Follow this step-by-step lesson plan to teach your students how
The return of the lego self portraits. You've probably seen these/my face floating around Pinterest (or at least I'm told by my fellow colleagues that my face is plastered on Pinterest). The original project I did last year brought some major traffic to my blog. I think part of the reason, along with the fact that legos are just awesome, was that shortly after I posted the project The Lego Movie came out and Lego Mania was upon us. This is probably one of my all time favorite lessons. We cover a lot of information and it is fun, the kids love it and all find some sort of success! The majority of this lesson is done with crayon, a few students did choose to use marker on the background. To see a more detailed description of the lesson go here. I'm amazed as to how much I can see the resemblances in some of the portraits and I can pick out which lego belongs to each student.
Learn about plants with this 80 page botany lesson for kids! Information, worksheets, experiments, and more for elementary age!
Take your word work reading center to the next level with these low prep and engaging word work centers! Plus, learn how to organize and run the word work center!
Help students break the reading ‘code’ with these games for teaching themes in upper elementary.
Grab these states of matter worksheets to learn about solids, liquids, and gases with no-prep printables. Perfect science for kids!
This unit could definitely be done with younger grades, but I went more in depth with abstraction and creating mood in an artwork with 5th graders. I did it with this age because of the time I had with them (five classes) and they had just done something observational, so I wanted them to do something more hands-on. The artist example was Picasso (obviously) and on the first day, before any instruction, the students filled out a see, think, wonder worksheet about this artwork. They filled it out again on the last day for my evidence of student learning. On the first day, we talked about how color can be used to show mood and feelings in a work of art. I had the students pick a mood word from the bucket, which they had to paint non-objectively. Later, the students had to guess the mood that was painted. (From top left to bottom right: anxious, playful, mellow, jealous, angry, and gloomy). On the second day, the students learned about different ways to abstract an object. They made a few practice sketches (student example above). Then we talked about all the parts on a guitar (using my examples and my ukulele to help them visualize how I abstracted the different parts). Then, they made a larger sketch of what they wanted their final piece to look like (student example below). Lastly, they transferred their guitar's outline onto their final, large paper. On the third day, we talked about tints and shades. The students painted their guitar shape with either a tint or a shade of blue after practicing making a gradient. On the last two days we talked about monochromatic and mixed media artwork. Then they cut paper and news paper to create their guitar parts, adding their strings last. Then they filled out a self assessment and an artist statement about their guitar. Some student examples are pictured below.
These all about me, back to school art activities for kids are engaging icebreakers. Encourage creativity and build community during the first week back
Please Note: All images seen below are of my students artwork only. These photos/lessons are not posted in any particular order regarding the flow of my curriculum. OP ART- “3D PAPER CONE DRA…
Looking for an engaging way to teach upper elementary students word work skills? Look no further than A Teacher's Wonderland Word Work for 5th Grade!
Here are 7 Bible Verse Memory Games that are fun, creative, and unique! Plus these Memory verse activiteis work with any Bible verse.
Free Printable Daily Work For 9/8/2015 4th and 5th Grade I haven’t thought about sharing our daily work with you all but decided someone out there might find use for it as well. These are a f…
Free growth mindset lessons to help your students have a more positice frame of mind. All activities are engaging and quick to prep.
How to use and set up the Growth Mindset Escape Room where students apply skills, solve puzzles, and have fun.
Handy free printable leif erikson for kids worksheet and coloring pages to make into readers to learn about famous early explorer!
Need to help your students get more hands on practice for their vocabulary words? I've got 5 fun vocabulary games you can use right away!
Perspective taking is an important first step in empathy - this post shares about a perspective taking lesson to use in upper elementary
There's a lot of ground to cover when you teach creative narrative writing. Here are 5 creative narrative mini-lessons you should be sure to use!
Students learn how to practice drawing quick rectangular shapes and paint warm and cool colors into those shapes using Paul Klee art inspiration and
Need Wonder activities for your classroom or home school Wonder teaching resources? We have Wonder lesson plans, Wonder worksheets, and more ideas for book projects, kindness activities for middle school, and diversity lessons to make a great study unit for students using both the novel by RJ Palacio and teaching with movies (including the popular precepts project!).
Enhance geography skills with FREE printable 7 Continents and Oceans worksheets for elementary students: maps, facts & more!
These human body for kids activities allow children to learn about the heart, muscles, lungs, 5 senses, bones organs, cells, and so much more!
Kids will be WOWED with this hands-on, fall science experiment where they will explore Why do Leaves Change Color for kids! Fun Leaf Activity!
Kids will have fun learning about other countries, famous landmarks, and geography with this France for Kids FREE Printable Mini Book.
