Leveled Valentine Passages

Do you know Elizabeth from Fun in Room 4B? She used to be a classroom teacher and focused a lot on math. Now she is teaching ESOL kids and she really wants to be sure that you know she has ventured out and making many other products. She was so kind to let me try out her Valentine Leveled Passages. And even though Valentine's Day is so near, you can still use these after the actual Valentine's Day. Or grab them for next year. 

Currently I am not working with ESOL kids (We call them ESL for English as a Secondary Language), but I am working with 2nd graders who are having trouble with reading. 

I wanted to see if this would work with other kids besides ESOL. I found out that it does!
There are 10 different leveled passages that can be used by a variety of grades. (Because we all know that within our own classes, we have a gap between our lowest and our highest readers!)

The levels range from Text Level A or Lexile -220 up to Text Level L/M or Lexile 500.

Elizabeth has given very clear lesson plans of how to use these for 3 days.


The first thing they do is read the passage.

 Then they have to search for vocabulary words and circle them with a specific color. This is a great skill to teach kids. They need to know how to skim what they read to look for information.  Because they have to color, this also helps kids who may be unsure of their color words.

(Let me stop here for a minute. This product comes in color pages and black & white. So you can save your color ink if you need to or you can use the color pages, laminate them, and use a visa-vi marker on them.)

When finished their paper looks like this with many colored circles around the vocabulary.

Another part of this product is the vocabulary cards with pictures. Great for helping those kids identify the words.

 This young fellow is looking at all the vocabulary words (without pictures) while I read the definition to him. Once he matches it up, I gave it to him to place beside the word.

There is another piece that helps them connect to the reading. They have questions to answer that they can find right in the text. (In the old days, we call those Right There questions!)

The last part asks them to use some of their own thoughts. "Why do you think? What would you like?" type questions. I love that part because it lets the student give their own thoughts that don't have to be RIGHT! 

The final part of this package is a game board to practice reading those vocabulary words. I ran out of time and didn't get a chance to try this out. 

(I don't work on Thursdays and we have this Friday and Monday off for Mid Winter break. but I'm not trying to rub that in to you. . . . much!)

But it sure looks like fun! 

If you are interested in grabbing this, it is on sale right now. . . HALF OFF!  You can get it for $2.00. That's it! (42 page$ for $2.00 i$ a ma$$ive $aving$!)

You can click here to go to her store.

$uper $ale Today Only

Stop by my store today, 

I've got everything at 20% off.

Some of my things for Valentine's are: 

Contractions

 Fact and Opinions

Verb Tenses

Free Nonsense Words

I also have some Knock Knock jokes that I put on the kid's lockers. 

I hope you find something you like 

and that you love the pri¢e$ too!

Patty

Non Extreme Makeovers

I am approaching my one year of selling on TPT. It's been fun and so helpful to me to create things that work for my classroom. That's why I make these things. And if on the chance that YOU could use them too, I decided to sell them. I know that many people make similar things. So I get that you might buy from someone else. That's ok with me.I know I have my favorites just like you do too. 

This summer it has been one of my goals to update and market my wares better. That's what this post is all about. I wanted to give you a sneak peak at a few things that I have updated. I realize that you are a long way from these holidays. But if you're like me, you might need some extra time to get therm around before the holiday actually approaches. 

You can click on each picture to take you

 directly to that product in my store.

Thanks for stopping by and stay tuned for more 

updates real soon.

Patty

A Little Late . . I hope you don't mind.

I'm back from my whirlwind trip to Houston this weekend. You know, I'm not really a sports fan. . . but even I figured it out when we left from Chicago to Houston and the plane was completely full on Thursday night and then coming back this morning it was full again, that a sport just might be involved! . . I guess that the All Star Basketball game that was held in Houston had a lot to do with that!

I didn't go there for the silly old game! I went to see my daughter and her husband. We had a great time, the guys golfed, and we got pedicures, shopped, ate, shopped, ate, and ate some more!

Yesterday the sun was perfect and we took some time to sit by the pool (fully clothed mind you!). It didn't take long and I was pink. . . no red. . .
no burned bright red! YIKES!

Of course my face looked even worse by the end of the night. After lots of aloe and a few prayers, I decided that I was going to live! Silly me, I know better, and I don't like to burn. . . . but being from Michigan, I feel so pale and sun deprived!

