Ultimate Word Work Pack

Click here to check out the Ultimate Word Work Pack!

If you're like me, you are always looking for ways to embed high frequency word practice into everything you do.  The more ways you provide for your students to practice reading, writing, singing, and playing with the words the more opportunities you provide for them to memorize them effectively and efficiently.  

I prefer to use the Fry word lists because they are the 1,000 most commonly used words listed in order of frequency in text.  In 1996, Dr. Edward B. Fry expanded on the Dolch word lists and research.

The first 25 words make up approximately 1/3 of all published items.  The first 100 words make up 1/4 and the first 300 words make up 65% of all written material.  

In kindergarten and first grade children pick up words like little garbage collectors.  My goal is to immerse them in words that will make them the most successful and competent readers possible and in my opinion, the Fry words are the most efficient way to accomplish this.

High frequency words, sometimes referred to as "sight words," are words that do not always sound the way they are spelled so students need to memorize them to become fluent readers.  These words should be recognized instantly by readers.  

We all remember the pain of memorization, my goal is to make memorization fun and engaging by providing a variety of ways for students to practice these words.

The Ultimate Word Work Pack provides teachers and students with the opportunity to teach and practice high frequency words each week in many exciting ways!

The monthly sight word cards can be used on your word wall or to play a several games such as Memory, Swat-a-Word, and Fishing.  Directions for each month are located at the beginning of the pack.  You will also find 3 partner games: Bingo, Battleship, and Snakes & Ladders.  

The sight word song can be sung to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.  There is also a word search for each month!

Here is an example of one of my students singing an old sight word song!

Finally, there are weekly word work pages where students will practice 4-6 words.  Spin*Write*Graph, Read*Stamp*Write, Roll-a-Sight Word, and Graph-a-Sight Word.  

I like to use all of these activities in my literacy centers each month, they provide students will multiple, meaningful ways to practice using the words as they work on memorizing them.  

These words are paced out to match my Kindergarten Homework Menus.  These menus utilize the first 150 Fry words.  I also offer First Grade Homework Menus which cover the first 300+ Fry words so The Ultimate Word Work Pack would help you provide practice for about half of the first grade words as well!

To learn more about high frequency word practice and find some helpful and creative ways to support your child at home please check out this article on Childhood101!

Room on the Broom

So last weekend I was wandering through the children's books in Target looking for book for my friend Rachel's baby shower when I came across Room on the Broom (click here to check it out on Amazon).  As I stood in the aisle reading, idea's came steadily flowing into my head about ways I could use this book in my class.

If you know anything about my digital products you know I stick to games and activities that can easily be incorporated into centers.  I've never tried a book companion before.  I've also never purchased clipart.  I use whatever I can draw out myself.  So this is a whole new venture for me and I'm SO pleased with the way it turned out!

This companion is 46 pages with both literacy and math activities.  Common core standards are included in each section.

The literacy activities include:
-rhyming word game with a recording sheet
-readers theatre with puppets
-2 writing prompts about monsters and friendship
-2 worksheets that include word searches, ABC ordering, and a maze
-2 word building activities

The math activities include:
-place value matching game with recording sheet
-number puzzles students can practice counting by 1's, 2's, 5's, & 10's
-number word matching game with recording sheet

There are 9 separate activities in this packet with multiple versions of several activities to help provide differentiation.  If I were to price out each activity individually they would cost at least $14.00 but you can get them all in this packet for ONLY $8.00!  Please check it out and let me know what you think!

Click here to check out Room on the Broom Companion Activities!

I know I like to test before I invest sometimes so I'm providing you with this story map FOR FREE! Say what?!

Click here to download this story map for FREE!

Finally, I recently set up a Facebook fan page for The Curious Catfish, click here to follow me on Facebook!

Supplementary Worksheets

Teachers are always looking for ways to supplement their curriculum.  Ways to engage their students and provide additional practice with the skills and strategies that they are working on.

I'm not a big fan of worksheets but last year I started making a worksheet each week for my students to do either during skills block, morning work, or as homework.  They practice basic skills like handwriting, rhyming, or ABC order as well as the comprehension skill or strategy that we are working on that week.  Our district provides us with Houghton Mifflin teaching materials so my worksheets are themed around their main stories each week.  I wanted to share a couple of the worksheets I created for theme 1 with you for free!  They are available in my TpT store.

Theme 1, Week 1-Mac the Cat

Theme 1, Week 3-Pigs in a Rig

I will be packaging and posting worksheets for themes 2-10 over the next few weeks.  If you happen to use HM, teach first grade, like jelly beans, and want some awesome supplemental worksheets please check them out in my TpT store!

I just finished editing and posting Theme 2 Supplemental Worksheets!  They are available in my TpT store for $1.50!  Here's a little peek....

Word Family Fishing

Happy Labor Day weekend friends!

How did you celebrate the weekend and enjoy your time off?

I went down to St. Augustine to visit a friend who gets a condo down there for the week around this time each year and I took my Mom to lunch to celebrate her birthday.  There should be a 3 day weekend at least once a month, they're so rejuvenating!  

I also just wrapped up and posted a new fishing game!  Word Family Fish and Sort is waiting for you to check it out on TpT.  

There are 5 fishing and sorting games total, one for each vowel.  Students fish for a word and sort it into the appropriate category.  When all of the words have been sorted they record them on a sorting sheet.

