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.
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 fall poetry unit utilizing the awesome fall scenes as springboards for brainstorming. Forms of poetry included are: limericks, diamantes, cinquains, haikus, couplets, acrostics, shapes, and free verse.
This unit is a literature study of The Greedy Triangle. In this unit, there are eight teaching and learning activities with opportunities for extending the literature study with eight additional activities. In the reading and math activities, there are approximately sixteen Common Core State Standards addressed and covered in the teaching and learning sequence. There are questions written at the remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating levels of thinking to formatively assess comprehension. There is also a quiz at the end of the literature study to help gauge success in mastering math geometry vocabulary. Your students will absolutely love this literature study!
This timeless Caldecott winner is sure to bring our the imaginations of all of your students. Students absolutely love this story of fantasy and will delight in engaging in all of the teaching and learning activities. In this literature study, you will find a total of twenty-five teaching and learning activities all connected with this great piece of literature! Activities are all correlated to Common Core State Standards. Additionally, there is a formative comprehension check with ten questions. You don't wanna miss this literature study particularly during the month of October while potentially doing a study of "wild things and monsters!"
In this packet of mini-posters, you will find a set of three posters that serve as reference tools for students in aiding in trying to determine the author’s purpose of a specific text! These posters are a perfect fit for a bulletin board and/or right above your whiteboard! You can’t go wrong in displaying these mini-posters in that throughout the year, students are asked to identify and justify the author’s point of view!
This is a set of ten mini-posters each referencing a literary element. The set includes: plot, setting, protagonist, antagonist, narrator, narrative method, dialogue, conflict, mood, and theme. These are great mini-posters for referencing these important parts of a story. They can be used as a bulletin board all year long to serve as an easy reference or placed above the white board for easy reference as well.
In this packet of mini-posters you are sure to find the literary device that you need to use with your students. Specifically, you will find Fourteen Mini-Posters each Depicting a Literary Device to include: alliteration, allegory, irony, personification, hyperbole, imagery, simile, metaphor, idiom, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, pun, and palindrome~ These mini-posters are valuable tools in using on bulletin boards, center rotations, and as reference tools all year long in a language arts classroom! Your students are sure to love them!
Are you working on trying to reinforce nouns, adjectives, facts versus opinion phrases, and synonyms? Is it necessary in your classroom to scaffold instruction in terms of rigor level? If so, this packet is for you and your classroom. This packet contains ten absolutely gorgeous fall scenes from which students can create cinquains. After each fall scene is cinquain pattern one, two, or three. Pattern one tends to be less difficult, patten two follows a parts of speech pattern, while pattern three focuses on syllables. This poetry packet on cinquains is great for whole group instruction, small group instruction, as well as in a poetry center. Students will be very proud of their poetry they create. Upon completion, publish a book of cinquains for fall. The beautiful, fall scences serve as a springboard students’ thinking and constructing. Students might also take the opportunity to recite their poetry to the class and focus on their speaking and listening skills!
This instructional resource is a packet centering around the poem, Polka Dot Pajamas. Children will delight in the rhyme, rhythm, and pattern of this poem. Included are several literacy extensions that reinforce many Common Core State Standards to include choral reading, response and chant, constructing a similar poem, identifying adjectives, and sequencing the events in the poem. There is also a formative assessment with ten statements about the events in the poem for the students to sequence.
This simple comprehension strategy is sure to help each of your students answer open-ended questions. This is a set of three mini-posters each with a component of the comprehension strategy ~~ ANSWER ~~ CITE ~~ EXTEND. Use these mini-posters as references when students are working at constructing answers to comprehension questions with clarity as they make sure that they answer the questions being asked, cite evidence in how they derived their answer, and then finally how they extend their answer to include examples from their prior knowledge and personal experiences! Use these reference mini-posters, they are sure to ACE an awesome response!
This is a packet of six mini-posters which presents six comprehension strategies for readers. These mini-posters can serve as a great bulletin board or placed above the white board for easy reference. Strategies include: making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, synthesizing, and determining importance.
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!
You will not want to miss this resource! In this packet you will find five different templates for opinion/argumentative writing. The templates are themed with candy bars to include: Snickers, Reeces, Almond Joy, Twix, and Butterfinger. Using the templates, students are able to form their opinion of one of the candy bars. Next, they give the first reason for their opinion. Then, they give an example. Next, they state their second reason for forming their opinion and give another example. Finally, they formulate a third reason for their opinion complete with an example. Then, finally, they are to write a final opinion statement. Students are sure to be completely engaged with such an awesome topic. What child does not like any of these chocolate bars… not to mention what teacher wouldn’t enjoy teaching opinion/argumentative writing with such a scrumptious topic.
You will not want to miss this series of packets on the novel, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. In this first packet, you will find a character chart for each of the characters introduced in chapter one. The student must list several pieces of information as they connect deeper and deeper with each character. Also, there are potentially seventeen vocabulary words in this first chapter; therefore, there is a vocabulary template for each of the chosen vocabulary words. Finally, there is a comprehension sheet for this first chapter, which has twelve open-ended questions of a variety of different levels of thinking. This comprehension sheet might be used for a formative assessment/quiz at the end of each chapter.
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 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!
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 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 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!
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!