Now on to what we did for Valentine's Day. I read all about everyone's over the weekend, and I was itching to get back and share mine too!

We start the day with a breakfast in our classroom. The kids always think it's so fun to eat in the room, when they normally eat in the gym! It doesn't take much to make them happy!

Do you know Sheree from Peterson's Pad?  She teaches first grade and had some great ideas for Valentine's Day.

I know that there are a lot of activities out there that you can do with the candy hearts, but Sheree's were cute, easy, and perfect for the time we had to do them in our class.

First they had to tally how many they had, then they made a graph with them. I love how this one below actually put the hearts on the chart since that's the way this child sees things best.

Then they had a couple questions to answer that pertained to their actual graph. Each person's graph turned out differently because they all had their own individual boxes.

Our boxes didn't have white hearts as the charts asked for, but they had blue ones which weren't on the charts. This was an easy fix for us to change so it fit our needs.

We also celebrated the 100th day of school in the afternoon on Thursday. 

Our building has only 6 classes 

(2 kinders, 2 firsts, and 2 seconds).

Each teacher planned a 25 minute activity. The classes moved from room to room to do each activity and finished up just in time to go home. (Gotta love those days when the time flies!)

I visited my friend Corinna Gandara in Hawaii. . . well, I didn't actually visit her. . .Truthfully, I visited her blog. . . . and you will want to too. Her blog is called Surfin' Through Second Grade. 

She is very cool and fun and let's me live vicariously through her adventures in surfing!

These next two activities are from her blog.

In my room the kinders made some gorp with many different kinds of foods. It was so cute to listen to them count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 over and over as they got to each bowl.

When they were done, IF they counted right, they had 100 things to eat.

Some kids automatically made patterns all on their own!

We asked some to make addition groups like 3+5 to see what the answer was.

Then the first and second graders had to find 100 ways to make 100.

 I let the 2nd graders just make them any way they could. Some of them caught on and saw a pattern to be sure they didn't miss any of them. I love it when the light bulb comes on and math makes sense to them. 

With the first graders I had them stay with me and watch the pattern grow together. It didn't take long for them to catch on. 

We didn't have time to finish. So I told them to take it home, finish it, and return it to me tomorrow and I'll give them a treat. I sure hope lots of them continued making them at home.

And just look how neat this one below is! Don't cha just wish every one wrote this neatly 

and can keep their numbers inside the boxes!!!

Thanks for hanging in there and reading about our fabulous day on Thursday. I loved reading all of yours too! It's so interesting to see how each school does different things.

Patty

Valentine Treats YUM!

The winners of my Valentine activities are Lori, Mrs. Lavoie, and Sarah. Check your mail for some surprises! Thanks to everyone who stopped by!

Now for the yummy stuff!

I can not claim these as my own. . . and I don't even know who made them originally. . . but since I saw them on Pinterest, I thought it was fair game to share them with you. I'm not selling them or making any profit what so ever. . . well, I guess I could increase my weight with these, but not my wallet!

Here's the simple, and quick directions:

Ingredients: One bag of Hanover square pretzels, but any pretzel that is circular or square will work.

One bag of Hersheys Hugs (but you could use Kisses or any flavor of Hugs or Kisses.

One bag of  Valentine M&M's.

Preheat the oven to 225 degrees.

Put a layer of parchment paper on a cookie sheet. 

Lay out the pretzels and begin unwrapping the Hugs. 

(This will take you the longest time!)

Place one Hug on each pretzel. 

Put the cookie sheet in the oven for only 5 minutes. 

Pull them out and place on hot pads on the counter. 

Put one colorful M&M on each melted Hug. 

They will sink in enough to stay. 

You don't really need to press them down very far.

Let them cool and put them in the fridge over night. 

Place on a nice plate and 

share with your colleagues. 

I just heard the other day that if you don't feed the teachers, they will eat the students. . . . so I want to be sure to feed my teachers! 

(Thanks Mackenzie!)

Patty

V-V-V-Very Valentine's & You Can Win One!

Have you looked at the calendar? At the end of this week comes February.

Have you noticed a lot of pink, red, and white on other people's blogs? I have and well, I like it. I love the froo froo girly girly stuff. Even if I myself am not froo froo and girly girly!

I have also been creating some Valentine activities and I would love for you to have them. I'm willing to give one of each away.

All you have to do is:

• be a follower of this blog.
• leave me a comment of which one you like.
• leave me your email address
• tell me the blog that you LOVE to follow (besides mine of course!)

