Common Core and More

I have been super busy at work in my little teacher workshop (which also doubles as my dining room table) on a few new projects that I'm excited to share with you!

First up is my March Printables Pack. I started making these back in October and they've really evolved! This month's pack is full of all things spring and St. Patty's Day. I've included some of the same activities that I've gotten great feedback on, like the calendar page and wall of words. There's also a fun writing activity and addition and subtraction practice which should mirror what second and certainly third graders are doing right about now. In total, there are 19 pages of printable goodies for you! Each page has the CCSS for 1, 2 and 3 as appropriate right on the page to help you with planning purposes and of course all answer keys are included. It's on sale through tonight. Just click HERE to check it out.

And now for a project that I have been working on non-stop, every day, all night and each weekend day straight for at least the last month. It's an updated version of my Weekly Word Wizards. I changed the name to Second Grade Common Core Weekly Word Work for a few reasons. For one, I wanted it to be more obvious to people what they were looking at. Word Wizard sounded fun to me and I had the cute little wizard graphic, but it wasn't very descriptive. Secondly, I've had to make a second set of Word Wizards without the wizards because the element of magic involved in the wizard was not acceptable at some schools. That was actually surprising to me at first, but I can understand it and I really didn't have a problem making a modification like that.

I would also get lots of questions about what grade level the Word Wizards were for and if they were Common Core aligned. Truth be told, the original set was made before CCSS was the big buzzword and although lots the skills were the same, the way they were presented needed to shift more in line with common core. For example, the way prefixes and suffixes were addressed in the Word Wizard sets was just to have students identify which part of the word was an affix and which was the base word. In this new set, it's presented a bit differently. For example for prefixes the students are asked, "Which word means to read again" and they are given the choice between reread and unread.  Some CCSS were not addressed at all before, like non-fiction text features which now appear in this set. And some skills weren't quite so necessary anymore, like antonyms and synonyms.  Here's a list of exactly what is covered in the new and improved Common Core Weekly Word Work:

 If that's hard to read, just download the preview.

It's in there too along with a free week to try with your class.

With my Word Wizards, I created and released them one set at a time. Every few days I would get an email or question about offering them as a bundle. So this time, I decided to complete the entire set at once and release it as a yearlong unit. I guess doing this midyear isn't great timing - but I've also had a few people ask me about making enough to use daily, so this might help a bit in that area. It's also priced as a bundle. Listed individually, they would be $5.75 for a nine-week set, totaling $23 for the year. This set is listed at $19.50.

If you've been using my original Word Wizards, this might be a nice way to kick up the intensity for the end of the year. The format is the same, so students should be able to transition to it easily enough. I'm working on third grade now and fourth is looking more like a summer project at this point. If you've been using the first grade versions, I think those will be getting a facelift too, but since they are already CCSS aligned, the content won't change at all and you'll be able to just download the update when the time comes. 

Any questions, just ask! Have a fantastic work week ahead :)