Back to School Freebie and NEW Letter-Sound Mats!

I've got a little back to school freebie that I like to use in the first few weeks of school.  It's a back to school poem and cloze activity.  I put the poem under the document camera and we read it every day for a week. We discuss the poem - do a little "close reading", talk about why it says "goodbye old pool", find rhyming words, etc...

{click to download}

 For one of their literacy/word work centers that week I put out copies of the cloze activity that goes with the poem.  These are printed two-to-a page, so I make copies and cut them in half.  I also have sentence strips with the each line of the poem written on a strip and they put the poem together in a pocket chart.

{click to download}

Once students complete the cloze activity, they glue it in their poetry notebook (which is a composition book - this is why they are two-to-a page, to fit in the notebook).  After completing the cloze and gluing the poem in their poetry notebook, they draw a picture to go with the poem.  Here is my example (Don't laugh - I am a terrible artist):

I just finished a new kit for Teachers Pay Teachers!  I will blog more about it later, but here is a little info now:

  This is a 40 page kit with TWO different activities included!

Here are a few sneak peaks from the activities:

and

Best of all, it's only $3.00!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Click on any of the photos to see this at Teachers Pay Teachers.