Thanksgiving Writing Paper - Lined Paper - Thanksgiving Harvest Theme. Writing paper for your Harvest or Thanksgiving celebration in your classroom. Four different designs. Two sheets have illustration boxes for students to decorate. Clip art includes choice of turkeys, harvest pumpkins, and pilgrims. - HappyEdugator

Vocabulary Builder - Pump Up Your Vocabulary in Ten Easy Steps PowerPoint. Going back to school? Give students vocabulary strategies that will help them build a strong vocabulary for reading and writing. Interactive PowerPoint lesson. Ten vocabulary builders. The ten steps for building vocabulary include: Pronounce words correctly Use a dictionary Use a thesaurus Make word cards Use mnemonics Use context clues Distinguish between multiple-meaning words Learn word origins Study word parts and Distinguish connotation and denotation 33 slides with activities for practice and answers. Materials required: a dictionary for each student or group of students, and 4 index cards for each student.

Watership Down Part III - Vocabulary and Study Questions. This is a two page document that includes vocabulary for each chapter and study questions for Part III (Chapters 30- 38) of the novel Watership Down by Richard Adams. - HappyEdugator

Teaching Literary Devices - Daily Quote Exercises. 50 writing prompts - inspirational quotes for your students to write about. Explanations of literary devices and figurative language (such as similes, metaphors, symbolism, and analogy) used on the first twenty quotes for instruction. Use for daily journal activities. Good discussion starters. Have students copy the quote and paraphrase what it means to them and share. Slides can be projected on an overhead or printed out (you can adjust the size on your printer and print them out on index cards). Many possible uses for this resource. Enjoy! - HappyEdugator

Red Scarf Girl Vocabulary Sheets. 4 weeks of vocabulary based on the novel Red Scarf Girl by Ji Li Jiang. The lists can be projected on your white board, and students can fill in the words on their matching study guides. - HappyEdugator

Storms - Wild Weather Word Scramble. This storm word scramble has words related to storms or precipitation. All the letters in the stormy words have been mixed up, and students need to figure out the correct words in the jumble. Can be used for a science unit on meteorology or weather or to go with a reading assignment. This is a fun sheet to use with any unit on weather, storms, disasters, or as a supplement to a story or book with bad weather, such as The Cay by Theodore Taylor, Stormy Weather by Carl Hiaasen, Star in the Storm by Joan Hiatt Harlow, or Anna, Grandpa, and the Big Storm by Carla Stevens. Twenty words. Key included. - HappyEdugator

Watership Down Part II - Vocabulary and Study Questions. This is a two page document that includes vocabulary for each chapter and study questions for Part II (Chapters 18-29) of the novel Watership Down by Richard Adams. - HappyEdugato

Watership Down Part I - Vocabulary and Study Questions. This is a three page study guide for Watership Down by Richard Adams, Part I, Chapters 1-17. It includes vocabulary words for students to define and study questions for each chapter. - HappyEdugator

Suffixes for Parts of Speech Practice Sheet. After studying suffixes and parts of speech, students can complete this assignment to practice changing words from one part of speech to another, and SPELLING them correctly as well.Includes answer key. - HappyEdugator

William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying - essay test or examination for the novel. Questions are based on Faulkner's life, style, including characterization and organization, themes, symbolisms and ironies. You can choose to have students answer all of the questions or let them select. This can be used as a take-home open book examination. Grading form and answer key included. You can use this for backwards design, and use the answer key to drive your class discussions. - HappyEdugator

Writing: How to Engage the Reader PowerPoint. Focus on writing using three strategies to hook the reader, with examples. These three different writing strategies to engage the reader and create a great beginning for a narrative account can be used to help students overcome writer's block, especially when preparing for state writing tests. For use in a standards-based writing program which supports common core. Includes a slide with several other strategies students can try as well. Updated August 2014 - HappyEdugator

Easter Creative Writing Activity - The Very Large Egg. Especially fun for Easter, but enjoyable anytime. Sightings of giant eggs have been reported in various parks in the country. Students will look at the different photographs of the eggs, and then choose one picture to write about. Encourages students to use their imagination as they answer the questions and write a story that really engages readers. This activity can be done as a whole group, by projecting the photos on a whiteboard, and having the students write individually. Activities can be printed for differentiation. Also can be used in centers and for cooperatvie learning groups. - HappyEdugator

