Greetings! I am just wildly giddy to welcome you to my little corner  of the blogging world  as one of the newest members of  a very special and royal group of teacher-authors! Today we are honoring our first birthday, and are so glad you are participating in our blog hop! I hope you enjoy my post that is chock full of ideas on how to use poetry in your primary grade classroom to build reading fluency skills! BUILDING FLUENCY FIVE WAYS IN FIVE DAYS ...

Greetings! If you have followed me for any length of time, you know that combining songs with stories is at the heart of the lessons I plan for  my students and the resources I create!   Integrating music into literacy instruction helps build phonemic awareness and reading fluency skills in all ages of readers! It is also loads of FUN! ...

Greetings! If you've been following me for any length of time, you know that I will ALWAYS find TIME to RHYME in my classroom!   I am here today to share the way that I am doing that this winter! USING POETRY WITH PRIMARY GRADE STUDENTS ...

Hello Friends and Royal Fairy Tale Fans! Greetings from the "Kingdom of Room 2," a place where we are currently immersed in a cross-curricular unit about castles!  My second grade construction crew has been hard at work building towers, turrets, drawbridges, and moats with all sorts of 3-D solids as part of our geometry unit.  Their fascination with castles all started after I shared Doreen Cronin's newest story, Bloom.  CASTLE CONSTRUCTION:  FAIRY-STYLE This modern-day fairy tale with a twist features a wise yet messy mud pixie, a king and queen whose castle is made of glass, and a young servant girl who proves to be extraordinary, empowered, and intelligent in her efforts to save the kingdom! Next week, I plan to introduce my little learners to our own classroom fairy, and use her as a springboard for more critical thinking, reading, and creative writing activities.  She'll have her own garden and house (thanks to a delightful ......

My love for poetry is no secret in my classroom, and my students know that I will always find time to rhyme during our reading lessons. Reading poetry aloud builds student phonemic awareness and rhyming skills by helping them hear the repetitive, familiar vowel sound patterns. It also builds their syllabication skills by allowing them to hear the rhythm and pattern of the poetry sentences or stanzas. Reading fluency and accuracy improves every time they re-read a poem either with the whole class, in a small group, with a partner, or at home for practice with a family member. This post will guide you on how to host weekly poetry studies in your classroom, and provide mentor texts, ideas, and additional resources to help you do it well!...

Greetings of the season my friends! This post is an updated one that I actually wrote four years ago in December as the sun rose over Bonita Beach in southwest Florida.....a place that my own family has called "home" for the holidays for eighteen years now. Many of my siblings wake up slowly each morning when we gather there, warming their hands around a mug of coffee or cocoa, with books open on their laps.  We were fortunate to be "raised as readers" by our Mom and Dad, and I am here today to share a creative way to help other teachers and parents encourage children to make time to honor and enjoy reading magic at home! Today's idea was inspired by a unique Nordic picture book and an Icelandic tradition that I recently learned about!  I hope that you'll find that it is an easy one to adapt for use at home during this holiday, and then implement in your classroom either before or after your winter break! HOW TO HOST A BOOK FLOOD! ...

Hello Friends! While my reading intervention classroom will be in a new space with a new decor theme this year, the materials I use to help my striving readers develop confidence and fluency while having fun will not change! USE POETRY TO ENGAGE READERS AND BUILD FLUENCY SKILLS Thematic original poems and songs that piggyback off of familiar folk tunes are two of my favorite types of texts to use with my students during any time of the school year.  They are short, rhymed, rhythmic, and repetitive.  They are also full of sight words and a variety of vowel patterns!  In short, they help us practice a variety of important reading skills while having fun! This resource that I created exclusively for this blog hop sponsored by The Reading Crew features four poems about one of my favorite subjects......GNOMES!  They are formatted into a  mini-booklet with coloring pages that your students will love reading over and over again in a large group, small group, with a par......

Puppies. Poetry. Cuteness overload, right? What better combination of two of my favorite things to help my primary grade students practice reading fluency, recognizing vocabulary context clues, rounding up rhymes,  and writing poems of their own! PUPPY LOVE POEMS ...

It's another snowy day here as the month of February begins, and what better way to welcome it than with an eBook created by seventeen of my teacher-blogger buddies?    LESSONS OF THE HEART was a labor of love and is full of free acti vities for you to use in your classroom!   W e hope that you will enjoy it!  Click on the link below the photo to access the eBook pdf through Google Docs!   Each page of the file has a clickable link either on the product picture or the blog button that should take you to the activity file!  Page 16 of the file features my FOREVER FOREST FRIENDS FLUENCY PACK, which is a FOREVER FREEBIE available exclusively through my blog.  As of 2/1/14, a revised pdf was uploaded with corrections and additions.     LESSONS OF THE HEART EBOOK I hope that you enjoy these materials, and encourage you to leave feedback in the comments!  Input on how to add to and improve the resources I create is much-needed ......

Welcome Friends! Thanks for leaping over from The Primary Pack's Lucky Linky to check out my March literacy pack that is full of fun leprechaun-themed poems and writing activities! READING AND WRITING IDEAS FOR MARCH ...

RING IN 2021 WITH   DOLLAR DEALS AND STORE SALE! Hello Friends! It is time to bid goodbye to the old and ring in the new with a Teachers Pay Teachers Dollar Deal Sale sponsored by Shelly Rhees and her Focused TpT Sellers group!  Cheers to helping you purchase what you need for the months ahead!...

Welcome! Waddle right into The Primary Pack  rookery this week and enjoy our explosion of penguin products that we hope will make your classroom a more "polar" and pleasant place to be this month!   I am linking up with Jenn from Crayons and Cuties in Kindergarten and Ashley from One Sharp Bunch to offer a fun freebie that I created a LONG time ago, but that still packs a one-two punch when it comes to a rhyming good time!   Your young readers will love the craft stick puppet patterns included in this pack and can use them to act out the poems about each animal.  I make the poems "pocket-size" by printing 2-4 per page, and keep them on a ring at our literacy stations for easy-access. I also print each poem full-size so that each student can highlight the rhyming pairs of words they find, re-read the poem to a partner, and then take it home to read it again to a parent or sibling for fluency practice! ......

Printing, laminating, copying, collating, and organizing have kept me busy this week as I prepare to meet my new group of second graders on August 21st, and I cannot wait to introduce them to the "Poetry Corner" that I have created for my classroom!  All of the materials that I will use there were designed and compiled by my friend and fellow blogger Melissa of Teacher Treasure Hunter ,  and are "just right" for building fluency, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and rhyming skills all year round.   Melissa's resource includes four sets of seasonal literacy posters that support the Common Core ELA standards for reading and listening to poetry, and can be used in many different ways in grades K-3.  Her collection includes a nice variety of non-fiction and fiction poems, as well as both serious and silly verses. The focus of my product review will be the variety of summer and fall poems that are featured in this resource.......