Long Vowels - Finally!

I'm so excited - we finally made it to long vowels!  If you teach first grade then you know what I mean!  We open up a whole new world when we introduce long vowels.  There are hundreds of new words that my firsties can add to their repertoire!

Here's what we will be working hard on for the next five to six weeks:

This unit is actually very flexible!  You can use it with your whole class or with small groups.   I really do feel that this can be a great supplement to any reading series.

Here is how we use it in our classroom:

We will spend 2 weeks on long a because it allows us to use everything whole group to introduce before putting all of it in centers.  We really enjoy using the onset/rime cards above every morning for a quick fluency practice.  I reach in and grab an onset stick and then the class reads the real/nonsense words as quickly as they can.  They think its fun that half of the words don't make sense!  We will practice with about 5 different onsets each morning.  It only takes about 2-3 minutes but it is great reading practice!

We use the above worksheets in my guided reading groups.  My firsties really enjoy all the different activities.

I keep all of their fluency stories together in a folder.  I plan on taking a day or two every few weeks to just go back and practice reading past stories for fluency.  I love that can go back and feel successful when reading familiar passages.

I would love for you to check it out!  Just click on any of the above images and it will take you over to TpT so you can see it a little more in-depth.

Have a WONDERFUL week!