I really like North Lanarkshire's Active Literacy programme for getting kids sounding out and decoding words. After my last couple of years, though, I felt like I needed to be more structured with how I taught Reading Comprehension strategies - and I wanted a 'hook' into them, that kids would remember easily. So I had a look on Teachers Pay Teachers (I'm sorry this isn't a freebie!) and came up with this pack from A Teachable Teacher.

In the pack, she gives each strategy an animal. You can see 'Retelling Rhino' above, and there are 6 more (Picturing Peacock - visualisation, Wondering Walrus - questioning, etc). The pack includes posters for each strategy, smaller versions of the posters (so you can put them on scrapbooking rings, to keep in your reading area, or for each child to have their own) and various structured worksheets that the children can use to help them get started using the different strategies.

In my class, we started with re-telling (so it is up on our wall), and I linked it last week to our writing, as the children retold their favourite day during the summer holidays. This week, I've followed up by having each reading group re-tell their own reading story as our 2nd day 'comprehension' task (I used my Story Maps - click if you need some for your own class).

In the past, my teaching of Reading Comprehension strategies hasn't been as structured as I would like. I really like this little pack, and the kids already remember 'Retelling Rhino' without any problem at all!

As we add more strategies, more posters will go up on the wall. I'm also planning to order scrapbooking rings, so every child can have their own set of Reading Comprehension strategy reminders.

Our Primary 2 (1st grade) teacher and I are both using the same pack. Hopefully, this continuity will boost reading comprehension in subsequent years as well. I love the way the animals are associated with each strategy - such a great way to help little ones remember them!

How do you teach reading comprehension strategies in your class? Are there any specific resources that you use? I'd love to hear new ideas, if you'd like to share!

Here are another 4 packs of picture flashcards/wall words for the phonemes CK, EA (long e sound), AU and EW (click on the pictures above to access the files you want). Hopefully some or all of them will be useful to you!

As I've been making these packs, many of the files have become quite a bit longer than they were originally. Depending on the kinds of words that tend to have a given phoneme in them, I've added 'ing' words, compound words, words ending in 'y', etc, so that teachers have the option of using these flashcards to reinforce different types of decoding strategies, word endings, spelling patterns, etc.

However, when I've personally downloaded free files from the internet, or bought packs on Teachers Pay Teachers, I've sometimes made the mistake of printing everything out, thinking that more must be better.

Sometimes that's been fine - but other times, I've ended up with too many bits and pieces, because I haven't really thought through how I was going to use the resources I've printed out.

Hopefully, with the way that I've organised these files, that won't happen to you! As teachers, we know our own classes. With respect to the different kinds of words in each of the files I've been posting, you'll know whether certain words are too easy, too hard or just right for your own kids. I've tried, as much as possible, to make it so that you can easily print out just the right kind of words for your class, while skipping pages that contain words that are too easy/too hard.

I do understand, though, that sometimes it's nice to print it all out (I suspect that's what I'll be doing!) - and if you choose to do that, the words are already organised by difficulty level for you, so if you don't use the compound words (for example) this year, they are ready to go if you need them in subsequent years.

Now - off to do a bit of 'Back to School' planning! I hope your plans are further along than mine are...

Along with having a wonderful visitor (my cousin) from the States this week, I've been hard at work finishing off Stage 2 and 3 phoneme flashcards/wall words. I just finished them all today (and I must say - I'm beginning to have quite an addiction to cute clipart from Teachers Pay Teachers!). Hopefully this weekend, or perhaps early next week, I'll be able to look into what steps I need to take to convert my Word files into files I can post on the Internet.

If you are working with North Lanarkshire's Active Literacy programme in the Infant department, please do check back!

Only my youngest went into school with me today, but we still managed to get just about everything organised and stored in the proper place. Above is the classroom as it currently is (yeah!). I've had to take a picture, though, as weeks 4 & 5 of the summer holiday are 'deep clean' weeks - so when I arrive back at the end of week 6 to start back to school, all of the furniture will be shoved into the centre of the room. This picture should help me to put everything back where it belongs. It will also remind me that I need to buy one more red utensil drainer/pencil holder for my last table.

In the back corner, I've organised our library. I came home with quite a few books, and I need to take some books from home (Magic Tree House, Flat Stanley, Junie B. Jones) into school. A few labels still need to be made and attached, but it's in fairly 'P3 ready' shape, I think. I'll have to see if I can scrounge a few cushions from somewhere as well.

These will be our reading trays. I normally name reading groups for a fruit, then colour code the fruit to the tray (e.g., red strawberries) to make it easy for kids to remember where to put their reading books and find their writing/reading jotters. Each child will have their own grey tray (below the reading trays). The leftover trays will store various supplies.

We also have a 'Maths Area', which kids will be able to access for supplies/math supports/manipulatives that they might need. So far, there are number cards, playing cards, dominoes, 3 different kinds of dice, buggy rekenreks, number lines, 100/120 squares, counting/connecting cubes and counters. There are also some shape building/tiling games that my P1s loved last year, and that I'm sure will be a favourite of next year's P3s as well. I'm planning to put some magnetic base 10 materials on the small whiteboard, and the cupboard underneath the board holds more maths games. One of the only things on my wall so far are the maths rotation boards (I'm assuming I'll have 3 maths groups, like last year - I guess we'll start with that, and adjust if we need to).

