I know teachers are typically accustomed to sending weekly newsletters home, informing parents of the important news, events, dates, etc. for our classroom. Have you ever thought about sending newsletters to help inform your students' parents about your classroom instruction? Today I am sharing a free download that you could use to help educate parents about your phonics instruction! By helping parents, we enable them to better support their children at home. Equip them wit

If you have visited the TallyTales homepage in the past couple of days, you may have noticed a couple of new resources! These files are entirely free to download, print, share, etc. You can access them in my TPT store by clicking on the images below today! For future access, they will remain available on my homepage as well. Classroom Accommodations for Children with Dyslexia This document that details possible accommodations to consider for an IEP or a 504 Plan for students

Since we all love a good freebie, I thought I would share one of my favorites, available in the Tally Tales TPT store! This one is...

Hello, friends! Today I have a sweet little character to introduce to you (and hopefully, your students/children as well!) Years (and I do mean many years) ago, a colleague shared the concept of a character known as "Mr. BD Eyes" with me. At the time, he did not really have a specific, identifiable image; He was simply a character that I taught my students how to draw whenever they struggled to remember how to write their b's and d's correctly. These letters are so often co

Today, I am sharing a sweet, simple version of a "Never, ever" poster that may be used as a reference poster for fluent reading.  I often discuss "robot reading" with my students. We call the expressionless, halting style of reading "Robot Reading" because, obviously, it sounds more like the voice of a robot than that of a fluent reader. In order to become fluent readers, students must learn to read with smooth, expressive voices -very much as though they are having a convers

Is anyone else a little nervous about our return to school in August??? Given the possibilities of what "school" might look like, I am trying to prepare to maintain as much consistency in my instructional procedures as possible. Today, I want to share a product I have created to use in my classroom when we return to school in the fall. I'm also sharing it as a freebie in case you can use it as well! Typically, I use the Take-Home Read Every Day (R.E.D) Folders as a core com

Today, I am sharing a fun, fun freebie that I created for my own children to use before we went on one of the popular neighborhood "bear hunts" that are helping so many of us get out of the house but maintain a "safe distance" from contacting others. For this neighborhood, residents posted a variety of items - not just bears. We have been on several household scavenger hunts lately, but they were excited to venture out for this one! My five-year-old is fond of lists lately (s

Reading fluency graphs are important - not because we are stressing speed-reading, but because we are highlighting progress. Helping struggling readers see their progress is paramount to their motivation.

If you're wrapping up your school year and looking for a fun way to send your students off into summer, check out my free materials for summer reading book bags... NOTE: This product does NOT contain free books; only the materials for the preparation of the bags. I have stressed the importance with my students of taking time to read during the summer (I know, right...) and it's a bit of a long shot to expect them all to read every day. But I thought that if I gave them an o

These Freebie: Parent Conference Sign-In and Sign Up Pages were created to help teachers streamline and elevate their parent/teacher conferences while keeping clear, organized records.