Long Vowel Silent E

Over the next few weeks in first grade we will be completely kicking it up and learning so many phonological patterns. The weeks before and after winter break are super serious weeks....despite all the wintery fun and Christmastime anticipation

We started our first long vowel right before break. Long a w/ silent e. We watched this YouTube video to get the ball rolling.

I love this video. The kids love this video. It's really a win-win. Now the video does call it magic e and has a cape. I know that usually magic e has a hat or wand but I stayed consistent with the video. After watching the video we went old school and I had letters on construction paper and we did making words. Each kid held a letter then we read the CVC word. The we acted out magic e coming to help the closed vowel. It was kinda fun. Oh, and of course while we are doing this and being a bit goofy the principal comes and does one of his walk-throughs. But hey, I was teaching the kids were engaged, and it wasn't seat work. Also a win.

If you follow me on the 'gram (that's what the kids call it, right...???) okay Instagram you may have seen that I have been using #SeeSaw and #SeeSawActivities quite a bit. I love them. It saves papers. It's a digital portfolio that I don't have to be in charge of organizing/saving, the parents see assignments in almost real-time (as soon as I can approve them), I can leave feedback, I can differentiate, and I can HEAR each and every child sound out a 'page' of 12 words. Some of the videos are 12 seconds and others 58 seconds..so if I tried to do this one-on-one in class I'd be using valuable teaching time!

Well, as I said those weeks before break were packed full of important phonics. So, I created this to hear each kiddo practice soft g.

click to hear student

Well when we come back we hit the ground running with long i. There were some great freebies for long i work on SeeSaw that were shared by fellow teachers but I like the format above so much I created quick pages for long a, i, o, u. I didn't do long e because I found that there weren't as many e__e words but when e get ready for vowel teams I will be adding some. IF you can think of some first grade appropriate words then please comment below and I'll create a long e page and send you a copy of my pages for free. I had three or four that fit the pattern. 

click any of the previews to check it out on TpT

Silent Digraph Freebie

Hello all! I hope you've had a great holiday break. It's been quite a long time since I've posted but I've still been reading, IGing, and pinning away on Pinterest.

I have such a respect for those bloggers that continually bring us updates, products, life stories, ideas, and support. It takes a lot of your precious personal time.

Here is a freebie for you. We studied silent digraphs. I have an ancient (okay not ancient but definitely outdated by todays powerpoint standards and my capabilities....but if it's not broke ya know) powerpoint that uses a clipart finger to cover up the letter that is silent in a digraph. This is a followup worksheet that's kind of fun. The kids get a kick out of the giant finger on the screen and cutting out the fingers on the worksheet.

{click here}

Feel free to pin! I have some more freebies I've been working on and I'll be back to post them while I"m on break. Hopefully, haha.