Printing 2 by 1 {Spelling Journals}

Hey guys! I thought I'd share a remake of my SPELLING JOURNALS

I've used these for YEARS. Honestly.  Truly a life saver. I used to send them to our district's print shop to get printed and bound, but over the years, I've started changing how I do them...

Now I print them 2 by 1 and then hole punch them and put them in a 3-pronged folder.

Just in case you need to know how to do it... here's a quick tutorial

First - hit that page thumbnail icon on the top left, so all the pages show up in the sidebar.

Then, hold down the control button and click on the pages you want to print. I happened to only want to print the pages with word banks already on there, but if you wanted both pages, that's cool, too!

Then click on the print icon up top.

THEN... here's where you need to make sure of a few things...

- click on "multiple"

- custom - 2 by 1

- horizontal (or vertical, whichever fits your pages)

- landscape

Then you print them up and hole punch

I print a cover sheet in a different color, so it stands out - since they use their folders for other things too. 

Check out how we use this spelling folder in THIS post. 

Find it in my TPT store HERE

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Making Phonics Fun - Weekly Routine

So each week, we practice our words for the week... the same way each week. Kind of, anyway. It's the same "type" of skill....but it's different activities too.

Here's a run down of our activities:

Monday - Make a List Monday

On Mondays, we talk about our new phonics words...and what the rules are. Then we make a list on the chart paper....sometimes it's a cute picture, sometimes it's a bubble map, sometimes it's just a list. haha. 

Sometimes we make a list from a poem that I found that works for that week's skill.

And then for their seatwork that day, during centers, they make their own lists.  Sometimes it's on a fun craft....

Or maybe they are going to make a list from the poem we did together and then illustrate the poem.

Check out more about my poetry journals {HERE}.

Tuesday - Trade it Tuesday

This is a cooperative group strategy that we use in a LOT of different activities. I'm not really sure what it's called, because I've mixed and matched it. haha.

But they practice reading words with the phonics skills for the week and then trade it and move around to find a new partner.

The cards come from my phonics packs...like this one...

Wednesday - Walk the Room Wednesday

Wednesday's seatwork is to do "Walk the Room" I have a few different activities for this one. Sometimes I will take the cards we did for Tuesday's activity and hang them around the room - and the complete one of the walk the room activities from one of my phonics packs.

Sometimes it's a real/nonsense activity.

Thursday - Think About it Thursday

Thursday is all about them using their brainpower to think about things... like if it's a long or short sound...

or real or nonsense...

Friday - Fix-It Friday

They love Fridays. I make about 7-8 words all scrambled up and they cut them out, one at a time, and unscramble them...then write the words next to it.



I have a whole year's worth of Fix-It Phonics for 1st grade HERE.


A lot of these activities come from either my phonics packs - and I have them for pretty much ANY phonics skill you can think of for 1st and 2nd grade. Here's an example of what is included in most of them. You can check them out {HERE}.

I also do a lot of activities from my Real or Nonsense Packs. I have them for CVC, Blends, and 

Silent E right now, but I'll be working on the rest of the skills... 

I love using these for my RTI groups too!  Check them out {HERE}

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Spelling Journals - a Classroom Life Saver

One of my MUST HAVES in my classroom is our Spelling Journal.

We use it ALL. THE. TIME.

We use to add in our spelling words each week.

We also use it whenever we do ANY writing.

There are 2 different sections in the spelling journal. 

Alphabet words - where there are already sight words and commonly misspelled words written in the boxes and plenty of lines to add your own!

And there's also the "Category Words" section with school words, holidays, and seasons.

I've recently added the Half-size version to the files.

You can either just print the different letters back to back....

Or you can print the blank page on back for more lines to add more words throughout the year.

I absolutely LOVE the Spelling Journals. My kids are trained to come up to me with their journal opened to the page for the word (or rather, what they think is the page for the word) and a pencil for me to write in the word for them. They DO NOT raise their hand to ask me "how do you spell ....??" anymore. I love it!!

There are 2 versions for each size - handwriting lines and regular writing lines included.

Each "letter" has a page WITH the box of words and without the words.

There are also alternate pages you can use that combine some letters (like xyz) and there are also "digraph" pages you can use.

The category pages include:

school

colorsfamilynumberscalendartravelpetscommunityhomefallHalloweenThanksgivingChristmasWinterValentine's daySt. Patrick's DaySpringEasterSummer

Click {HERE} to check it out!

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First Week of the New Year

We had our first week (4 day week) back. I didn't do a lot of "fluff" to ease their way back into it....nope. I went in full force, my friends! ha!

Before I get started with our week though. I want to show you what we did the last week before break, so that they were ready to hang in the hallways when we got back from break. 

We read the book, Dream Snow, by Eric Carle.  Then they picked an animal that they wanted to do in their writing. I talked about they needed to write about for each line....they aren't very good at coming up with their own clues just yet...but if I give them guidelines, they can do it!  What color hair or skin, how many legs, what kind of tail, where it lives, and what it says.  Then they colored their picture. I gave them an overhead sheet to paint and cover their animal with snow and make snow all over the page (like the book). 

I love how they come out!!

You can grab the writing page from Mrs. Bainbridge's blog post {HERE}. 

We also made our New Year's Resolution. I just did a "quick write" and had them choose which color they wanted to glue it to. These writing sheets come from my {Winter Writing Pack}. 

You can check out {THIS} post to read more about my Writing with Rubrics packs.

We finished the first half of 1st grade!! That's right...90 days have gone by. I will say, the change is SO drastic from day 1 to 90 ...and even more from day 1 to 180! It's seriously crazy. I've taught grades 1-5, and this grade is the one where I see the most growth in my students.

This is my math board, my calendar is right to the right of the weather cards. We go through all of this every morning. It takes about 10 minutes to go over the date, weather, how many days of school, the "plus sign" in the 100s chart...etc. I just {pull sticks} and run through it. 

Weather and Calendar Cards//How Many Days Ten Frames

We finished and added in our December page to our {Memory Books}.

I mean...look at the difference in her writing already just since the first week! That's why I love these books... check them out {HERE}.

And I thought I'd show you how were' doing on Individualized Spelling lists we do.  As you can see, everyone is on different words, different lists...but they are moving and grooving!

I pull them back to my back table in small groups to test them. To read more about doing Individualized spelling, check out {THIS} post.

And we started our {Snowman Writing}.  I love the planning page included. They kids are able to really use it and make sense of it. I will come back this week to show you more of the snowman activities we did.

Next week, we're starting my Penguin unit!! I'm so stinkin' excited!!  If you've bought this pack already, make sure you download it again - I've added 40 pages to it! See how I've used this in the past {HERE}.  Check out {THIS} post to see which books I like to use during Penguin week. 

Hope your first week back went okay!

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