Tutoring and Homophone Printables

Hi Friends!! Happy Thursday to you. Yesterday I had an awesome experience with my first day of tutoring. I'm working with grades 2-5 on Mondays and Wednesdays. I am loving it so far! I love that I get to work with some of my old students. The fifth graders were my first kindergarteners!! I cannot believe that those little, bitty babies that walked into my kinder classroom in 2008 are now big, ole 5th graders getting ready for middle school. *tear*

Here's what my schedule looks like: 

I'm busy all day but I have several breaks to grab a snack (important for a pregnant girl!), go to the ladies' or get some materials together. It works out perfect.

For grades 3-5 I'm doing a lot of STAAR readiness. I cannot believe what a huge jump the 2nd graders when they go into 3rd grade...it's mainly math that shocks me. I taught 2nd last year, so I'm very familiar with the standards. As I was working with the third graders on STAAR math problems, I couldn't believe how complicated they can be. I mean...I think even adults would mess up on some of the problems if they weren't really focusing. Here's an example of one: 

"Four third grade students returned their field trip permission forms on Monday, 52 students returned their permission forms on Tuesday, 30 students returned their permission forms on Wednesday, and 37 students returned their permission forms on Thursday. Which number sentence can be used to find the number of students that returned their permission forms before Thursday?" 

Is it me...or is that REALLY long and unnecessarily complicated? The problem I see with the kids is not that they cannot add, subtract or multiply...they are struggling with figuring out what the problem is asking them to do. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about if you teach 3rd, 4th or 5th. My job in the next few months is to get the kids ready for problems like that...so I'll be posting more about that journey as I take it.

I have a 2nd grade group that I'm really enjoying. I loved teaching second grade, it's such an awesome age. I have more creative freedom with this group and I'm really excited about that. Yesterday we worked on homophones. We did an activity from the TPRI (Texas Primary Reading Inventory) website and we recorded in our reader's notebooks. I gave each child a spiral notebook to record all our mini lessons and activities. It's a small version of a reader's notebook just for our tutoring sessions.

The kids worked together to find the homophones and match them (one set is colored orange and the other set is white), then they recorded in their notebooks. (The TPRI activity we used called them homonyms but I actually think that's wrong...I did some research and the words we used were homophones.)

I made an anchor chart we are going to keep in their reader's notebooks.

I also created another sorting activity for practice as well as a practice page. To use the cards, copy one set on colored paper and leave the other set white. The kids then match the homophones in pairs or independently. 

The "Color by Homophone" page is from my Winter Literacy Stations for 2nd/3rd pack.

You can pick up these files in a small freebie here.  Alright friends, that's all I have for today. I need to go do some MAJOR cleaning. The hubster watched Jackson for me last night so I could go to bed early (I mean REALLY early) and I woke up to a VERY messy house. I feel like I need someone to watch my husband while he watches my toddler...is that bad?!?