The Razzle Dazzle Classroom: It's January!!! {Snow, Opinion Writing, Text Features, Bossy R}

Christmas has come and gone! We have a new family member.... His name went from Olof to Rudolph to now Marley...

So Marley it is....

We've been having all kinds of fun with snow this week!!!

We used Whiteout! A Book About Blizzards to explore informational text features!

While reading The Biggest, Best Snowman we learned about a dedication...

Our Scholastic News was PERFECT to explore some other text features. As we explored different text features my students had to give an example of the text feature and explain why the author used the feature.

Right in the middle of our Scholastic News... This happened! And... the kiddos were all kinds of excited. SO..... we stopped what we were doing. Grabbed some black paper and went out to collect and observe some snowflakes!

We finished learning about captions when we came in...

We read this AMAZING book about snow! It gave some really great facts! We also read my Snow PowerPoint that is included in my snow unit!

Then... we made these cute snow globes and wrote informational paragraphs about snow.

This week we also worked on opinion writing.

My kiddos wrote their opinions about the BEST thing to do on a snow day.

Now our bulletin board is super cute and displaying our hard work

This week we also worked on those tricky r-controlled vowels. {This is a FREEBIE!!!}

I put up posters and my kiddos had a blast finding words with bossy r.

These r-controlled vowel fluency passages were great for some extra practice!

We sorted words...

I was so glad to have r-controlled vowel handwriting practice!

And... my r-controlled vowels word work came in super handy for morning work!

I finally have my literacy stations up from my Snow Extravaganza Unit. These stations are perfect for reinforcing vocabulary skills for my higher learners.

I also got out my Ready Set School... stations for my students who need a little more work with some of those basic phonics skills.

One of my guided reading groups is reading The Snow Day From The Black Lagoon. My kiddos always love Black Lagoon books!

Another reading group worked on prefixes, suffixes, and root words. This came from my SNOW literacy stations. My kiddos usually complete these stations independently, but I thought one of my groups could use a little support.

Another group is working on blends... My fluency packets were created for this group! We began with our blend cards. I always hold up a card and my kiddos say the blend. This has been a big help with developing automatic knowledge of the blend.

We worked on some phonemic awareness, and building our spelling patterns! {These kiddos are working on the whole group skill of r-controlled vowels, but also blends in their guided reading group.} Then, we read these fluency phrases. AND.... LET ME SAY.... These passages have been a HUGE help with developing their knowledge of sight words and beginning to read fluently! Each time they read a phrase they check off a box. {They whisper read, so that I can help then when needed.} They do this two times on their own, and on the last time I check them! If they get all of the boxes checked... they get a big star! Yep...they work like crazy for that star. Why? Because a smiley face just isn't as good....