A, E, I, O, U- All about Vowels!

1. We had conferences last night till 7:30 and I don’t know about the rest of you but Amanda and I get very slap-happy on these evenings and just really want to sit around and giggle.  Does that happen to anybody else on those long days??

2. I decided to spend a whole lot of my time early on this year reviewing vowel sounds- short and long.   I usually spend a good portion of the beginning of the year just working on short vowel sounds with my 1st graders, but I’m trying to push my little friends along a little quicker this year and as a result have been going over silent e long vowels a whole lot already! Thankfully so far I feel like my little friends have definitely mastered short vowel sounds (almost all of them) and some of them are even getting the long vowels with silent e- woohoo!

Common Core Alignment: 

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3b Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.1.3c Know final -e and common vowel team conventions for representing long vowel sounds.

3. One way I’ve been reviewing vowels frequently in my room is with my Vowels Bundle Pack.  This is a mega pack that has helped me out so much this year! It includes posters, mini posters, centers, printables, assessment, etc! I try to always make sure that not only are we practicing words alone but also in sentences and text so my centers include a combination of all these things.

Posters!

Mini Posters for Guided Reading Groups

Short Vowel Picture and Word Match

Long Vowel with Silent e Picture and Word Match

Short or Long Vowel Sort

Short Vowel Picture & Sentence Match

Long Vowel Picture & Sentence Match

Sorting by Sound: Short & Long Vowels

Printable: Picture & Sentence Match

Read and Find It: Short & Long Vowels

This pack also includes centers for r-controlled vowels & two vowels walking, but my little friends aren’t quite ready for that yet…soon enough though, I hope! You can check out these activities and more in the pack here!

4. Also included in my Vowels Bundle Pack, is a Quick Assessment for short vowels, long vowels with silent e, r-controlled vowels and two vowels walking. To assess my little friends, I have them click through a Keynote (Mac version of Powerpoint) with a short vowel/long vowel word on each page. They read the word and I record what they said on my own computer. I have a file for each of my students and then I just put the date of the assessment and list their total. I also write any notes about how they approached sounding out the words- what they seem to be missing, etc.

5.  I posted last year about how I constantly repeat myself to my students saying, “What’s at the end of the word? What does silent e do?” In order for me to not repeat myself maybe quite as often as I used to, I now just point to this poster and my little friends now know what I’m about to say and say it for me instead!  You can download this freebie here!

Going to go check out other posts who linked up with TBA and DoodleBugs Teaching!