I think I'll use my Ikea Trofast unit (below) for 'Fast Finisher' tasks. I bought this 'All Done! Now What?' set from Miss Kindergarten Love on TPT, and it has lots of different tasks for kids to complete. The Trofast unit should be just the thing to organise everything - and it will be right there, after they hand in their 'Finished Work'.

At the moment, the unit is still filled with various maths manipulatives and literacy games from this past year. Yes, I mixed maths and literacy resources! I imagine that would drive some teachers up the wall. I have to say - I'm not naturally organised, but I'm learning that I need to be to teach. This organisation thing is a work in progress for me, but it's slowly getting there (which is a good thing, as I'm now onto my 4th year of teaching!).

OK - so this is what the classroom looked like when we arrived this morning (as I said yesterday - it always gets worse before it gets better!). You don't quite realise how much stuff you have until you are in the process of moving rooms and reorganising it all.

this proved to be the least popular job on offer, and all three kids moved on to other things. I have a feeling I'm going to need to bring the remaining sets home myself and sort through them while watching something on TV. I briefly considered bringing them home tonight, but couldn't quite work up the necessary enthusiasm!

While the other 3 kids flitted between sorting number sets and various other odd jobs, my oldest patiently worked her way through a TON of cutting out. Here she is, cutting out 'Reading Comprehension Strategy' cards - I now have enough to make reminder sets for every child in my class next year. While she was doing this, a couple of my other kids photocopied and cut out our spelling word homework lists for next year - so all of these pre-prepared literacy resources are sitting in the top of my literacy cupboard, ready to go come August (see the picture to the right). What a great feeling (thanks, kids!).

For anyone who is interested in the reading strategies resource my daughter prepared for me, I am using Reading Comprehension Strategies by A Teachable Teacher. She has turned each strategy into a cute animal (for example, we have 'Picturing Peacock', who reminds us that when we visualise our story, that helps us to remember it). The resource I bought also includes classroom sized posters, graphic organisers for each of the strategies, and photocopiables to use in an interactive literacy notebook. I'm looking forward to trying this out next year with my class - I'll let you know how I get on!

We were in school from just before 10 to a bit after 4, with a break for lunch at Subway/Ashvale in Portlethen. Cupboards and resources are much more organised, and the classroom is looking a bit better. Still more to do (and we haven't even started on the library), but I think I'll give the kids a day off tomorrow. We're planning to watch Jurassic Park tonight in preparation for going to see Jurassic World tomorrow afternoon. Here is a picture of the classroom as we left it this afternoon:

As the year ends, I've been thinking a lot about how I teach number sense in maths. As I've been in Primary 1 (kindergarten) this year, that is my main job in numeracy. I want my kiddos to go up to Primary 2 with a solid understanding of early numbers and how you can combine and take apart numbers in different ways.

One of the resources I've loved this year (and which I think has made a positive difference to the numeracy learning in my class) is dot cards. I first heard about dot cards on Math Coach's Corner, and I bought her dot card set on Teachers Pay Teachers to get started.

Primary ones need lots of experiences counting concrete objects. But you also want them to start being able to subitise - to see groups of objects as a group, rather than having to count each one individually. Dot cards are a great way to develop this skill in a fun way.

As you can see from the side of one of my cupboards below, there are dot card rings available for kids to use in my class. I keep some rings out for the kids and some with me, that I use during our mental maths time. The kids love playing 'teacher' with these rings, and quizzing each other on 'how many dots' they see.

As part of our mental maths at least 2-3 times a week, I use a routine similar to the one found in Number Talks: Grades K-5 - Helping Children Build Mental Math and Computation Strategies. Using one of the sets of cards, I flash a card for a few seconds. My kids love the challenge of figuring out 'how many' when I've told them that they only get to see the card for one second!

When they know how many dots are on the card, they put a 'thumbs up' on their chest (so I don't have hands waving in faces and distracting others who are still thinking). I then have several kiddos tell me 'how many dots' they saw. Once we have several answers (or, when everyone is on the ball, only one correct answer), I get the children to tell me 'how they saw their number'. Hopefully, kids will see groups of dots and be able to add those groups together - for example, in the dot card ring furthest to the left, I'm pleased when my kids can tell me they saw 4 + 3 = 7, although someone else might tell me they see 6 black dots + 1 white dot makes 7 - also great thinking.

I always write up the sums they tell me they see, so we can see how many different ways there are to 'see' the groups of dots. When kids tell me that they counted all of the dots, we write up 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 7. Kids can see for themselves that counting gets the right answer, but that there are faster, more efficient ways to get there.

As I'll be moving to Primary 3 next year, I've been thinking about how to continue to use my dot cards to develop number sense in older kiddos. I suspect that some of my kids will benefit from some of the dot card sets I'm currently using with my almost-Primary 2s, while I'll need to have a think about how to develop subitising skills for older children who are working with larger numbers.