and end sounds. For example, making a collection of rhyming words that all belong in the "-at" family, such as "cat", "mat", "bat", "sat", "fat" etc.

To make learning more concrete and playful, we always like to make the activity using manipulatives and as playful as possible. We all learn best while touching, moving and doing, rather than looking at a worksheet or set of 2D images!

As a next step activity to making the rhyming strings, we had fun playing with real objects that sounded the same but didn't necessarily all have the same spelling patterns. For example, "bear and chair" which sound the same but are not spelt the same. This was an entirely auditory activity, placing emphasis on listening, discriminating and matching sounds, rather than writing them down or reading them, so it still comes as an early step in the process in understanding about rhyme.

I put together a very simple and easy activity using a large basket and some small toys from various Playmobil, Sylvanian Families and other small sets. I made simple pairs of rhyming objects and then mixed them all up to be found and matched.
In the basket were the following:
goat and boat

man and fan

chair and bear

snake and cake

cat and hat

duck and truck

fox and box

mouse and house

car and star

dog and frog

The game was simply to pick one object, say its name out loud, then to look through the basket for another object which rhymed with it. In some cases we needed to name at the objects first and say them clearly to emphasise the main sounds.

Then they placed the rhyming objects into pairs and we jumped along the line, saying them together again. "A fox and a box, a man and a fan, a dog and a frog!" etc

After this Cakie wanted to add more objects to rhyme with those already in the box and went around the house looking for some to put in.

They didn't find it as easy as I had first thought they might, which means we will play this again until they are more familiar with the idea.

Cakie: 5.7

Pop: 4.0

Bean: 2.1
What they are learning as they play:
literacy: identifying rhyming strings, matching words by sound, discriminating sounds

See our many other fun literacy activities in our Playful Literacy archives!

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Rhyming Pairs Basket Literacy Game - The Imagination Tree

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Make a simple rhyming activity to help practise rhyming pairs and learn about literacy in a playful, hands-on way! This would be great for both home and the classroom as a go-to resource on the shelf.

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Description: This activity is with a small group or the whole class, depending on the amount of parts. Students will be given parts from the script to read aloud to the class.76
Advantages:
* No memorization needed
* Boosts reading confidence
* Promotes fluency
* Learns to read aloud with expression
Disadvantages:
* Students may experience confusion if they have not done this before
* Can be time consuming
* Scripts could lack a strong story line and interesting characters

**The link below includes various scripts in pdf form**
http://www.timelessteacherstuff.com/

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Description: Using the Elkonin Boxes, students will identify each sound of a word. Students will then write and say aloud each phoneme in each box.
Ex. /Sh/ /ee/ /p/
Although sheep has 5 letters, you only hear 3 sounds. Recommended for working individually or in small groups
Advantages:
* Build phonological awareness by segmenting words into phonemes
*Better understanding that the number of letters in a word does not correlate to the same number of sounds
Disadvantages:
* Students may be confused when seeing the Elkonin Boxes
* Students may also be confused about hearing only 3 sounds when it has 5 letters like from the example above.
http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview?LPid=13697

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Resources and services for Utah Higher Education faculty and students such as Canvas and collegEmedia.

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Description: It is an interactive, ongoing display of words in large lettering and in alphabetical order on a wall. Each week, students will be given 4-5 words to learn and master spelling and using it in a sentence. The words that they have mastered will go on the word wall, along with other words that the students have mastered.
Advantages:
* Builds phonics and spelling skills
* Provides high frequency words permanently on the wall
* Easily accessible to students
Disadvantages:
* Takes up a lot of wall space in the classroom or no room for word wall
* If the class and teacher does not consistently use the word wall, it is useless and ineffective
https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/word-walls-work/

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In my classroom, it is easy to find evidence that I value and teach the basics - it's all over the walls. I am not referring to commercially prepared charts or bulletin boards; rather, my students and I collaboratively build Word Walls as we learn and practice phonics, spelling, and language conventions in the context of authentic reading and writing activities. A Word Wall is an interactive, ongoing display (on a chart, bulletin board, or other exhibition medium) of words and/or parts of words, used to teach spelling, reading and writing strategies, letter-sound correspondence, and more. Word Walls are not simply dÃ©cor - they are useful works in progress, built over time as words are harvested from meaningful contexts. They provide support and references for children, and serve as a clear record of their language learning.

