Happy weekend! I am thankful it is Saturday – can I get an AMEN?! This first week back took it all out of me. But I was very proud of my kiddos. No major data drops over break and we had minimal behavior problems. Yay! So – I am super excited to participate in Jessica Stanford’s Magical Product Swap! This was such a fun way to meet other bloggers and check out some amazing new materials!
I was incredibly lucky to be paired up with Melissa of Don’t Let the Teacher Stay Up Late. Her blog is FREAKEN ADORABLE. I am loving her color scheme and banner graphics. Cuteness. I was even more excited to get comfy on the couch and read through her blog. She has taught 1st and 4th grade but is currently a Reading Specialist for grades 3 – 5. She has loads of great reading ideas and interventions. (and since you all know I hate teaching math…) I loved getting some fresh ideas for teaching reading. Check her out:
Melissa was super sweet and let me review TWO of her products! Lucky ducky me 🙂 Her store is full of tons of goodies. She has a little bit of everything that I had a hard time choosing which item to review (but I got two!). I love her Chevron papers too. So cute. I nabbed her freebie chevron pages right away. Check out her TpT store: Melissa’s TpT Store.
First I reviewed Measurement Pack – conversions, games, and sort. I was drawn to this product because I always need extra support on my math instruction (ahem…) and I have one student who is significantly higher than the rest of my kiddos and needs more complex materials. He did so well so this! I highlighted some of the key info as a guide and was very impressed. This product was perfect to introduce this complicated concept. It included a sort, I have, Who has Game, and a review page.
The second product I reviewed was her Winter Literacy Centers. This came at a prefect time since I have been reorganizing my guided reading groups to incorporate more grammar. This set of centers has SO many components. I loved it. I was able to target so many skill areas using these centers and activities. There are 4 comprehension centers to work fact and opinion, cause and effect, main idea, and author’s purpose. And then there are 4 Word knowledge centers to work on prefixes, suffixes, synonyms, and antonyms. She included black and white versions of everything which many printers will appreciate. I will go through the centers and share pics of my kiddos working on them 🙂
Cause and effect: I love that this can be used as just a puzzle but then has the writing and drawing extension activity.
Prefix pet: This was a hard skill but one I definitely need to target more! I love these graphics too!
Author’s Purpose: Another tricky one! But perfect for my highest student who I often don’t have enough work for. I laminated these to use with a dry erase marker.
What’s the Main Idea?: Loved this one! We have been working on it a lot and I like that the details aren’t always obvious. You need to think about it!
Synonym Hats: I love, love, LOVE synonym games. Working on synonyms is great for children with autism because they can equate the meaning of the new vocabulary term with their prior knowledge of the mastered word. Learning definitions can be tricky for our kids due to their language deficit so this gets around that issue perfectly!
Antonym Mittens: Shocking but I also love work on antonyms or opposites! More ways to categorize words and their meaning! I liked that these tasks came with a worksheet.
Fact or Opinion: I laminated the board so we could reuse this one frequently. They had fun with this one because they practiced ‘arguing’ the opinion ones!
Suffix Snowmen: This one was my favorite. I want to make this for all seasonal vocabulary now. My one guy LOVED it. He asked for more. No joke!
I made mini images of her title pages to use as labels as for the baggies. This worked perfectly since then the directions are included:
Be sure to check out some of the other great product swap posts today!
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2 Responses
Thank you so much for the wonderful review! I love how you did all of the pictures and will have to learn how to do that. It was a pleasure working with you, and I’m thrilled that your kids were able to get so much out of the packs!
Don’t Let the Teacher Stay Up Late
Thanks Melissa! Love the centers! This is a really fun product swap 🙂