S.M.A.R.T. Spaces EASY. FREE. EFFECTIVE. Do we have your attention?! We’re here to help you add to this month’s festivities by providing these gift bow Slap/Creep Track cards as a free download! Sometimes as educators this activity can trip us up. We feel compelled to teach, teach, teach all day long. We may even forget that the movement itself is what is stimulating the brain! The cards are meant to direct the student’s eyes from side to side, or one card to the next, as they are creeping. These eye movements help build the foundation, and are a critical component, for reading. So remember, the cards in the pockets of the Slap or Creep Track must be review! The content should be material familiar to all students so they move smoothly through the activity. What if a student cannot call out the material? Tell them to gently slap the card with their hand. We are more concerned about the movement of the eyes than the knowledge of what is on the card. Share any festive cards you are using in your Creep or Slap Track on our Facebook page for others to enjoy! Downloads: Red & Green Bows (PDF) Blue & White Bows (PDF) S.M.A.R.T. at Home Need ideas to keep your child busy during the upcoming holiday break? How about having a screen-free zone where your child can create, imagine, and play! We all can remember the sheer joy of making a fort in our house as children. Maybe your fort was built between the couch and living room chair using the throw pillows, couch cushions, and all of mom’s blankets! Perhaps you used the dining room table as your structure and borrowed some bed sheets from the linen closet to create a perfectly cozy cave. Do you remember how much time you spent in your fort? All day!
Time Saving Tips Organizing seasonal celebrations, squeezing in a holiday gift project, creating literacy centers, grading assessments, teaching subtraction, searching for a lost lunch box, cleaning your desk, hunting for the custodian, buying supplies for your class art project, checking homework, writing next week’s lesson plans, putting a Band-Aid on a boo-boo, attending PLC meetings. Need we say more? Teaching is not a 9-5 job and we appreciate the effort and passion educators bring to their profession and students each day. This month, we are dedicated to helping you implement S.M.A.R.T. with the least amount of prep time possible. Katy, 2nd grade teacher from Janesville, WI, wants to share her Visual Mazes she created for her students. Please enjoy a wide variety of Katy’s December and January themed Visual Mazes and for those of you who are in early childhood, use them as Tactile Trackers*.
Using a clear page protector, Katy puts a Wagon Wheel on one side and a Visual Maze on the other. She adheres a magnet that, not only keeps the vision posters on the lockers, but also makes them easily adjustable to the height of the student. Her second grade students use the procedure of covering the left eye and tracing, then the right eye while tracing, then tracing with both eyes open so this can be an independent activity with a teacher monitoring the group as a whole.
Katy creates several thematic posters each month to keep students engaged in the activity. In addition to the themes, Katy adds 2nd grade concepts into the Visual Mazes. Below is an example using antonyms and homonyms.
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AuthorSCheryl Smythe Archives
December 2024
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