Hello Mrs Sykes

Want to boost the vocabulary of your entire class with only a few minutes a day? What if I told you with little prep work! Here's the solution: use the Mystery Word of the Week clues to spark daily discussions of words.

By popular request, the Academic Vocabulary Word Walls are together in a discounted bundle!  As a special thank you for followers who already bought one of the Academic Word Walls, this set is available for an additional discount - only $8 for the set through March 31!   Had an ice day last week, and began printing/laminating small copies of my new Academic Word Wall Bundle (grades 2-6) .  I printed them with 2 pages per page (one of the options you can choose when printing), to create smaller cards to use during word work activities with my 4th graders - decoding multi-syllabic words. ***Confession time:  I actually finished this bundle last week on a crazy ice day... and fully intended to post the Bundle last week... and then the weather became beautiful again, so I went outside instead.  :)  I'm sure y'all understand...   Want a freebie to try in your classroom?   Here's the link on Teachers Pay Teachers:

Phew!  Fin-all-ly I finished my Mystery Word of the Week set for the year .  Check it out by clicking the pic below... ****Update - This set has been updated, again!! If you have already purchased this set, please go back and download again for free from your TPT purchases page!**** Need more Mystery Words?  Here's the beginning of year 2 !! I'm off to answer emails from parents about their green bean's interim reports!  (Can you believe I've already been in school over 4 weeks?!?)  Enjoy!!

Here's another quick round up (in no particular order) of some Amazing Resources for classrooms available online.  Best part of all?  They are all free!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If your class is stuck indoors, no worries!  Hop on over to Adventure to Fitness , and register for a free teacher account.  Mr. Marc guides the class through a dynamic and fun adventure to keep fit while exploring the arctic, the pyramids, or the jungle.  New episodes are added often, and teacher guides are available for each episode.   Be swift, be safe, be adventurers! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ With all of the focus in Common Core on nonfiction text, it can be a challenge to find engaging, age-appropriate materials.   National Geographic Young Explorers has put all of their past issues online for free, and students can explore the articles or even have the articles read to them! ...

Sooooo, I was at a meeting recently where we discussed the upcoming Common Core adoption for our state.   {OK. Side note.  This makes me hyperventilate.  Every. Time. I. Type. This.  We are adopting CCSS next year *without a transition year.*  Worst part?  I'm at a year round school, and we aren't guaranteed to have resources from the state ready in July, since they always target the traditional calendar schools.  This means the beginning of the year information comes out when I'm working on 1st quarter report cards.  OMG.  Breathe in... Breathe out... Breathe in... ok.  That's better.} What does this have to do with the title of this post? You must be asking this by now, and I'm starting to wonder, too.  Oh, yeah.  We were looking at the 2nd grade CCSS objectives and noticed that a great deal of emphasis was put on the tier 2 words for vocabulary instruction.  We had a great discussion, which reminded me o...

My second grade team has been talking lately about ways to expand our students' vocabularies...  Here are several of my favorite Mentor Texts for Vocabulary Instruction : Miss Alaineus a Vocabulary Disaster , by Debra Frasier.  Donovan's Word Jar , by Monalisa Degross Frindle , bu Andrew Clements Fancy Nancy , by Jane O'Connor