ELA

Find guided reading teaching tips, freebies, centers, and activities for first and second grade! We've got you covered with engaging resources and ideas for guided reading, word work, read alouds, phonics, and more!
Latest ELA Posts

Shades of Meaning & Strong Word Choice

Help early elementary students improve their writing by teaching word choices through integrating shades of meaning. These strategies will help your students grow as writers! Anyone else ever get totally sick of seeing your students use the most booooooring words ever in their writing?? The word choice is just downright

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Digital Phonics for First Grade & Second Grade

With our current pandemic, teaching remotely is becoming very common. Plus, we don’t know how long distance learning will last. So, I wanted to create an engaging way for first grade and second grade students to practice phonics skills. That’s why I’ve designed these digital phonics activities! Even if you’re

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Teaching Students How to Research

Welcome to part two all about teaching students how to research! If you missed part one, I talked specifically about animal research reports. Today I want to share with you one of the ways I taught my 2nd grade students how to research. This method is great to use in

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Animal Research Reports

Teaching students about animal research reports is one of my favorite writing units! It’s the perfect combination of nonfiction reading and informational writing – all in one perfect unit of study! I’ve got so much to share with you that I’m splitting this into two posts! You can find part

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5 Simple Activities to Teach Writing Complete Sentences

When it comes to writing complete sentences, students (and teacher) often find this tricky, frustrating, and just all-around problematic! Today I want to share with you my favorite activities for writing complete sentences so students can write them and start writing strong, detailed, descriptive sentences! Writing Complete Sentences: The Basics

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These reading response activities are perfect for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students. This resource includes monthly menus and generic choice boards. Each choice board and menu includes response ideas, prompts, templates, questions and graphic organizers for fiction and nonfiction journals. You can use these independent printable activities and worksheets daily, weekly, or monthly!

Reading Response Activities

What are Reading Response Journals? Reading response journals and menus are the perfect way to have your students writing about what they read. All you need to get started is a notebook! In this notebook, students respond to books, articles, and texts through writing. What do students write about in

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prepping reading centers

Setting Up Your Reading Centers

Have you ever been to a professional development where you left and felt like you had 1,000 things to do? It’s can be so stressful figuring out how to get your reading centers and literacy stations ready! Recently I spent some time working with a few teachers on setting up

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Organizing Math and Reading Rotations

Are you stressed about organizing your math & reading rotations? When it comes to organizing your math & reading rotations, small groups, and centers, it can get a little overwhelming! Be honest – Do you… Feel lost when it comes to organizing your small groups? Worry about meeting with all

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why you need a focus wall in your classroom

Classroom Focus Wall for Math & Reading

Putting together a focus wall is a great way to display learning, so I wanted to share with you a few tips & ideas on how to put one together to fit your classroom! Why should I use a focus wall in my classroom? I like to think of focus

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Word Work Centers & Phonics Instruction

When setting up your word work centers, there are many different things you need to consider. In my classroom, I want my word work centers to match the phonics skills we are working on. I also think it’s important that my students can do these activities independently! That’s why I

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Sight Word Books

Grab 3 free sight word practice books to add to your word work routine! With 5 sight words per book, students can practice tracing, coloring, reading, and writing those words!

Free holiday math activities

Get 5 math activities including centers, partner games, math crafts, and more for 1st & 2nd grade!