Teaching First: Winners of the Huge Give Away

Hi Everyone! Thank you sooo much for all the wonderful ideas for books and movies to read and watch! I rented War Horse and loved it!! I also started reading "I Love Letters" by Jean Feldman and Holly Karapetkova, and "No More Letter of the Week" by Pat Lusche!

Both of these books are wonderful resources for the beginning of the year and for teaching letter names and sounds. I love the the Sounds in Actions page in No More Letter of the Week. If you have ever used Jolly Phonics (popular in the U.K.) it is almost identical. It provides a hand action for each letter sound. I have used Jolly Phonics in my classroom for several years to teach the sounds of the alphabet and my students learn them and retain the sound much better than just associating the letter sound with a picture.

For example, the sound /r/ is made by putting your hands up like claws by your mouth and growling like a dog, or the sound /n/ is made by putting your arms out straight to the side like an airplane. After the initial sounds are taught, the we practice spelling basic cvc words with the actions, and so on. For the entire list of sound symbol actions from Jolly Phonics click here.

Thanks so much for all the well wishes for my recovery from neck surgery. It has been a "pain in the neck" but I am recovering well. I think I sleep about 3/4 of the day away, but I guess that's a good thing! I am still in a lot of pain from neck surgery and wearing my lovely neck brace 24/7. Can I just say how crazy it is to sleep in this thing!!

But, it is Saturday and I am so excited to announce the big winners of my give away!!

Congratulations to Winner #1 Nicole Shelby!! She wins $25 worth of packets from my TpT store!