Light Up Your World With Hanukkah

This is a new product that I am really excited to present to you. I spent a long time on it since I wanted emergent readers that provided information about the holiday of Hanukkah. I think I pulled it off and I am really happy that it is Common Core aligned. The first book is entitled Hanukkah is Here.

It is important to me that my students be exposed to culturally diverse literature and these books provide them with that opportunity. They will also build academic vocabulary while they practice important foundational skills. The teacher reader is perfect for a literacy station once students have completed their own version. 

The second set of books are for building math concepts and the title is Light the Menorah. Teachers will have a colored version to read to their students and to use as a model during small group instruction. Students work on counting skills, ordinal numbers, and reading number words. This can be challenging for young children but this book contextualizes these numbers so children can make sense of this. 

Are these only useful at this time of the year? No! These have valuable content that children can explore throughout the year. If you want to take a peek at them you will find them here.  Have a wonderful week.

No More Simple Readers... Meet the Challenge!

I hope you have been adding some sparkle to your reading program and now is the time to step it up and bit.

March is here and the year is sliding by. Is it just me or did this happen quick as a snap? Here are some readers that can be used with any program to enhance your small and large group instruction. 

So as I move around my district as a Common Core teacher I have been in many kindergarten classrooms asking them what emergent readers they would like to have. These are four new Sparkle Readers I have created just for them. I have a balance of fiction and non fiction so that our children are building crucial academic vocabulary and knowledge which is age appropriate. These can be found in my TpT store and have sentence builders to go in the pocket chart. Each book has a sentence with a focus on "I like" and then a second one with a repetitive piece. There are a variety of activities provided to keep your students engaged such as word writing, counting by 10's, cut and paste, and working with transition words. Why do I have two lines? Common Core tells us that our children need to build stamina and be challenged! I am taking it up a notch and with repetitive text my ELL's will work on wrapping around which is crucial for first grade. It is March and I need to get them on the path to becoming first graders! No more little foldables... on to the real work of learning to read. Dots are provided to help children track these words as they sweep around the text. Are you up for the challenge? Check them out here!

Another Look At Martin Luther King

Check out these readers I have created to celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday. After reading some of the books that are readily available this makes a nice follow up for students to read. The focus is on the goals students can set for the new year. I have not used these in my classroom but I am definitely going to try it out in the coming week. This is such a nice way to encourage students to set goals for themselves and work hard just like Dr. King. One page has an empty frame which allows students to draw something they hope to accomplish by the end of the year. This is in Teachers Notebook for now because I am having trouble with TpT. I will keep trying and hopefully it will show me some love and upload later. So what is your dream?
Click on Dr. King to purchase these for just $4.00.

            

Finally... Sparkle Readers #6 Are Here

These are my newest Sparkle Readers and they took forever for me to make. I really thought about what kindergarten children need to focus on at this time of the year but I still needed to keep the text simple enough for them to be challenged but successful. We all know how difficult that can be. I also wanted to be careful to sustain a Common Core focus and I think I pulled it off with this set.
There are 4 titles in this set:
This Is A New Year
Winter Teens
This Is The Arctic
This Is Winter
Along with each sparkle reader is a full set of pocket chart sentence builders to teach it whole group or use as part of a literacy station once your students have interacted enough with the text.
I took the text up a notch by giving students two lines to read but I made the second line repetitive. I have content across many areas of the curriculum and the books are very interactive. This is my favorite set and I cannot wait to introduce them to my kindergarten friends so they can use them for their winter theme. The Common Core stresses that we need to challenge (not frustrate) our children with more complex text so I worked hard to create books that met this criteria. Do you need to add some sparkle to your reading program?  Click on this button to go to my store: