Party Flavors

Last weekend I went to the dollar store to buy some "goodies" for my classroom's surprise box and found these cute items that met my eye right away. They can be used as a reward and also as a learning tool. The students were happy to see new items going into the box. The first item I like to share is the key chain. Absolutely cute! The boys were more interested than the girls.

I selected colors than were neutral, something that a boy or a girl could be happy with and not get tired.

Then, I saw the possibility of turning these key chain into something more practical.
I used round color coding labels to write my students' name and labeled  all of them.

    Then, I attached the ring with their weekly spelling words.

The final challenge and the most important one was when we attached the key chain to one of the

zippers in the backpack.  This was great!! Now I can quickly check at the end of the day who is taking the words home to study.

Also, the words are easy to find the next day before we get ready to do our word work.

Feliz 2015

My dual language students welcomed  the New Year reading in their native language. The well known Puerto Rican poem, "Yo traigo un ramillete," was adapted  and converted into a mini book. The students assembled the pages and colored them.  The sentences are  appealing and easy to remember. They quickly memorized the words and repeated them throughout the day.

Happy 2015

 New Year has brought in a major change to our classroom. We got 10 i-pads. The students are super excited and can't wait to start working with them. The challenge has been to get each unit set up and running. New Year's activities were a big part of our school day.

We used a smart board lesson to learn festive vocabulary.

 The students took turns matching words to pictures.

 They followed directions, listened to the new words, and spelled them.

My 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th graders worked on January calendar math activities.

The math problems come in two formats, PDF and smart board.

  We used both formats in class. We read from the board and the students worked on their individual copies.

 Students took turns to solve the problems on the board.

The final step  was to create a poster to mount the first page of the 2015 calendar year.

Freebies.

The Holiday Season came upon us very quickly this year and I didn't get a chance to announce
some FREEBIES I  had made and posted on TPT. They are all activities for the smartboard.

The Christmas ABC activity has 25 frames or pages. Students will enjoy using season appropriate
vocabulary as they get a chance to review other skills.










There are five words in each activity page
for the students to move around and place in the right order.

For the younger students I include a letter naming and letter sound activity.

In this letter matching activity the trees have been labeled with an upper case letter. The ornaments in the box have been labeled with a lower case letter.

 Students have to find an ornament and match  it to the corresponding tree. Then, they will say the sound the letter makes.

Letter Bingo and Concentration

I hope everyone had a nice and restful Thanksgiving with family and friends.

I wanted to get back to blogging and share some materials I'm using in class to help my students develop vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and background knowledge about common words — many of our ELLs are familiar with the concepts of these words in their first language, but do not know the proper label in English.
These "Bingo and Concentration" units are for every letter of the alphabet. The first bundles are now available, keep an eye out for the rest, which are coming soon.

Students have the opportunity to master between 25 and 30 words per letter of the alphabet when they use this method. The bingo cards come in sets of 20, and there are three different sets to accommodate varying levels of language proficiency.

The Blue Set (beginner level) reinforces beginning sounds and alphabet awareness, and is ideal for kindergarten. The Green Set(middle level) is designed for emergent readers who are starting to associate objects with corresponding words. The Red Set (advanced) is for students who have decoding abilities and are ready to practice their reading skills. I use these cards with the students in 2nd grade and above. At times, I have had the need to use a mix of the cards within a group because of the makeup of the group.

 

As a suggestion, you may want to print two cards per page, as the bingo cards are large.
The Calling Cards also come in three unique sets. Select five cards from the set that you would like your students to practice. Place them in a basket, provide paper, pencils, and crayons, then ask your students to draw a picture of the word you've selected, label it, and color it. The word cards can be used at your drawing and writing center. (I print the picture cards on white card stock and the word cards on colored paper. The color difference makes it easier for the students to turn one word card and one image card together when playing concentration.)

The cards can be used in many other ways as well. Another suggestion is to match the picture to the card depicting its name. It can be done individually or two students can work together to accomplish this task.

In my classroom, I prefer the students use the pocket chart to match up the cards. It is easier for me to monitor the work from a distance when I am conducting reading groups with my other students.