I will pick 3 winners on Thursday after school.

The first one I made is to help with fact and opinion. These cute little cards have a statement on them. Your child must read them and decide if they are a fact or an opinion. Pretty easy to do. But oh so good practice for your students. It's called Love Bugs Facts and Opinions. You can get it by clicking on the link.

The second thing I made is a practice in verb tenses. It's called Valentine Verb Tenses.  Each verb is underlined. The students must match up the other verbs with the main one, then decide which one is spelled wrong. That's the one they write on the answer key. 

And the last one I'm highlighting today is my Love In Alphabetical Order. It's a basic practice in ABC order, but there is some sorting of the matching cards first, then they put them in ABC order. There is a recording sheet included in case you'd like this to be a writing activity. 

And here's a freebie if you're still hanging around to read all of this.

I call it a Back to Back.

Students sit back to back with a lapboard for a hard surface. One student will say, "color the word stirrup pink." So they both color that pink. They DO NOT turn around to be sure that they have the right  word. Then the other player tells them what word and what color to use. This continues until the whole figure is colored in. THEN they share their pictures to see how well they read, listen and have chosen the right colors to use. (They can only use the colors that are listed at the top of the page.) In the end the picture will look crazy colored this way, but it will be a good oral language and listening activity for them. 

Don't forget to leave me a message!

Patty

Nonsense Word Practice and Valentine Jokes plus a giveaway!

Hello Everyone,

 I've been busy digging up old files and trying to update some things I made last year before I had a store.

Since Valentine's Day is fast approaching, and you just may want to get some things around well before it gets here so you can work on them, I decided to post some to my store today.

First I like to put jokes up through out the year on the kid's lockers.

They love to read, and who doesn't like to read a good joke. I consider it a good thing if a child reads a joke and can laugh at it too! That tells me they have good comprehension skills.

These jokes are perfect for 2nd graders. But your better readers in first grade or even 3rd and up would like them.  You can see more about them here.

Just copy them, laminate them, then cut them up. Tape the color heart on top of the black and white one at the top of the heart. Tape them to the lockers or anywhere they can be seen by the kids.

 Students read the joke, and lift it up to read the answer.

Then sit back and wait for them to come and tell you the funny ones!

Another activity that I'm posting is to practice with contractions. I know that this is nothing new. But with the Valentine theme, it fits this time of year and is cutsy to look at as they practice matching the boy with two words with the girl holding the contraction that matches.  You can pick these up here. 

Both of the these two are made using the clip art and fonts from DJ Inkers.

And finally I am teaching some first graders to practice making nonsense words. So I made up this set of cards to do just that! The students will mix these all up then try to make as many different nonsense words as they can. You can see these here.

If you're still here, I'd like to give 5 of these away. Leave me a comment, and tell me which one would be best for you. Leave me your email address. I will pick 5 winners tomorrow night. Good luck! I hope  you win!

Patty

Blog Manners and a Valentine Freebie

I had some concerns about what was allowable and acceptable on blogs and I put the question out there. Teri from Mrs. Cupcake shared a link with me that I found very helpful. You can click on this link: blogging manners to see if you learn something new. This is from Lindsey at The Teacher's Wife. Inside this link Lindsey also sends you to another tip on blogging.  "Jen at Finally in First did a great post about Linky Party Etiquette  "  If you're new then I suggest you read these.  I had no idea and I'm glad that I found this resource. I don't want to be booted off here for doing something that is frowned upon. Thanks Teri for helping me out!

Now if you're like me, you may have spent the last couple days putting away Valentine's decorations and setting up St. Patrick's Day stuff (named after me of course. . . . St. Patty's day!!  bahahahahaha!) Well I have a freebie to share with you for Valentines. I'm sorry it's late, but my week has been busy, filled, extremely fun, but left me with no extra time to blog much.

These are Knock Knock jokes that I put on student's lockers. (I even think the older kids would get a giggle out of them too!) Copy off all the hearts, laminate them, then tape them together at the top so they see the Knock Knock colored part on the outside, but when they lift it up, the black and white part has the answer. Kids love jokes and what a great way to practice reading. It also shows you who your brighter kids are, since they are the ones who "GET" the joke part of it!

Click here for Valentine jokes

If you're LUVIN this freebie, let me know. I enjoy seeing my neighbors and meeting new friends.