Teaching volume in 5th grade? This post shares tips, strategies and FREE volume resources that focus on calculating the volume of rectangular prisms.
Learn how to plan and manage literacy centers through differentiated instruction activities, rotations, & behavior management strategies.
This fun team-building activity helps students see the beauty in imperfection. It's great for a back-to-school icebreaker!
Geometric Art
With so many types and formats of writing that we ask of students, it can be overwhelming for them to know where to start, what kinds of language to use, and what the structure of
Happy Fall! I don’t know about you, but for me, at this time in the year, the back to school rush of adrenaline has worn off. Students have settled into their classes, behaviors start to escalate and as an art teacher, you’re just plain worn out. But after classes are done for the day, you have to attend to all of the cleaning, organizing, school duties, meetings lesson planning & prepping for the next day. . Art teachers are really AMAZING. The amount of work you do on a daily basis is unreal a
FREE ELA Morning Work Grades 3-5. A LOT of skills in a LITTLE amount of time. The simplest (and most engaging) way to consistently cover critical ELA content in 10 minutes per day. Grab your FREE WEEK to perk up your morning routine now! Enter your information to get your FREE ELA Morning Work for Grades 3-5 instantly!
5th-grade homeschool curriculum resources with reviews. Choose the ones that are a perfect fit for your student. Daily schedule included.
Whether you're a homeschool mom looking for a great book for your 5th grader or a classroom teacher trying to build a great library, finding texts that are engaging and a great fit for your readers can be tough. I've compiled this list of the best books for 5th graders to help save you time and give you a
I have so much to share with you about writing interventions, but first things first: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW BLOG DESIGN?!?!? Please share your thoughts! Every year, I meet lots of middle schoolers who struggle with writing. And every year, I play around with lots of different interventions to meet their needs. Last year, I made establishing sound writing interventions one of my big goals. I spent lots of time (and money!!) on resources that I could use, and by about March, I had something that I thought I was pretty happy with. This year, I'm starting off with those interventions that worked so well last year and I couldn't be happier with the results! In fact, I'm so pleased with how they are working, I feel confident enough to share my practice with my blog readers. I can say that these are definitely KID TESTED, TEACHER APPROVED!! Creating a Time and Space for Intervention within your Classroom I teach by myself. There are no aides, special ed teachers, BSI teachers... just little, ol' me! So, when I want to create and manage small groups, I'm on my own. This is hard. It would be so much easier if there was another adult in the room to help, but there is not, so I just have to deal! It's work, but it absolutely can be done! A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Power of Bell-Ringers. Establishing a quiet and smooth transition into writing class is a great way to get started, but it also provides me with a window of time where I can pull a small group! By mid-October, my bell-ringer time gets extended to 15 minutes. The kids get started immediately and are clear on the expectations during this time. Now the environment for working with small groups is set: the room is quiet and engaged, allowing me to focus my time on the handful of kids in my group. I pull my kids to a table that I have set up in front of our classroom library. I have a "teacher station" at one end where I do my instruction. I usually stream some jazz or piano music during this time so my group doesn't distract the rest of the class. Establishing Interventions In my district, by middle school, there are no longer district-mandated interventions in place. There are no clear resources for teachers to use or personnel to help. So, when we have a struggling reader or writer in 7th or 8th grade, it's the job of the classroom teacher to meet their needs. In my tenure of working with middle schoolers, I've found that there are two types of students who need more support than my writing curriculum provides (and please remember... I am not a researcher/specialist/writer of books/etc. I'm just a teacher, like you, who loves my job, tries to do the best by my kids, and is compulsively reflective about what I see happening... to me, teachers are the best EXPERTS, but I know that we are hesitant these days to trust a "lowly" teacher and rather find ourselves relying on big publishers and educational researchers to show us best practices... I don't have lots of "data" to support what I'm sharing with you... just my actual observations I've made while working with real, live kids in an average classroom setting!!). Type One: Students Who Struggle with Structure The first type of students who need intervention are those who struggle with structure. These are the kids that can't organize their thoughts in a way a reader could follow. They simply write whatever their brain thinks at the time. They can generally stick with a broad topic, but because they are just writing whatever pops into their head at the time, there are lots of places where their writing veers off track and becomes confusing. Here is an example written by a former student struggling with structure: My dog Henry is my most special treasure. He is always there for me whenever I need him in sad times and happy. In many ways, he's my best friend. He has brown fur and a white chest. He is such a good dog to have around when you are sad because he always knows just how to cheer you up. His eyes are brown, like a Hersey bar. His favorite toy is a yellow tennis ball. Once he almost got hit by a car chasing the ball down the street. I have loved him ever