Using an Almanac Scavenger Hunt. A worksheet activity with ten interesting questions that students should be able to find the answer to in most almanacs. Have students work in pairs, partners, or cooperative groups with a class set of almanacs and look up the information. This is good hands-on practice of research skills. They need to be familiar with how to find information in an almanac. If they can't find the information, of course, a key is included. :-) - HappyEdugator

Punctuation - Hyphens, Dashes, and Semicolons PowerPoint. Interactive PowerPoint presentation with animation and sound. Explains the usage of hyphens, dashes, and semicolons, and then students can practice punctuating the sentences that follow, and checking their answers. At the end there is an answer key to check their work. This can also be played as a game by dividing the class into teams and teams submit their answers-the team with them most correct answers wins! 53 slides. -HappyEdugator

Reading Activities Menu Based on Learning Style. This reading activities menu can be used to accompany any novel, play, or short story. Use for differentiated instruction. The printable handout gives possible project choices for students based on their learning styles: auditory, visual, or kinesthetic. Level of difficulty from easy (light blue) to difficult (dark blue). Students may use this to select book projects based on their unique learning style, or teachers may use it as a guide to making learning style based assignments. Color and black and white versions.

TEST PREP Get a High Score on the Test! ELA PowerPoint. Test prep interactive presentation with practice questions and feedback on superlative adjectives, verb and pronoun usage, troublesome areas for students in middle grades, especially 7th grade. Also, these slides can be used to study and prepare for any state test in Language Arts, and 6th and 8th graders can use it, too. Help students get ready to take a standardized test! Supports common core standards. Updated January 2015 - HappyEdugator

The Cay - Multiple Meaning Vocabulary Game. Play this game before, during, or after reading the novel The Cay, by Theodore Taylor. Using multiple meaning vocabulary words from the novel The Cay, students play a fun card game that makes them read and practice vocabulary words with multiple meanings. - HappyEdugator Directions: 1. Cut out the Blue Vocabulary Cards and print out on cardstock. Laminate. 2. Cut out the individual sentence strips for each vocabulary word. Print out on cardstock and laminate. 3. Game play: 2-4 players. Shuffle cards. Turn over Blue Vocabulary cards so they are upside down in the center of the table. Deal out the sentence strips. The youngest person turns over one of the Blue vocabulary cards. The player who first realizes he has the sentence strip for that card must call out the word and then read the sentence strip out loud. He may then discard his sentence strip, and turn over the next card. Play continues until all the vocabulary cards have been played. The player with the fewest sentence strips left in his hand wins! - HappyEdugator

Back to School Language Arts Survey. Get to know your students when you go back to school. This is a beginning of the year activity to do with your students to learn more about them and their attitutes toward reading and language arts. It's like an anticipation guide for the year! Have them respond to the statements as either true or false or sometimes. This will help you get to know your students better. - HappyEdugator

Hard G or Soft G Word Sort. Is it hard or is it soft? Print out these cards, laminate, and students can sort them into words that begin with hard or soft G. 28 cards - 14 colorful and bright cards of each sound. Includes Center sign, Sorting Mat, and Answer Key and Directions for Teacher. Choose color or white background to save ink. English can be difficult for a young child because some of the letters make a variety of different sounds. It is important that children be exposed to them. The purpose of this activity is for the student to divide these cards into two groups: those with a hard G sound, as in garbage, and ones with a soft G sound, as in giraffe. - HappyEdugator CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.1.3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.1.3a Know the spelling-sound correspondences for common consonant digraphs.

Character Project and Adjectives List. Students create a fiction character for a new story. They must use 10+ adjectives from the provided list to create traits and an interesting personality for their character, and write detailed sentences to describe. Students will also make a drawing to describe what their character looks like. Included is the project handout with directions, an adjective list, and a writing checklist. The adjective list and writing checklist are also useful for any creative writing activity. Great to help students develop a character which they later introduce in a narrative. Supports common core! - HappyEdugator

Spectacular Word Choice Vocabulary Builder - Fall Theme. A Writing Assignment that builds vocabulary on each handout. When you go back to school, these 4 word lists will have students thinking and writing. On each handout, students are challenged with some "spectacular" vocabulary which they will need to define and then produce some original writing using their new found words.- HappyEdugator

The Cay by Theodore Taylor - Hurricane Brochure Research Project. After reading the novel, students will choose an island or region to research and write a hurricane safety brochure for the residents of their selected region. They must include a graph showing the costliest and deadlest hurricanes in history, a paragraph describing the region's history with hurricanes, a resident preparedness list, a checklist for items and supplies needed, a map with an evacuation route, a what to do and what not to do list, and a list of agencies or shelters where residents can find assistance. Includes project assignment handout, grading sheets, peer rubric, tri-fold template, and teacher directions. Enjoy! - HappyEdugator

