Who Wants An OCR Freebie? Raise Your Hand and Hit Download!

My district has not purchased a new reading program in many years. So I am faced with the challenge of implementing the Common Core while using the Open Court Reading program in my classroom. Over the years I have worked hard to make this program effective but now I have some new knowledge and will change it to reflect best teaching practices.

The Letter-Sound cards used in this program are quite large and I will not have the wall space necessary to hang them up. What's a teacher to do? Make them smaller and a little bit cuter! I am so happy with the results and decided to give them away as my first BTS Freebie. Does that make you jump up and down?

These cards can be hung up in rows but need to be visible to your students as you refer to them. The best case scenario is to hang them where your students can reach them and use them as an anchor when sounding out words. Some of you might prefer punching 2 holes in each card and stringing them into a banner using brightly, colored ribbon. I would break them up into a few rows if you decide to do this. Cute, right?

You might want to make more than one set of these cards and let students use them in literacy centers. If you are interested in having this freebie you can download it here or click on either picture to access it.

Here are just a few ideas for using these cards:

1. Hand them out to students at your opening. Start singing the chant for these cards and as you sing about each letter the child holding it pops up to show their card. ( Thanks Meredith for this fantastic idea.)

2. Place them within the reach of your students and let your child of the day point to each card as you go through the alphabet.

3. Use these cards for phonemic awareness games recommended in your manual.

4. Hand out the cards and have students line up in alphabetical order.

Make these interactive and students will stay much more engaged!

Stay posted and look for other OCR freebies as we head back to school. If you download these I would really like you to leave a comment and follow me. I hope this helps any new teachers who are getting their classroom ready

Common Core Freebies from Kindergarten Crayons

A New Tradition: Freebie #1

So I decided to post some Common Core freebies to get the new school year rolling and here is a  little preview of  the first one. I want to give them to my followers before the start of the school year so that you can get a head start with your prep. I still get butterflies in my stomach on the first day! Do you?

This is my favorite way to make books. I call it "Stack and Whack" because you stack all your pages, staple them, and cut on the line to make 2 books at a time. A parent can put these together fairly quickly using a paper cutter.

Here are some simple options for filling in this book. Use what you have or just let them color the dots in the ten frame. I just know that some kids struggle with coloring and might prefer using another method to represent each number. 


Does this look like something you might be able to use? It is perfect for meeting the CCSS and children can put manipulatives right inside of each circle to be sure they have the number sense to complete this successfully. This can be done during small group instruction and created again for math workshops!

Do you have any other ideas for filling in these ten frames?Please leave a comment with any suggestions. I will post this book tomorrow for you to download. Thanks for your support and here is the book. I would love for you to leave a comment :)

Fran