March is right around the corner and a Freebie!

I have to say the fact that it is March 1st a week from today has really been my motivator all week long!   March always means spring to me (even though it’ll likely stay cold for a good portion of the month)…but March also means it’s almost Spring Break, so woohoo! 

My little friends worked hard all week long with a variety of reading activities, but one thing has become glaringly obvious to me in the last few weeks…my students are MAJORLY struggling with vowels this year.  I’m not sure if I’ve done something differently than I normally do or if i’ve simply forgotten that they always struggle at this time of the year, but regardless, we’ve been introducing long vowel silent e words one week at a time for 5 weeks now and for some reason every single time we come across a silent e word in a story or on it’s own, I still have to say- “what does that silent e make the other vowel do?” AND even with saying this some of my little friends still just give me a blank stare and then just say the short vowel sound! So we review each time what the silent e does, yet three words later in a story I hear myself again saying- “wait, let’s try that again- what does that silent e make the other vowel do??” Anyway, as a result of this I’ve been trying to incorporate a variety of games/puzzles/sorts/etc that relate to vowels into our reading activities with the hope that one of these days they really are going to know what silent e does without me having to ask them! So my freebie for this week is a vowel literacy center with a St. Patrick’s Day theme- in my class we will likely be repeating this center on a weekly basis till St. Patty’s Day rolls around and maybe come St. Patrick’s Day, I’ll be back on here saying we’ve figured the vowels out! (At least I surely hope so!) And don’t get me wrong, I am SUPER happy with the progress my little friends have made, but as we know, they just have to keep on going and I know we will get there with vowels as well…it’s just taking a little…ok a lot…longer! Hope you can use this vowel center for extra practice with your little friends too! 

Check out this freebie here or by clicking the image below!

Happy ‘almost-March’!