Writing an Advice Column - Writing Assignment and Rubric. This is a writing assignment where the student has to pretend to be a newspaper advice columnist and respond to a reader's question. A word bank of suggested words will help the writer get started on offering ideas and advice to the reader to help solve their problem. You will get two pages. The first is the student assignment sheet and the second is a rubric for grading guidelines. - HappyEdugator

Reading - Activating Thinking Strategies for Reading. Includes posters for SLANT and SETTING. Twelve simple ideas to help you engage your readers by activating their thinking, connecting to their world, stimulating schema or background knowledge and grabbing their interest. Reading strategies you can really use! These are especially useful for lesson planning in Learning Focused classrooms. - Happyedugator

Common Core Standards for ELA Writing PowerPoint Posters. Common core standards for ELA Writing grades 6, 7, and 8 summarized. Use as WE CAN posters or as a slide show. You can go over the standards with your students, and afterwards you can print out the slides and laminate them to use as a poster in your classroom. Kid friendly language with colorful graphics. The CCSS ( common core state standards ) are the same for 6th and 8th grade, only the level of complexity changes, so feel free to use them for all three levels. - HappyEdugator

Columbus Day Fun Activity Pack. Columbus Acrostic Poem, Writing Prompt, Word Search. Poem Handout, Mak-a-Word, and Fill-in Activity included. Twenty-six Columbus Day related words in wordsearch. October is a fun Fall month, and this is an engaging activity for building vocabulary and spelling skills. Also includes a reading handout of the traditional poem "In 1492" and a Christopher Columbus Fill-In the Blank Activity sheet. You can also use these as time fillers or as a substitute activity. - HappyEdugator

Limericks - Writing Limericks Handout and Activity Sheet. Fun St. Patrick's activity! How to write a limerick! Writing limericks handout explains the possible history of limericks, what limericks are, how they are patterned, and how they often contain figurative language like onomatopoeia, idioms, and hyperbole because they are meant to be funny. Activity includes practice activity with pattern, and writing an original limerick and illustrating it. A fun activity to do on St. Patrick's day, in the month of March, or anytime, really!.

Middle School Writing Rubric. This rubric has four categories...ideas, organization, style, and conventions. There are five possible points in each category, and students and teachers can easily understand what is required. A 20 point scale is easy to translate into a percentage. The rubric can be used for both creative and expository writing. There is a place for students to write their name and teacher's name, and then students can evaluate themselves and turn in the rubric with their work. The bottom of the rubric has room for comments and teacher feedback and grade. Left in editable format for you to adapt to your classroom needs. - HappyEdugator

Halloween Writing Activity for Smartboard. Halloween writing motivator. Five different Halloween characters...vampire, ghost, scarecrow, skeleton, and witch. Students drag the character traits they want for their chosen Halloween character into the box. They then can name their character and in their journal show, not tell, how their character demonstrates the traits they chose. Good Halloween Smartboard activity for the whole group or class, or use as enrichment for a center. You can choose to make one character a day for a whole week. Many character traits to choose from, some will build vocabulary by having to look up unknown words. Supports common core standards in writing. Happy Halloween!

Character Traits Rating Continuum Graphic Organizer. Supports common core. This graphic organizer will have students doing some higher level thinking! Students analyze a character trait as they read a book by placing specific examples or text evidence of that trait from the book on a continuum. For instance, they could rate Brian's survival skills in Hatchet, or Billy's maturity in Where the Red Fern Grows. As they find examples of the trait in the book, they write the page number, a description, and evaluate it. This can be done with a book the whole class is reading with teacher guidance, and then with their independent reading books as well. Supports common core! - HappyEdugator

Middle School Technical Writing Rubric. Standards based rubric for use with technical writing, such as letters, thank-you notes, formula poems, instructions, web pages, procedures, business correspondence, resumes, job applications, and application essays. The purpose of technical writing is to inform, explain, interpret, evaluate, and/or recommend in order to transmit specialized information to a specific audience. This rubric will help middle school students focus on what they need to acheive in order to meet state standards. The rubric has four categories -conventions of language and style, purpose, organization, and development and support of content. Standards-based grade: students will exceed, meet, approach, or fall below standard in each category. Students can self-evaluate their work. Editable for your classroom use.

Easter Activity Pack - Literacy and Math Fun. Print and go. Four different sheets of math word problems, (two addition and two subtraction), ten count the eggs and trace the number word sheets, make an Easter card sheet, an original Easter poem to read, a create a word activity, an Easter word scramble, a jelly bean sort and graphing activity, an Easter maze, a history of Easter (the resurrection) and a history of Easter (bunnies and eggs). Lots of fun for April!- HappyEdugator