Daily grammar practice is a tool that helps students practice and master grammar standards. Learn more about grammar spiral review in the classroom.
Teaching grammar and language art skills can be a challenge for anyone. How do you hit all of the skills...effectively? How do you know your students are
This Language Arts Interactive Notebook is filled with over 30 pages of hands-on grammar activities for grades 4-8. Activities including everything from diagramming to figurative language.
Our family's recommended resources for homeschooling third graders. Includes suggested resources for language arts, math, science and social science.
Teaching grammar and language art skills can be a challenge for anyone. How do you hit all of the skills...effectively? How do you know your students are
Worksheets for 1st grade math, first grade math worksheets for free for the basic math topics taught in grade 1.
So you have 100 minutes, but how exactly do you plan and schedule your language arts block for the junior grades?
If you are looking for some high-interest activities, try using animated shorts to teach inference. Free handouts focus on student learning.
39 super fun sentence structure worksheets and activities and sentence building games to get kids excited about language arts!
When teaching narrative writing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, there are so many writing skills to cover. They range from creating a sequence of events (beginning, middle, and end) to more difficult
Analyzing writing curriculums, planning writing workshop and teaching writing lessons can be overwhelming. You might think, how am I going to fit everything in and produce successful writers? Where do I start? What skills do they need? This post will share the 7 BASIC WRITING LESSONS that every teacher should teach! With this basic knowledge, students will be able to perform other writing assignments more effectively. The following skills are not only effective in upper elementary, they are often needed at the middle school level for review or the primary level for differentiation. So yes, every teacher should teach them! If you start with these 7 fundamental skills, it will set the expectations for your writing lessons and assignments throughout the year! Frequently Asked Questions What are the basic skills and what order should I teach them? Sentence Structure 1. Complete Sentences Lesson for complete sentences 2. Fragments Lesson for fragments 3. Run-ons Lesson for run-ons Paragraph Writing 4. Topic Sentences Lesson for topic sentences 5. Relevant Details Lesson for relevant details 6. Transition Words Lesson for transition words 7. Closing Sentences Lesson for closing sentences How much time should I dedicate to teaching these fundamental skills? I recommend one day for each skill. If you spend a whole writing block for each skill, students will benefit from the practice. How do I teach each skill? First: Start with an anchor chart explaining the skill. (See each lesson link above for effective anchor charts.) Second: Provide examples. Students can share examples too! Next: Students should take notes. I love using Interactive Writing Notebooks to take notes. Research supports the use of interactive notebooks through studies on multiple intelligences, the brain and note taking. Here are a few videos to Set Up Interactive Writing Notebooks. Click photo for the Upper Elementary Version. A Primary Version is also available. Then: Identify the skill. Provide practice sheets and task cards for students to practice identifying the skill in sentences and paragraphs. Last: Apply the skill. Students should have the opportunity to write their own sentence or paragraph to apply the particular skill. What if I can't fit the lesson in one writing block? If you can't extend the days to complete them, there are other ways to get the whole lesson in. You can put practice sheets or task cards in a center, or you can have students apply the skill for homework or morning work the next day. What if my students, some of my students, or absent students can't do interactive notebooks? Make a small anchor chart to put in their notebooks with the same information! If you don't have a printable poster, take a picture of the anchor chart you used in class and print them off! I hope you found this post helpful and your students become successful writers this year! Connect With Me! TPT Store Facebook Pinterest My Blog
Kids will have fun looking for nouns all around them in this Grammar Activity for Kids. Simply print the Noun Hunt printable and head out for fun learning.
Free reading comprehension passages for grades 2 - 3
teaching ideas, upper elementary classroom ideas, reading ideas,resources for the upper elementary classroom, teaching grammar, graphic organizers
Cute contraction activity helps children practice identifying contractions with a fun Bingo Game to play and learn!
Back to School is right around the corner for us and I am SUPER excited to kick of this school year with some fun, hands-on and engaging resources for The
I can't believe it's only Tuesday...Seriously? I already feel like I need the weekend for a break. Part of the problem is that it was my ...
Upper elementary classroom tips and ideas with a focus on classroom management, student engagement, & cooperative learning.