Here are some hot tips for making Word Walls really work in your classroom!

1. Make Them Memorable

Use favorite rhymes, poems, chants, songs, or stories as contexts for pulling key words for your Walls. For example, last year we enjoyed a version of our school song performed as rap. We lifted words from the song to add to our Chunking Wall. (A Chunking Wall helps students decode unknown words by analogy and promotes phonemic awareness.) While rereading the song chart, we used highlighters and word frames to call attention to these words.

Potential pitfall: Using arbitrary lists of words for key references. If the key words are "any old words," they are likely to be treated as such!

2. Make Them Useful

The more you use the Word Walls to spell high-frequency words during modeled writing, to generate correct spelling while writing aloud, or to decode a masked word in text, the more your students will use the Walls to do the same. Demonstrations and think-alouds take only seconds, and if done frequently, give you a lot of bang for your buck. ("Yes, I can read this word. I see /br/ like the beginning of Brendan's name, and /ast/ like our key word last; this word must be breakfast. It fits here and makes sense!")

Potential pitfall: Putting up the Word Wall at the beginning of the year, telling kids to use it, but failing to demonstrate how.

3. Make Them Practical

Incorporate Word Walls into your daily wordplay activities. Use Word Wall words you've already targeted, for making word ladders, word sorts, and word hunts. Such practice helps kids gain automaticity with these key references. Use key words as spelling words, too.

Potential pitfall: Doubling your workload by basing wordplay on arbitrary words. Don't treat your wordplay and Word Walls as separate parts of the literacy puzzle. They fit together naturally, helping you avoid overloading students with too many words at once.

4. Make Them Hands-On

Make your Walls interactive by attaching key words with Velcro strips or sticky tack. If this isn't possible, put pockets under your Wall at the children's eye level. Place copies of key words in the pockets. These techniques allow students to go to the Wall, remove a word, use it at their desks, and return it.

5. Make Them Space Efficient

If you lack adequate wall space or you want your Walls to be more "up close and personal," use three-panel display boards (like those employed in science experiments during fairs) or foam display boards (available at office supply stores). These freestanding materials don't require any wall space, and can be moved around the room and placed on tables for easy visibility. As a reading specialist, I simply fold one Word Wall down and put up another when a new student group arrives.

Potential pitfall: Failing to build a Wall with students because of presumed lack of space.

6. Make Them Your Way

There is no one right way to build a Word Wall. What to build, what key words to add, and when to add them all depend on what your students need. If you are teaching kindergarten and want to reinforce the alphabet, create a Name Wall that highlights first letters in students' names. Or build an ABC Wall, using key words from nursery rhymes. If your students commonly misspell words like they, said, and because, create a Words-We-Know Wall, featuring high frequency, irregularly spelled words. A Chunking Wall helps developing readers and writers learn to use spelling patterns to read and write new words. You can also combine these varied types of key words into one Word Wall; add new words each week and build them up over time. Organize your Walls in a way that is practical to students. Be creative and trust your observations.

Potential pitfall: Bogging yourself down by thinking, "I'm not doing it right." If your students are using the Word Wall to better their reading and writing skills, you're doing it right!

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In my classroom, it is easy to find evidence that I value and teach the basics - it's all over the walls. I am not referring to commercially prepared charts or bulletin boards; rather, my students and I collaboratively build Word Walls as we learn and practice phonics, spelling, and language conventions in the context of authentic reading and writing activities.

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Description: This is a type of a concept development lesson and a form of semantic mapping. This type of organizer can be integrated with other subjects, but it will always include literacy because it helps grow vocabulary words. First students list words about the topic given, then will have to sub group the words on the list or add words they think of into categories themselves.
Advantages:
* Develops understanding of vocabulary and concepts
* Develops skills for categorizing and labeling
* Promotes critical thinking
* Growth of vocabulary words

Disadvantages:

* Does not show immediate connections
* Time consuming
http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/list_group_label

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List-Group-Label | Classroom Strategy | Reading Rockets

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List-group-label is a form of semantic mapping. The strategy encourages students to improve their vocabulary and categorization skills and learn to organize concepts. Categorizing listed words, through grouping and labeling, helps students organize new concepts in relation to previously learned concepts.

