I have been in the field of education for 27 years. I love what I do everyday; it is truly a passion and I can not imagine doing anything else! In 2013, I retired as the gifted, special services, and elementary curriculum director for a public school district! I design curricular materials anywhere from Pre-K to 8th grade, and I must say I am partial to classroom/behavior management and English Language Arts.
I have been in the field of education for 27 years. I love what I do everyday; it is truly a passion and I can not imagine doing anything else! In 2013, I retired as the gifted, special services, and elementary curriculum director for a public school district! I design curricular materials anywhere from Pre-K to 8th grade, and I must say I am partial to classroom/behavior management and English Language Arts.
You are sure to enjoy this set of mini-posters to use with your students. As we all know, it is hugely important to continue to work with our students daily on refining their writing skills while also spending time writing for different audiences and purposes. To practice a lifelong skill, teach students the importance of annotating their work when reading and in turn they will better understand annotating when writing. This set of mini-posters all give students important hints and clues of how to read critically and write critically in annotating their work. This resource set includes six mini-posters all providing reference information for you to refer to when teaching annotating!
This is an awesome set of seven mini-posters that will easily fit on a bulletin board or above the whiteboard in your classroom for easy reference all year long! These posters highlight editing and revision techniques that all good and great writers adhere too! As you work with the Common Core State Standards, particularly the writing standards, refer to each of these editing suggestions all year long with your students so that these suggestions simply become habits of mind when they write in any genre and narrative!
Show your students there is more than one way to express their words in poetry! In this packet, you will find eight mini posters each featuring a form of poetry to use when teaching each instructional format. Each poster also has an example of the type of poem explained. Students are sure to love writing these forms of poetry about their favorite topics. As well, this could be converted into a Christmas poetry unit utilizing the awesome Christmas scenes as springboards for brainstorming. Forms of poetry included are: limericks, diamantes, cinquains, haikus, couplets, acrostics, shapes, and free verse.
This is an awesome informational text article on the history of scarecrows and all of the different versions of scarecrows throughout the world. The informational text article is approximately 1,000 words long and includes illustrations to help better explain the text. One illustration includes a caption that can be discussed as a text feature. At the conclusion of the article, there is a formative assessment in the form of a quiz.
This product is a collection of teaching and learning activities for grades second through fifth on the topic of scarecrows. What a better theme than scarecrows for fall learning! This unit includes scarecrow humor, poetry writing with scarecrows, opinion/argumentative writing, informative writing and sequencing in a "how to" piece of writing, designing and publishing a mini-book from "how-to" work to share with younger children orally, categorizing the history of scarecrows, conducting research skills with scarecrows to determine potential problems with the different designs, and reading and comprehending informational text passages in regards to the history of scarecrows! What an awesome fall learning experience for your students during this favorite time of the school year!
This is a resource pack that you do not want to miss! This packet is ten pages long and contains the following activities:
*Sentence dictation with Conversational Candy Hearts
*Estimation
*Finding the Difference
*Constructing a Bar Graph
*Writing a Haiku
*Constructing a Pie Graph
All of these teaching and learning activities are from the central theme of Conversational Candy Hearts!
In this packet, there are eight writing prompts focusing on Abraham Lincoln. There are two prompts on each page and can be easily set up to use in writing centers or in whole group instruction. These are great tools as well for research and investigation. The prompts range from Lincoln's campaign to Presidency to his assassination. They are all somewhat open-ended in nature so that you, as the teacher, can dictate the length. Your students are sure to enjoy them!
As your students prepare to go back to school from the Christmas holidays, this is an exciting resource that your students can make connections with for sure! This resource is an informational text article about the famous iconic series "The Love Boat." This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the show and the celebrations are being kicked off at the Rose Bowl Parade where the original cast members will be on "The Love Boat" float! This article is approximately 790 words long and includes a formative quiz which includes ten questions that range from multiple choice to open-ended formats. This is an awesome resource to review comprehension and get back into school after a long Christmas break!
You will absolutely engage your students with this wonderful informational text article that most every child can relate to. This is an informational text article about the Home Alone mansion being on the real estate market. The article is approximately 680 words long and is completed with several illustrations, including captions, to motivate any reader. At the conclusion of the article, there is a ten question formative quiz that ranges from multiple choice questions regarding vocabulary to open-ended questions which require inferencing and multi-step thinking! You can't go wrong in working on vocabulary and comprehension utilizing this informational text!
This resource is sure to engage all of your learners. They will be most eager to get started on these activities leading to the 100th day of school or… work as many activities as possible on the actual 100th day of school. Activities range from guessing how old the teacher will be in one hundred years, to predicting what their town/city will be like in 100 years. Additionally students are asked to make a list of 100 reasons why they love their school and many other thought provoking, brainstorming, jumpstarting the brain activities in celebration of this big day! This resource is set-up in a power point format so that each activity can be approached on individual days leading up to the event or each activity can be placed in a center unto itself. This resource can be used in such a multitude of different ways! Your students are sure to love these ten activities to celebrate this day of achievement in their school year!