Two to three students could work on this activity at a given time. I set up this activity by sorting 10-12 picture cards and their matching word cards and place them in a Ziploc bag. Then I ask for a volunteer to place the picture cards on the pocket chart. The student that is selected must say the name of the item depicted on the card as he or she inserts them in the pocket. If the student is unable to complete the task, another student takes over until all the pictures are arranged on the pocket chart.

Next, the word cards are shuffled and dealt among the players. Students will take turns matching the word next to the picture until all the cards are matched.

The Vocabulary Builder activities will provide students with the extra practice needed to master their basic vocabulary. Depending on the group I am working with, I use the cards as group activity or individual practice, in an as-needed basis. I keep a copy of each one of these pages in a sheet protector in the 

"___letter" binder.  

I place the worksheet in a basket next to the dry-erase markers.

(My students love these markers. The colors are bright and the built-in eraser is a plus). 

Students have access to the picture cards if needed during the Vocabulary Builder activity. Depending on the student's level of proficiency, they may use the word cards or labeled picture cards.

If you would like to try some of these activities with your students click on the picture below and visit my TPT store. There you will be able to download Letter Aa Bingo and Concentration for free. This preview contains 15 cards per set (full sets are 20).

I meet with my students twice a week in the afternoon to help them with their homework. This year the group is large and the grades are mixed (2nd to 5th grade). Their teachers have been introducing and or reviewing multiplication facts in the class. Many of my ELL students have not had a chance to learn the multiplication facts in their native language and now they are faced with  new mathematical concepts and with  a new language. Last year,because of the special needs of a similar group of students, I created the multiplication watches, something simple, practical and engaging for them to do. The students enjoyed making the watches and had fun doing the activities. They learned math facts and how to skip counting simultaneously.  Their number fluency and their ability to say the numbers in the target language have improved tremendously since we started with the watches.

Each student was given a copy of a watch of the multiplication table they were going to use. I provided them with markers and crayons. They had the opportunity to decorate their watches.

 



 I  laminated the watches and added a Velcro coin to make them stay on the student's wrist. Also, the Velcro provided for the flexibility of reusing the watches as many times as needed. 

The watches were a  complete success. The students enjoyed the activities that helped them memorize the facts. It was amazing to see the efforts my students made to learn the
facts quickly in order to be able to wear "the next number". Looking at the watches they were able to skip count and count back. Besides reinforcing their number skills needed to succeed at their grade level they became more fluent in their abilities to verbalize the name of the  numbers in English.

During the developing stages of the multiplication watches a colleague of mine came to my room and talked to me about the difficult time her son was having learning verb endings in Spanish. I mentioned to her that I was going to adapt the idea of the watch to help her son. I went to work almost immediately, excited and motivated. The -ar verb ending watch was on his wrist by the end of the afternoon.

      I have since made watches for the -ar, -er, and -ir verbs in      Spanish in the present tense.I have now posted them in my       TPT store.

The verb watches come in two shapes, square and round. There are two sets of watches with the vosotros form of the conjugated verb and without the form. Also, I included a set of watches without the English labels "Present Tense", "-AR, -ER, and _IR verbs" as a request from a friend.

The verb watches come with a variety of worksheets to practice present tense conjugations.

 The different levels in which the activities are grouped are an indication of the number of sentences per  group. The activities are the same: the variation is that Level 1 students will be expected to read, and understand 20 sentences. They have to provide the appropriate conjugation of the verbs according to the subject given, The students in the Level 2 will be required to complete only 15 of these sentence, and level 3 students will have 10 sentences to complete in the same period of time.
There are two copies of the same activity, one with the vosotros form and one without it.
The second set of activities is "Quien hace que?" (I don't know how to insert accents)
In this activity the students are asked to identify the subject pronoun since they are given the conjugated form of the verb. After they do so they must translate the sentence into English.
The last activity is "Mas Verbos". Subject pronouns are provided and the infinitive of the verbs to be conjugated. Students must write the conjugated form of the verb according to the instructions.

There is also a set to practice the preterit tense. The imperfect tense set of watches is in the process of being made.