Back to School Labels and Tags - Fish Theme. Fun printable labels and tags for your classroom with a fish or ocean theme. Includes: Beginning of the year activity and bulletin board - five different fish coloring sheets for students to color and decorate for a special bulletin board - We May Be Different Fish, But We All Swim Together. Students write three things that make them special on index cards and attach their colored fish to the cards for a bulletin board display. Gift tags - Attach with ribbon to a small bag of “Goldfish” crackers or Swedish fish, and pass out as welcome back to school gifts. Name tags - these can also serve as desk name plates. Water bottle labels - these can be personalized and put around water bottles for a cute Open House gift idea. These can also be used for book marks or wrist bands. Fish cards - useful cards to write names, letters, numbers, sight words, spelling words, etc. to make flash cards or games like "Go Fish" Enjoy! - HappyEdugator

A Christmas Truce PowerPoint - A Reader’s Theater. 44 slides. You can use this in the classroom or make it into a production for Christmas. This is about the miraculous and spontaneous truce in the trenches during WWI where the British and German soldiers stopped fighting. Listen to the song Christmas in the Trenches, and use it as an introduction. We also connect this to Snoopy and the Red Baron’s Christmas Truce. Play slideshow while students are reading printed cards as a production for parents or visitors. We performed this for parents and invited the VFW to come visit. Includes details on the performance and how to do your own, ideas for backdrop, costumes, suggested music, links, and how to make Snoopy luminaries out of old gallon milk jugs! We ended our performance with everyone singing Snoopy’s Christmas. We did this several years in a row. It turned out to be a great success. Enjoy! - HappyEdugator

Dandelions by Eve Bunting Tic Tac Think. Differentiated assignment menu to use as an extension writing activity for the book. In this activity, students choose a task from each horizontal row. Students have a choice, but will have to make different text connections in each row. In some cases the teacher may want to specify certain tasks for individual students. You may challenge some students to complete all the squares for enrichment. PowerPoint format. You can display on whiteboard or print out slides as handouts. Included is a writing checklist for assessment. - HappyEdugator

Poetry - Writing a Parody Poem Activity - How Doth the Little Crocodile. What is Parody? Students will read the parody poem How Doth the Little Crocodile by Lewis Carroll (from the book Alice and Wonderland) and compare it to the original poem Against Idleness and Mischief by Isaac Watts. Includes guided questions comparing and contrasting the two poems, and a writing activity where students are challenged to write their own parody of a poem. They can then use the Parody Poem Writing Checklist to evaluate their writing. - HappyEdugator

Play Dough Mats - ABC and Numbers. Alphabet and numbers 1 -10. Make play doh, and have fun learning letters and numbers with hands-on play dough mats and edible play dough! Includes recipe directions on how to make edible play-dough, a numbers 1-10 learning mat, a learning mat for each number 1 -10, and a learning mat for each letter of the alphabet. Promotes literacy in math ( number recognition) and reading ( letter recognition). Enlarge, laminate, and have learners make their letters and numbers on the mats. ABC mats have pictures of things they can create to represent their letter as well. Keep play-doh soft in resealable plastic containers or baggies. In summary, you get: Directions for number mats and alphabet mats A recipe for edible play dough 10 Number mats Number mats have numbers represented with apples and fingers 1 mat with all ten numbers 26 alphabet play dough mats Each alphabet mat has a picture with the beginning sound to help with letter and sound association Uppercase and lowercase letters on each alphabet play dough mat - HappyEdugator CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.1b Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.1d Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet. CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.4 Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities; connect counting to cardinality.

Standards Based Narrative Account or Short Story Rubric. Use this rubric for when students have to write a short story narrative. Includes engaging the reader, organization, sensory details, range of strategies including figurative language or dialogue, excludes extraneous information, provides a sense of closure, and conventions. Grading scale included. - Happyedugator

Correlative Conjunctions Study Guide. Study guide and worksheet on correlative conjunctions. Definition, Examples, and practice using correlative conjunctions correctly in a sentence. Subject/verb agreement and pronoun/antecedent agreement using correlative conjunctions when writing sentences. Key inlcuded. Supports common core. -HappyEdugator CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.5.1e Use correlative conjunctions (e.g., either/or, neither/nor).

Standards Based Grading Scale! A 4 point scale for standards based grading to hold students accountable for learning the standards and mastering the content. Works for all subject areas! Apply the grading scale to the performance standards you are evaluating. In color and black and white for easy printing. - happyEdugator