If you are implementing a study of the different traditions of Christmas Around the World, this informational text article is for you! This article is approximately 800 words long and gives information in regards to Christmas traditions in Australia complete with dinner menus, decorations, and favorite pastimes. Additionally, the articles contains several illustrations complete with captions that compliment the text. At the conclusion of the article, there is a formative quiz complete with multiple choice questions as well as open-ended questions regarding the article. The last question is a performance based question where students will create a dinner menu for twenty-five guests based on relevant information in the article. Your students are sure to enjoy this study of Australia!
Your students are absolutely sure to be engaged in this informational text! This is an informative article written about the lighting of the famous Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York City. This article is approximately 934 words long complete with a couple of illustrations to match the text. At the conclusion of the text, there is a formative assessment that consists of an eight question quiz to include questions on vocabulary, comprehension, sequencing, context clues, inferring, etc. This text is sure to engage a room full of readers! A great read for your students!
This is an awesome packet of ten slides to help students with writing skills specifically linking words and phrases in their writing. This is the perfect resource for the language arts classroom when teaching the writing process. This resource can be placed above the white board as a reference tool or on a bulletin board.
Your students are sure to love this resource as they complete a study on the life of Abraham Lincoln. Students are asked to take Abraham Lincoln's name and construct an acrostic with each letter of his name. As well, at the bottom of the printable, students are to create a Haiku and are reminded of the pattern for this type of poetry! Students will delight in decorating their "top hats" and publishing their acrostics and haiku's for President's Day!
This is an awesome packet to utilize to teach opinion writing in grades, three, four, and five. This packet contains seven different sources which all have critical information in trying to formulate an opinion in whether one should buy an artificial tree or a real tree during this Christmas season. Five of the sources are articles from the web and include the following titles: (1) Real of Plastic: Many Consumers Will Be Asking Themselves That Question This Season; (2) It’s Environmentally and Traditionally Wrong to Buy and Use Plastic Products to Celebrate Christmas… Here’s Why?; (3) Dear Earth Talk: What’s Better for the Environment, a Fake or Real Christmas Tree?; (4) Buy a Real Christmas Tree and Support Our Economy?; and (5) Real vs. Fake Christmas Trees: Which is Better for the Environment? Next, there are two other sources which are graphs/charts and include: (1) China Tops in Fake Christmas Trees and (2) Tree Purchases (in millions). Students can critically read each of these sources to help them formulate an opinion. Upon much discussion and examination of each of the seven sources, students then can complete one of the two graphic organizers provided to frame their opinion writing. Both organizers allow the students to provide an opinion based on what they have read. Additionally, they are asked to give reasons and evidence for their opinion. These organizers pave the way for the writing of the opinion piece asked for in CCSS:
(W.3.a,b,c,d) (W.4.a,b,c,d) and (W.5.a,b,c,d).
Your students will enjoy working with the “Daily Buzzword” all year long. Use the mini-poster with the honeycomb to post the “daily buzzword” (vocabulary word for reinforcement). Students should then work through each of the activities listed on each of the mini-posters to include: defining the buzzword, using the buzzword in a sentence, illustrating the buzzword sentence, writing a synonym for the buzzword, writing an antonym for the buzzword, listing the part of speech that the buzzword is mostly used as in a sentence, and then finally illustrate the daily buzzword in general!
This is an awesome list of more than 100 March words to use as a springboard for writing in March. These words will aid in narrative, informative, and argumentative writing as well as poetry! These sheets can be given to each student to place in his/her Writer’s Notebook!
This is an awesome list of one hundred fifty January words to use as a springboard for writing in January. These words will aid in narrative, informative, and argumentative writing as well as poetry! This sheet can be given to each student to place in his/her Writer’s Notebook! This is a tool that is sure to improve literacy skills of students! Have fun!
This is an awesome list of one hundred December words to use as a springboard for writing in December. These words will aid in narrative, informative, and argumentative writing as well as poetry! This sheet can be given to each student to place in his/her Writer’s Notebook!
This is an awesome list of November words to use as a springboard for writing in November. These words will aid in narrative, informative, and argumentative writing as well as poetry! This word bank is comprehensive of the many words that come to mind during the month of November and are sure to get your students' creative juices flowing! There are approximately 50-55 words that spur your students' brains for all kinds of writing-- narrative, expository, argumentative, etc. Use this November word bank for writing, ABC order, poetry, etc. It's uses are only limited by your imagination!This sheet can be given to each student to place in his/her Writer’s Notebook!