It amazes me how much class size affects my teaching and my students. I started the year with 31 students. I just lost my second one at the beginning of this week, so I'm down to 29. I've had 2 kids out all week on long vacations and 2 more out sick. So I've had a class of 25 ALL week!! It's been a big difference. Even though the ones gone are little angels and I still have all the hard ones, it really makes a BIG difference!! Our district and researchers keep telling us that class size doesn't make a difference but I have to beg to differ with them. It makes a HUGE difference in first grade. With a smaller class I can spread myself out more- work with more kids, more often, for longer periods of time. We can get more done- 25 kids take less time to finish an assignment than 31. With all the activities we do in first grade through out the day it can really add up. With less kids, fighting for my attention, I can give more attention to those that really need it. During class discussions, there is more participation by more kids. The shyer kids start to open up. It just feels more like a close knit community rather than a big city. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to teach less than 20. What a dream!! Back to reality. Our school has been doing training in SIOP this year. It stands for Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol. You can find out more HERE. It actually is training in teaching English Language Learner but our school does not have a very high percentage of ELLs. We actually have only 3 out of 180 in our grade level. But the SIOP model is really best practices and a great review in how to teach better. With the new common core our principal thought is would be a great help. We've had to do lesson studies and just finished one yesterday. Our team did ours on Synonyms. It's great to collaborate and work together as a team developing and analyzing a lesson. Here's a practice page we used and a cute song we found. I don't know who to give credit for the song but our kiddos really liked it. Click HERE if you'd like to grab a copy. Hey, believe it or not but it's FRIDAY tomorrow- again! Gotta love FRIDAY! I hope you all have a GREAT one.
These 3rd Grade Word of the Week: Daily Academic Vocabulary Activities are great for morning work and ideal for ESL students or those who are struggling with gaps in Tier 2 vocabulary. Limited vocabulary, especially academic language, can be a huge barrier to student success in middle school. Effectively build your 3rd graders’ academic vocabulary skills in 10 minutes per day with this Word of the Week resource that focuses on building a strong foundation of word knowledge. Available no-prep Word of the Week printables, these simple, targeted academic vocabulary activities focus on critical Tier 2 vocabulary to help transition students from word recognition to application using the framework derived from Marzano's study of vocabulary acquisition. YOUR 3RD GRADE WORD OF THE WEEK DOWNLOAD INCLUDES: • Instructional guide with implementation suggestions • Word list • Word cards for word walls or personal dictionaries • 36 weeks of daily vocabulary warm-ups • 4 Quarterly review quizzes to monitor retention • Answer keys for review quizzes In this Third Grade Academic Vocabulary Resource you'll: ✔️FIND QUICK, EFFECTIVE DAILY PRACTICE TO BUILD ACADEMIC LANGUAGE When used as a daily warm-up, this word of the week resource gives your students a chance to discuss and utilize academic language through the research-based format identified by Marzano and colleagues. ✔️DIG DEEP INTO COMMONLY USED (& TESTED) ACADEMIC VOCABULARY This bundle includes 36 purposefully selected vocabulary words commonly seen on third-grade assessments and academic tasks, and daily practice scaffolds from identification to application and analysis as students build a deeper understanding. Perfect for classroom use, intervention groups, or tutoring. WORDS INCLUDED IN THIS RESOURCE: ✔accurate ✔additional ✔anticipate ✔arrange ✔alter ✔assist ✔classify ✔critical ✔constant ✔construct ✔defend ✔develop ✔disagree ✔exclude ✔identify ✔illustrate ✔impact ✔investigate ✔irrigate ✔justify ✔mend ✔minimum ✔occur ✔peer ✔persaude ✔prior ✔purpose ✔recall ✔recognize ✔repair ✔response ✔request ✔ridiculous ✔scatter ✔similar ✔specific ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's how this Word of the Week Academic Vocabulary Bundle Works: ❏ Monday: Introduction to the word of the week, including part of speech ❏ Tuesday: Define the word & create a non-linguistic representation (visualize) ❏ Wednesday: Identify synonyms & antonyms for the vocabulary word ❏ Thursday: Apply student knowledge through paragraph writing ❏ Friday: Assess student understanding & provide application opportunities Here's why teachers love these novel units... ♥ Thanks so much for this detailed thorough product and for making vocabulary instruction easy! The one word a week format with many opportunities to use and understand the word will definitely benefit my class of ELLs. ♥ I have been looking for a way to help my students have a better understanding of academic vocabulary and this is the perfect resource for that! ♥ Loved using this with my reading tutorial/resource class. It helped break material down to students' instructional level in order for them to understand the basic concept, and from there we were able to increase the rigor! ♥ I LOVE these pages and used these for our "word of the week" students enjoyed completing each daily task as a warm up. I even purchased the same resource when I moved on to teach fifth grade because I found it so valuable to build student's academic vocabulary. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This product is also available for the following grade levels: 2nd Grade Word of the Week: Vocabulary Activities for Academic Language 4th Grade Word of the Week: Vocabulary Activities for Academic Language 5th Grade Word of the Week: Vocabulary Activities for Academic Language 6th Grade Word of the Week: Vocabulary Activities for Academic Language Middle School Word of the Week for 7th Graders & 8th Graders Other Vocabulary Activities Your Students May Enjoy: Math Vocabulary Activities for Word Work or Stations Science Vocabulary Activities for Word Work or Stations Social Studies Vocabulary Activities for Word Work or Stations ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terms of Use: © Rebecca Davies. All rights reserved by the author. These materials are intended for personal use by a single classroom only. Copying for more than one teacher, classroom, department, school, or school system is prohibited. For use in multiple classrooms, please purchase additional licenses. This product may not be distributed or displayed digitally for public view. Failure to comply is a copyright infringement and a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Clipart and elements found in this PDF are copyrighted and cannot be extracted and used outside of this file without permission or license. See product file for clip art and font credits.
