Focus Wall Freebies!

Hi friends!

I have a busy day of laundry, groceries, and cutting out laminating ahead of me and wanted to hop on and show you my newest freebie before getting started on my "to dos".

One of the things I'm super excited about bringing back to my classroom is an ELA Focus Wall.  Teaching two grade levels for the past two years made it difficult to use one due to differing spelling words and ELA skills each week.  So, I had gotten away from a focus wall... but I am SO excited to use one again this year with my 3rd graders.

If you don't use a focus wall, here are some of the reasons why you should... in my humble opinion...
*Everything you are studying for the week is visible to your students
*Your students will come to check and refer to the focus wall during the week (which is mega cool!)
*The focus wall is a fabulous way to immerse your students in ELA vocabulary... words like genre, specific grammar and comprehension skills... those things are explicitly in front of them- and you'll use that high level vocabulary more too with the focus wall there
*It's a great anchor to help your students connect and organize their learning
*Talk about explicit teaching!  A focus wall really helps you "lay it all out there" for your students!

Here's a picture of my old focus wall when I just taught 2nd grade- this one is about three years old:

And here is my new, improved 3rd grade-i-fied focus wall...

Each week the story title, grammar skill, genre, author's purpose, and comprehension strategy changed.  We added spelling and vocabulary words and, with the vocab, I always had students put them in ABC order... which is totally becoming a lost skill, I feel.

So, since I'm going all out with the colors and buntings, I made some new focus wall signs to share with you!  I'll be working on updating the genre, author's purpose, and comprehension strategy signs later on too so that all of my fonts are the same.

Anywho, you can click the picture below to head over to my TpT store to check them out.  This was a free file, but I had lots of requests to add more cards.  The set now has 14 cards and is available for purchase at my shop for just $2.00.