Thinking in Primary

Pin It On February 29th my entire Teachers Pay Teachers store will be 20% off and you can get an additional 10% off by entering the TpT code L2P9Y. Happy Leap Day!

All About Mrs. Kalnicki-Mrs. K. has earrings, Mrs. K is nice to me, and Mrs. K rings the bells ;) Pin It It seems like the one thing that I always struggle with is writing.  I am always looking for new and better ways to teach writing.  This year I am focusing a lot of structure on my  star student writing.   That has been working great.  My kids are writing structured "because" sentences everyday and I see that skill transferring to their other writing as well.  Recently I came across a writing program by a woman in Nevada named  Jodie Black , nice first name, I know.  Anyway, she pulls from Ralph Fletcher and Lucy Calkins, among others. I've not used her entire program, but just recently I started teaching her "All About" posters unit.  Basically my kids are learning to write nonfiction posters.  They write fact sentences (very difficult) onto smaller pieces of paper and then combine them into a poster.  In my class we all wrote an "All About Walr

Pin It So at the start of this year I planned to do Daily Five.  I had read the book several times over the summer and I felt that I was ready.  Then, it was the first day of school and guess what?  I couldn't do it.  I felt like my little babies would not be able to handle it.  So, I set a goal to begin in January.  It didn't take until January.  After 9 years of centers it was time for a change (at least for this class). I started Daily 5 with my class at the beginning of of December.  I followed the book very carefully, but I soon found that one day's lesson in the book often took me 2 or 3 days.  I also learned that sometimes I needed to modify the lessons (just a little) to suit my own needs.  It didn't matter though, because it worked!   We now have 2 sessions.  The first session is read to self and we are up to 14 minutes!  Our second session is read to someone and listen to reading (also 14 minutes).  We do word work and writing as their own thing.  May

Pin It Superbowl Sunday Sale! I hope everybody has a fabulous Sunday!  I was so excited this morning when I opened my email and MY  Skunked  game was listed as a free download!  What a great thing to wake up to!  I also have a sale going on at my  Teachers Pay Teachers  store!  Everything is 20% off until Wednesday!   Some people have requested a master list of the words in the skunked game. You can get that list  here .  I've also revised the game to include blank cards so you can add your own words.  Hope that helps! Thanks for stopping by!  Have a great day!

Pin It Heather's Heart is having just about the most fabulous giveaway I've ever seen.  She's giving a Jack Hartman CD, an adorable shirt from Sewing Sassy, AND 5 of her TpT products!  You don't want to miss this one!