Teaching CVC Words with Games in the Classroom

One of my favorite things about teaching in the primary grades is how much they grow as readers throughout the year! When I taught kindergarten, most kids came in not knowing all of their letters and sounds, much less how to blend them to read a word. But by the end of the year, they were independently reading decodable CVC word readers with ease! It absolutely amazes me every year! As a teacher, it is such a thrilling moment to see how far they've come.

Now that I'm teaching first grade, the beginning of the year is SO different - now I'm starting out the year working on CVC words and word families! The majority of my kiddos this year are at or above grade level, so I've been able to dive right in with some short vowel review activities and literacy centers. I'm going to share some of my favorite strategies and resources for teaching CVC words and provide some simple, low-prep activities that you can implement right away!

One of the best ways to increase student engagement and learning is to have them play games! Kids love to play them and half the time they don't even realize they are working on skills and supplementing their learning. I also love getting kids involved with creating their own activities to help them learn, so here I had my students make their own game to practice one of their Short A Word Families: -ag. At this center, they created the "Bag of -ag Words". Students wrote -ag family words from a list on different paper bag printable pieces.

Then, they cut them out and put them inside an actual paper lunch bag.

Now, they are ready to play the game! Students pull one -ag bag word out at a time and write the word they read on the recording sheet.

To keep with the theme, I implemented other activities that had a play on words to go with the word family we were learning that day. The next game students can create is the "Can of -an Words" game. Students cut on printable lines to create a can that they glue to a piece of paper, cut out words in the -an family, put them inside the can, then pull, read, and color the word they chose. It's a fun way to work on word recognition and fluency!

For the next Short A Word Family, the -at Family, students can create a "Mat of -at Words". Using multicolored squares (love Astrobrights paper for this!) students will write all the -at family words they can think of and glue them in different places to create a colorful mat.

The last activity for Short A Word Families isn't a game, but just a fun little activity that is SO easy to prep. The last word family we learned was the -ap family, so students practiced reading and writing the words by creating an "-ap Family Cap". I just printed the template out on colored construction paper, the students wrote the words out and cut the cap template out, and then I stapled it together around their heads using a sentence strip!

Hands-on activities always make learning so much more fun! I love using these activities during our literacy center time. To add these fun activities to your short vowel resources, click on the picture below to find out more!

Five for Friday 10.16.15

Hey everyone! This has been a super odd week for me with a day off of school, parent teacher conferences, and two half days... but it didn't mean that we weren't just as busy in first grade! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share some of the fun I had this week.

We've been doing a big spider study for the last week and a half and my kids are SO into it. At conferences this week, so many parents were asking about our spider unit because their kids have been going home and telling them all they've learned. I love that! We kicked it off with a little spider graph that asked, "Do you think spiders are cool or creepy?" Note: I did not agree with the majority of my class. ;)

In keeping with our spider theme, we made this super cute Spider Sums to 8 craftivity from Wild About Firsties. We brainstormed all the ways to make 8 as a class and then each student picked one number sense they wanted to represent with their spider legs. 

I guest posted on my lovely friend Mrs. 3rd Grade's blog the other night as part of her 30 Amazing Teachers series and shared about a cute little Halloween gift I'm giving my first grade teammates this week! Click here to see how I put it all together (there's a link to the free gift tag I used from Eighteen25)!

Now that I'm teaching first grade, I'm teaching a lot of sounds, digraphs, vowel teams, etc. that I never had to teach in kindergarten before, so I was lacking a lot of resources to go with those phonics skills and struggling to find any printables that worked for my students. So, I did what any good teacher blogger does... I made my own! Included in this pack are 5 no-prep printables to go with the  -ck ending sound digraph (-ack, -eck, -ick, -ock, -uck). Students will read the words to practice fluency, highlight them in each word family, write and label pictures, read sentences, and write/illustrate their own sentences using -ck words. I tested these activity sheets out with my students and it really helped them with their spelling and fluency because they were interacting with the words in so many different ways. I just uploaded it to my TPT store... click on the picture to find out more!

One of my favorite things about fall is... hockey starts! Hockey is my absolute favorite sport and I root hard for my Coyotes! I got to go to the home opener earlier in the week and had a blast!

I'm so glad Friday has arrived! I am ready for a weekend! Hope you'll link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for more Five for Friday fun!