Teacher Shopping Finds w/Tickled Pink in Primary

This monthly blog post theme is right up may alley because I LOVE TO SHOP! I love scouring The Dollar Tree or the Target dollar spot for deals! Sometimes while I’m walking up and down the aisles, I see something that sparks my creativity and gives me ideas to take back to the classroom. I’ll provide direct affiliate  links to these products when possible to make your shopping a breeze!

The Target dollar spot is the BEST! Look at these drink stirrers that I found this week. These would be perfect for reading pointers!

I also came across these wipe off board games in the Target dollar spot. They have a number sense version so you can work on addition and subtraction. The other versions are for building 3-4 letter words. They come with little square tiles and a wipe off marker! I’m pretty sure I’ve seen something similar to this on Lakeshore, but for way more money!

Ikea is another great place to find good deals. We have decorated a lot of our house from there, but they have great teacher finds as well!  They are actually building an Ikea about 2 miles from my house….this is going to be bad news! I recently found this giant dice at Ikea. How fun would this be to throw in a center or use for a whole group game? If you don't have an Ikea near you, you can buy it online here. 

I found this Leaping Letters game at Kohls over Christmas and knew I had to get it for my nephew. I have seen this at Target and Amazon as well. If you love Amazon like I do, you can find the game here. This game reminds me of Perfection because you only have a certain amount of time to put all of the letters in place before they POP off. It also comes with a list of words so students can build words with these letters as well. We had fun playing this over Christmas!

This next shopping find is actually something I made while student teaching because my mentor teacher had one. All you really need is a glove, some stuffing or cotton balls, and a dowel rod. You can then make a big reading pointer! I decorated mine a bit further with a ring and a watch. J Simply, stuff the glove with cotton, put the dowel rod in the pointer finger, and then hot glue it all shut. I use this for when I read big books and it makes it easier to touch read and reach all of the words. So while you’re out and about, make sure to pick up a pair of cheap gloves.

If you’re like me, I go to school looking all cute, but then halfway through the day, I’m ready to tie my hair up. I ALWAYS have a hair tie on my wrist. I’m so used to wearing one, I forgot to take it off in my wedding! You can see it in my wedding photos. 🙈 Anyway, I have seen these hair tie bracelets on Pinterest and thought they were a great idea. I actually found them a few days ago at Charming Charlie. I LOVE that store! It has a ton of cheap accessories and better yet,  it’s all colored  coded. This is much trendier to wear than just a boring old hair tie. 😉

Finally, one of my favorite things I’ve bought is my personal laminator. I keep this at home to do small projects like this blends/digraphs chart or last minute things I make. I know many people have the Scotch laminator and I’m sure it’s amazing too, but I of course wanted to get a cute, pink one. I found this Swingline laminator and these laminating sheets on Amazon. It also comes in blue, gray, and red. 
Swingline laminator - $21.00
Swingline thermal laminating sheets (100) -$16

If you don’t have Amazon Prime yet, you may consider getting it.  I’m not much of an online shopper, but have really used Amazon Prime alot! It’s only $99 and you get FREE 2 day shipping, so this laminator came speedy quick! They have really good deals too. I’ve gotten to the point where if we are at a store, I check Amazon to see if we can get it cheaper or if the store doesn’t have our size in something. I still prefer to shop in stores, but Amazon is a great alternative. 

Whew, this was a long post! Can you tell that I love to shop? J Hopefully you’ve found some useful ideas.

On Track and On Target {with Tickled Pink in Primary}

At my old school we did Dibels assessments 3 times a year. In Kindergarten, students are tested on beginning sounds, nonsense words, letters, and phoneme segmentation. At the beginning of the year, I would progress monitor my RTI students on letter to help track their progress. I created some Letter Naming Fluency assessments similar format to the DIBELS assessment, so students would learn the format of the test as well. 

You show students the “master copy” of the assessments, and you refer to the ”student packets”. Students will try to name as many letters as possible within one minute. Students just need to say the letter name, not “uppercase A, lowercase d”. They loved trying to see how many they can name before the timer ran out. I typically don't show students the timer so they don't get distracted by it, but I wanted to include it in this picture to show you how I assess them.

I used the same sheet as the students so I could mark out the ones they miss and record their answers. I then kept a graph of each student's progress. This helped me see if they were making progress or hitting a plateau. I let my students graph their results, so they were aware of their progress as well. These assessment and recording sheets are included in my RTI Letter Bundle which has 5 different activities to help students master their letters.

At another school I worked at, they used NWEA assessments 3 times a year. These were computer based tests that gave us benchmark goals and set goals for each students. There is a general benchmark goal for each point of the year. The test results also set a goal for each student based on how they did on the test and how much growth they should make. This way your high achieving students have to make as much growth as your lower students. The test also adapts to your student's skill level and ask harder or easier questions, depending on how they are doing. 

I color coded how my students did on the test. Red would be my RTI students that were really struggling, yellow for students just a little bit behind, green for students on target, and blue for students that are 10 points or more above the benchmark. 

You can grab this NWEA recording sheet for FREE here. It will open in Powerpoint so you can add your own student's names, scores, and benchmark goals. You will receive a sheet for the beginning, middle, and end of the year.