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Description: These stations are rotated throughout the week for small groups of 3-4. The students will go to their station of the day and work on whatever it is they need to accomplish that day. The stations are separated into read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, work on writing, and word work.
Advantages:
* Students will experience different literacy stations each week
* Improves comprehension, writing, and reading skills.
Disadvantages:
* Student may slack off when teacher isn't looking and paying attention to a different station
* Elevated noises due to different stations
* Students become easily distracted when they go into groups
**Instead of writing on an anchor chart, I would have it printed out and laminate it.**
http://thesecondgradesuperkids.blogspot.com/2013/09/daily-5-station-ideas.html?m=1

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Each Monday we collaborate with our building's new and Dual Language staff members for a professional development session based on what they highlight as their needs and/or desires for learning!

This week we focused on Daily 5 ideas as all of our staff are currently working hard to get their stations and guided reading up and running! The teachers who attending the session came up with a variety of wonderful ideas and activities that could potentially be used throughout the year in these work stations. I thought some of you may enjoy taking a gander at what they came up with as well!

Just a little background... we utilized a strategy many of you may be familiar with called "Round Robin" to gather ideas during our meeting. The staff were given the anchor charts with only the titles and asked to add any activity ideas they were doing, would like to do, etc. based on the title on their paper. We gave each group 1 minute to brainstorm and write their ideas, and then they were asked to pass the poster to the next group. We continued to do this until all posters had made it to all groups.

This is a great strategy that you could use with your students as well to assess their background knowledge and/or learning of concepts. You could even do it at the beginning of the year to see what activities they already know and enjoy doing during Daily 5 if they are familiar with it from the year past! This may give you some insight as to what they may want to do in your classroom as well!

Alright now onto the posters...keep in mind these were quickly written by our staff and we discussed them a bit after as well, so not everything may make perfect sense! But feel free to ask questions in the comments if you have any and I would be happy to try my best to answer!

After our meeting, I also took some time to type up all of their ideas onto one page for them to hold on to and refer to throughout the year. You are welcome to a copy if you'd like- just click on the image below :)!

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Each Monday we collaborate with our building's new and Dual Language staff members for a professional development session based on what they highlight as their needs and/or desires for learning! This week we focused on Daily 5 ideas as all of our staff are currently working hard to get their stations and guided reading up and running!

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Description: This activity is used to describe an object as a class using the five senses: taste, smell, sight, sound, and touch. Students will need a bag of popcorn to help input his or her ideas to describe a popcorn.
Advantages:
* Understand that there are other ways to get information other than sight
* Shared discussion with class, which involves talking
Disadvantages:
* Students may have trouble coming up with describing words
* Popcorns are messy and difficult to clean up
**This activity is based on a picture of an anchor chart called I Can Describe Popcorn from the link below.**
http://spotlightonkindergarten.blogspot.com/2012/03/anchor-charts-and-classroom-charts.html

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Well I am home again. This time my youngest daughter is sick. We seem to be spreading this lovely stuff over weeks and months. Anyway, she is asleep right now so I caught up on my blog-stalking and thought I'd post a few pics of my anchor charts and classroom charts. So this is going to be very random - no rhyme or reason at all - just the pics I could find. I hope my sharing will help someone out there because most of these were inspired by someone else, and those someone else-s have made me a better teacher!

I have posted most of these before but I can't remember which ones. So, here they are again!

Here are a few more from some past units. I just didn't get around to them at the time. My class this year keeps me hoppin'!

That's it. I hope there is something here that is helpful to you!

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Anchor charts and Classroom charts Galore!

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Well I am home again. This time my youngest daughter is sick. We seem to be spreading this lovely stuff over weeks and months. Anyway, she is asleep right now so I caught up on my blog-stalking and thought I'd post a few pics of my anchor charts and classroom charts.

