K-6 Literacy Resources for Teachers & Parents
I’ve been learning all about dinosaurs over the past several months, and I wouldn’t say I’ve become a master of the Mesozoic, but I have learned some pretty cool things. It’s probably too late for me to become a Paleontologist, but I really enjoyed writing these rhyming dinosaur poems. Of course, when writing for grades …
I’ve collected plenty of autumn poems for kids over the years, but for teaching phonics, I could never find exactly what I needed. That’s when I first started writing poems with a teaching target in mind. When it came time to write a poem for the au vowel digraph (vowel team), it was a no …
Did you know there are actually three different kinds of compound words? Yup, there are. The Three Kinds of Compound Words: 1. Closed form compound words: Two (or more) individual words combined together that make a new word. (Examples: firefly, football, childhood, schoolhouse, firefighter) Usually, when people are talking about compound words, they are referring …
Whether you are teaching a bubble gum thematic unit or the -ew word family in a targeted mini-lesson, check out this short phonics poem embedded with theses ew words: chew, grew, and blew. This bubble gum phonics poem with -ew words is available as a FREEBIE. It’s part of a much larger collection of phonics …
Going back to school isn’t easy for a lot of kids, but it’s particularly hard for kids who are attending a brand new school for the first time. Being the new kid is just plain hard. Most of the time, I prefer to write lighthearted or funny poems, but I wrote this back-to-school poem because …
What is personification? Personification gives human qualities or characteristics to non-human animals, objects, or concepts. (As a clue, personification has the word person in the name.) We personify a non-human object when we humanize it through words we typically use to describe humans and human behavior. What are some personification examples? Here a (non-human) lighthouse …
First of all, what are phonics poems? They’re simply poems that can be used as good examples (exemplars) to teach specific phonics skills. Why use phonics poems for teaching reading? 1. Phonics poems provide an efficient use of short instructional time: As a reading intervention teacher, I typically had between 15-20 minutes to work with …
Phonics poems help teach short and long vowel sounds Phonics poems differ from other types of poetry because they are written specifically to be a targeted teaching text. They are strategically embedded with words of a certain spelling or sound pattern (such as the long o vowel/silent e) to help teach that specific phonics skill. …