since he was a puppy and we first got him. I was only 4-years old when that little ball of fluff was brought home by my parents to be best friends. His soft fur is always so smooth and warm when you pet him while watching TV on a cold night. He is my best friend and that is why he is my special treasure [sic]. This student is clear about his topic - his dog, Henry - but he cannot organize his thoughts. He is thinking about his dog and writes down everything he knows about his buddy exactly as it comes to his mind. Clearly, he has mechanical and conventional skills, and you can see evidence of where he is practicing what we learned in our mini-lessons and from studying our mentor pieces. But, because there is no organization, it is too difficult to follow and all of the skills he has are lost to the untrained, teacher-eye. Kids who write like this need an intervention that focuses on structure and organization. Typically, I LOATHE teaching step-by-step process writing, but in cases like this, I'm left with little choice. The lessons that I put together for kids in need of this intervention consist of learning how to write a well-organized paragraph. Together, we will work on writing topic sentences, creating strong and clear supporting sentences, and finish up with writing a closing that sticks with our reader. My favorite plans for this type of writing come from Michael Friermood. His Fact-Based Opinion Writing products are geared toward teaching elementary students (grades 3-5) how to write a good opinion paragraph, and they are PERFECT for my struggling 7th graders. They also lack a lot of the "cutesy" images that you find with products for this age group, so my big kids don't feel like I'm making them do "baby stuff." (I do not use the stationary he provides for the final writing piece... it's adorable, but it would be pushing in with my kids! So, we just do our paragraph writing in our intervention notebooks!) My plan is to pull the intervention group for one week (at 15 minutes a pop, this comes to 1 1/4 hours of learning). Long before I ever pull a group, I work hard to make sure that my lesson is broken down into five succinct 15-minute increments. Since time is so precious, you need to make sure not one minute is wasted! I can say that it takes me much longer to plan for a small-group lesson than a 50-minute whole-class lesson because efficiency is so crucial. The first few times you plan a small-group lesson, don't be surprised if your timing is mess. It definitely takes practice to be an effective small-group instructor! After their week is up, then I send them back to completing the bell-ringer at the start of class. I will watch them closely and conference with them lots to make sure that I am seeing a transfer of skills. If I don't, then it is likely that I will put them back in an intervention group in a few weeks to practice again. This intervention model will continue all year. Right now, I have 8 intervention students in one writing class, and 6 in another. By the end of the year, those number should reduce to 3-4 and 2-3. Never in all my years of working with small groups, have I had 100% of my intervention students "graduate" from small group. Don't be frustrated if this is the case! If you can improve 50-60% of those kids, then consider that a huge success!! Type Two: Students Who Struggle with Motivation The next group of kids that I work with are those who struggle with motivation. These are the students who complain a lot about not having anything to write about, spend more time doodling or coloring in their notebook than writing, and who will write the absolute bare minimum for any writing assignment. Many times, these kids produce too little for me to gauge whether or not they also need help with structure. But typically, once I can get them writing, they will likely find themselves in a small group for structure work :) Come October, after we've spent lots of lots of time list writing, the kids who are still struggling to get their pencils moving find themselves using a very special Interactive Writer's Notebook called "Musings from a Middle Schooler." This product contains loads of interactive writing pages that will motivate even the most reluctant writers. The pages can be printed out and glued into a marble notebook. (Most often, I'll have the kids create their own... I don't always have them use all the pages, rather I let them pick and choose the ones they like!). Cover Table of Contents page Table of Contents cont. and an "All About Me" page "My Life Story in Two Pages" My Favorite Thing Comics I created this project just last school year and it's been an absolute smash! The kids (especially my boys!) LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! In absolutely no time, they are writing like crazy. And once I can get their pencils moving it doesn't take me long to get them producing some actual pieces. I don't necessarily pull these kids and work with them in a small group. The first few days, we will assemble our books all together at the back table, but then they go right back to the big group. Rather than do the bell-ringer with the rest of the class at the start of the period, they will work in their "Musings" notebooks. Fifteen minutes of that is usually enough to get them into writing mode for the rest of class. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * So, that's how I make writing intervention work in my classroom. Phew!! That was long, folks!! I apologize for my wordiness and I am grateful if you stuck it out until the end! Also, I'm sure that I've left out some crucial details of my practice, so please do not hesitate to ask me any questions you still have! Do you have any good intervention tips or strategies that work for you? I'd love to hear about them. Drop me a comment and share! Happy Teaching!!
elementary art lessons classroom management
Free printable 5th grade minimalist math curriculum that covers the same breadth of difficulty and variety of problems without all the repetition.