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Description: This is recommended for lower elementary grade levels where students will blend on-sets with rimes to create a word. This activity could be used individually, small groups, or the whole class.
Advantages:
* Learns about family words
* Develops an understanding of decoding words to help with reading and writing
* Practices phonological awareness
Disadvantages:
* Struggling students may not be able to link the words and sounds
* Some students may think it is a word when it is not, and vice versa
http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/onset_rime

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The "onset" is the initial phonological unit of any word (e.g. c in cat) and the term "rime" refers to the string of letters that follow, usually a vowel and final consonants (e.g. at in cat). Not all words have onsets. Similar to teaching beginning readers about rhyme, teaching children about onset and rime helps them recognize common chunks within words. This can help students decode new words when reading and spell words when writing.

From the Florida Center for Reading Research, download and print these activities:

These articles offer suggestions for how to use simple onset and rime activities to help students develop phonological awareness.

Construct-a-word: "ig" in Pig. The link below outlines a strategy that can be adapted to teach different onset and rime word patterns. This activity helps teachers isolate and teach the rime "ig" using the book If you Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff. There is an instructional plan that accompanies the activity and extension ideas included to advance the learning process.
See example >

Download blank templates

See the link below for more help building word families using onset and rimes.

Bear, D., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (1996). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Chard, D., & Dickson, S. (1999). Phonological Awareness: Instructional and Assessment Guidelines.

Ellis, E. (1997). How Now Brown Cow: Phoneme Awareness Activities.

Goswami, U., & Mead, F. (1992). Onset and rime awareness and analogies in reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 2, 153-162.

Wise, B. W., Olson, R. K., & Treiman, R. (1990). Subsyllabic units as aids in beginning readers word learning Onset-rime versus post-vowel segmentation. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 4, 1-19.

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The "onset" is the initial phonological unit of any word (e.g. c in cat) and the term "rime" refers to the string of letters that follow, usually a vowel and final consonants (e.g. at in cat). Not all words have onsets.

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Description: This activity involves a dice, where either students get into a small group or work individually to answer the following questions rolled by the dice in a journal.
Advantages:
*Helps student work on their writing skills
*Promotes critical thinking
* Works on comprehension skills
Disadvantages:
* Students may continue to roll multiple times not getting the number they need
* Takes time to read and grade grammar errors for the upper elementary level.
http://applefortheteach.blogspot.com/2014/03/roll-and-retell-building-summarizing.html

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Our principal has really been encouraging us to add more writing into our daily lesson plans. "They should be writing all day long" he tells us. The research is there to back him up.

I bumped into this I
Roll and Retell page from Fun In First on printed and laminated four copies of the Roll and Retell page to hand out to each of my four table groups. Pinterest awhile back and finally figured out how to add it to our learning day.

After a round of Daily 5 I handed them out. I also gave each table one die. Each student at the table took turns rolling the die and then answering the question based on the number they rolled. They each used the individual book they were reading to answer the questions. I felt like it would be a great advertisement for new books for each child to read when they were done with the one they were working on. I also knew it would be great oral practice BEFORE they started writing.

Once they had a chance to talk about what they were going to write, I set the timer for 5 minutes and let them write. Then we shared our responses.

Here are a few of their responses.

I had so much success with this activity with my students, that I created versions that cover the standards for
2nd, 3rd and 4th grades.

What have you tried in your classroom lately? Link up with
Dr. Susan Hall, literacy leader and founder of 95 Percent Group, mentions this Roll and Retell Activity as a Reading Comprehension Game that Students Will Want to Play Over and Over! Check it out for the other ideas there as well!

Fourth Grade Flipper for Tried It Tuesday and share!

This post contains affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase using one of my links, which helps to support the blog. All opinions are my own and I only promote brands and products that I have used myself and truly love.

I would love to hear from you! ❤️

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Roll and Retell - Building Summarizing, Communication, and Writing Skills

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Our principal has really been encouraging us to add more writing into our daily lesson plans. "They should be writing all day long" he tells us. The research is there to back him up.

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Description: This Frayer Model is a type of visual graphic organizer to help students separate story elements that leads to a key concept. Students will work individually and may revisit the book or talk to their neighbor if they need help.
Advantages:
* Students will connect one concept and relate it to another concept
* Improves comprehension skills
*Students are able to talk to share ideas
Disadvantages:
* May be difficult for non-visual learners
* Overused in classrooms
**Click on story map 2 and use the first one that pops up**
http://www.lapresenter.com/25%20Graphic%20Organizers.pdf