Simple tips for improving writing in your second or third grade classroom. These tips are a must if you want better writers!
I have always struggled with spelling, and how to engage students in meaningful activities to practice their spelling words! I have tried just about everything under the sun, from rotating through teacher-selected word work centers, to a free choice spelling menu where students try to complete different activities throughout the week. Nothing seemed to work!
So embarking on this new grade, I didn't imagine quite fully all the new material I would be teaching. Dialogue in writing and how to punctuate it - certainly wasn't something I was expecting. I found these awesome ideas to be very helpful to introduce the concept to my students! First up the Balloon Stickies App: It used to be free, so look for a similar version ( my Ipad is at school so I will try to get the one I used) I got the original idea to use this app from the post over at Finally in First. Basically you use pictures and add text bubbles over the top then add dialogue or wording to the picture! I love the creativity involved and how easy it was to do. Never mind that my picture looks like word vomit :( It was fun to play around with it, and get the grammar mechanics straight so it would help with our writing. Students had a great time exploring this app! Next up, I showed my students this picture I then had them free write a conversation between these 2 animals! We wrote for a designated amount of time using proper grammar rules when using quotations. This also led to an opportunity to talk about "said is dead" and what other words we could use in its place. They thought the picture was HILARIOUS and then I played them the short funny video clip below afterwards (it was Friday....) The video could also easily be tied in with health, cause and effect, and many other reading strategies honestly all while getting a good chuckle. Just cracks me up! What other fun ways do you introduce and teach dialogue for either punctuation or in writing?! What other funny pictures could you use? There has to be tons! I just completed these Halloween Jokes after seeing a similar idea on Pinterest. We turned the jokes into dialogue and then used macaroni for the commas, and quotations marks - GENIUS! it was such a hit! I call that Macaroni Magic right there :) The kids loved the tie in of the jokes and the holiday and it brought a quick close to our activities on dialogue. Such fun practice!!
Wondering how to structure your middle school language arts daily schedule? Here's the planning template I developed to find my ideal stride!
We have all been there (no matter how long you have taught or how well you have planned a lesson). You have just finished a fantastic lesson. Everything went
Last week we started our study of verbs. I have used a few free verbs study packs I've found on TPT to introduce the concept. I love thi...
Supercharge your morning work with I Heart Literacy! Each page features a fun theme so your students will not only be practicing reading and ELA skills, but will also be learning about a curriculum-based topic. A wide variety of Common Core skills are addressed. Try these five free pages for free! Happy Teaching! Rachel Lynette ... Read More about Morning Work ELA and Reading Freebie!
Informational writing can be a very new type of writing for many elementary students in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade. Primary students are usually used to writing in their daily journal or creating fictional
Freaking out over how in the world can you actually use centers and stations in your classroom without being completely overwhelmed? Concerned that you don’t have enough time, don’t know how to enforce student accountability, don’t know what the stations should look like, or panicking that you simply can’t keep up? These are absolutely valid
I made this Subject & Predicate Writing Game from craft sticks as a fun way to show the students that every sentence need a subjects and a predicate. I made the sentence options very simple,
Each Monday we collaborate with our building's new and Dual Language staff members for a professional development session based on what the...
Spelling is a skill that develops with time, teaching and practice. We work hard all school year to build solid spelling foundations in our little learners. To do this, we provide our students with engaging tools that assist and challenge them to be responsible for their own learning. Now’s the time for us to up […]
Did you think teaching students to write would be a snap? I mean, you are a college-educated, certified individual. How hard could it possibly be? Well, it’s a challenge, especially when just starting out. In my classroom,