I'm going get these started as soon as possible (will post pic's!) because this is great practice for the beginning of first grade.  Inevitably a few of my students tend to lose a some of their word family and rhyming over the summer.  I'm hoping this practice will engage them as they cement this knowledge.

I will email a free copy of this fishing game to the first 5 people to follow my blog and leave a comment!  Don't forget to include your email address in your post!

That's it for now.  Stay tuned for a couple freebies later this week!

Happy teaching!

Here's What...

Click here to see Blog Hoppin's B2S linky!

Have you gotten your TpT shop on?  I'm still downloading my purchases!  Here's what I got!

Visit Christina's store here!

 I love all of these little flippy books, they are great for introducing or reviewing a new topic.  I've seriously downloaded almost all of these flippy's and my students always love making them!

Visit The 3am Teacher's store here

 I've had my eyes on some of her graphics for a while so I thought I'd download a few for some fishing games I have in mind : ).

Visit A Cupcake for the Teacher's store!

 Sometimes I want to celebrate a holiday with my class and just can't think of an activity that is fun and educational at the same time.  All of her craftivities are phenomenal, check her store out if you're looking for a unique way to celebrate with your students.

Visit Hello Literacy's store here!

 I just stumbled upon Jen Jones at Hello Literacy while I was looking for borders.  She's got adorable border sets for a great price during this Back to School Sale, go peep her out, seriously!

Don't forget to stop by my store!  Everything is 20% off with an additional 10% if you use the code: BTS12 at check out!  Most of my products are in the $2-$3 range regularly so you can get a really great deal on the cutest black and white fishing games ever!

My TpT Store!

Check out my newest addition Long and Short Vowel Fishing.  There is a fishing game for all 5 vowels.  Students "catch" a word using a magnetic fishing pole, determine whether it has a long or short vowel, sort it into the appropriate category, then continue fishing.  When all the words for that vowel are caught and sorted they record their words on the 1/2 page recording sheet!

Visit my store to get your copy of Long and Short Vowel Fishing!

Word Work Fishing Games

I can't believe how fast this summer has flown by!  I've finished ALMOST all of the summer projects I planned, including a few extra's that popped up : ) !

Is anyone else out there trying to relish this last bit of time before school starts?  Yesterday was practically a perfect day.  I went out to the beach to get a basket for my bike, which I will be riding to school this year as I just moved to a home about 1 mile away from the school I work at...I'm gonna be so granola this year!  Then I clocked a couple of hours on the sand and got lunch at Pita Pit...yum!  I got to end the day in my favorite spin class with some really fun peeps!  

As much as I'm clinging to summer I'm also getting really excited about this new year!  This summer I worked on a boatload of new fishing games that I can't wait to try out with my kiddo's!  I've uploaded them all to my TpT store but I'd like to feature them all below, with a freebie, of course!

All of the fishing games below are aligned with common core standards.  They come with teacher and student directions, fish cards with words for matching/sorting, and a recording sheet.  All of these fishing word work games are available for $2.00!

Click here to get Fishing for Antonyms

Click here to get Fishing for Synonyms

Click here to get Fishing for Compound Words

Click here to get Fishing for Contractions

Click here to get Fishing for Homophones

I see everyone doing these great give-away's and it seems like a good way to share your products so I think I'll give this a try.  I just took wrote down a number between 1-20.  The first person to guess my number can choose one of the 5 products listed above for free.  To win you have to be a follower of my blog.  Please include your number, email address and which product you would like in your post!  As soon as someone guesses my number I'll update this post with a picture of the number I wrote down and email the winner the fishing game of their choice!

Finally, a freebie for everyone.  Last year I focused on silent -e words with my word building RTI group.  I made these cards and we used them to play both War and Memory.  While it's pretty basic these games turned out to be a favorite, students asked to play them even after they mastered silent -e.  Follow the link below the picture to download the cards and game instructions!

Relish these last few days and definitely stop by my TpT store on the 12th and 13th for a huge Back to School sale!  More info coming about that later this week!

Click here to get Silent -e games

Word Building...Using Big Words!

I'm very lucky to work with a plethora of phenomenal women and a man or two!  Earlier this year one of the women on my grade-level used our latest test results to split our students up into tiered groups for our tutoring time...formerly RTI...now MTSS, I think...they sure love switching up those acronyms on us every couple years and I can't figure out if I have a hard time keeping up or I just don't really care about all those shenanigans enough to keep up :).  Getting back to what does matter...students were grouped according to their needs as identified by the test and I got the opportunity to work with the word building group.  I checked Making Words out of our professional library and started putting together word building activities and then created a worksheet as a special activity for Groundhogs Day.  My tutoring students enjoyed it so much that I introduced it to my class.  It was a hit with them as well so I developed a little unit of word building worksheet for every holiday that I could think of that occurs during the school year.

Click here to check this book out on Amazon!

Using big words to build smaller ones is not only a fun activity but this book taught me to extend on that by listing the words we build and then separating them into groups like words that begin with 's' or have 'th'.  These skills are meaningful for children in grades K-3 and beyond!  I just posted the Word Building: School Holidays packet on TpT!  Please stop by and check it out!

Click here to go to my TpT store!

Sometimes I like to test things out before I invest so I wanted to provide you with a Back to School freebie to try out with your students!

Click here to download this freebie!

I hope you find this activity useful in your classrooms, I saw a big improvement in my word building group after doing many similar activities with them last year and I'll definitely be using this with my incoming kiddo's starting this August!