Busy Week & Phoneme Segmentation

Phew....it has been a {BUSY} week! My hubby and I painted my classroom this week and I am SO EXCITED how it turned out. See a preview below. Before my walls were the standard grey color and I wanted to SPICE it up a little this year so I chose Nomadic Desert by Color Place from Wal-Mart. I painted my built-in shelf last year Furry Ottertail {where do they come up with these names?!?}, so I went two shades lighter on the same color family for my walls.

**Terrible "after" picture I know...I will be posting more classroom pictures when it is finished. Our school is shut down for two weeks.                                              

                                             

   












These are the colors that I am using this year...what do you think?

Do your students have trouble with Phonemic Awareness? We have students that come to the middle school that still struggle with phonemic awareness or were never taught how to read using phonics. Our Special Education Department started using Language! by Jane Fell Greene. I LOVE it for the population of students that I work with. We saw HUGE growth and progress with the students and I couldn't be happier! Here is a little tool that I will be using with this program to help with phonemic awareness {I saw something similar on Pinterest, but I have adapted it slightly}. This little "gem" can be used in multiple ways, but here is what I am planning to do with it:
1.) Use each bead color for each sound in the word (students will slide a bead to the left to represent the sound and then slid all beads back to the right to say the word. Example: /c/-/a/-/t/ students will slide 3 beads to the left
2.) Use each bead color to represent prefixes,suffixes, and roots
3.) Use to teach syllables

The best part is I got a BIG bag of beads for $1 at the the dollar tree and I had the string at my house so it is VERY cheap and I can make one for each child to have.


That's all for now...will post some "Pinspiration" projects that I am working on later this weekend!