Flickr is nothing without you, our community. We want to make sure this community continues to thrive, grow, and inspire, so we've made some big changes.
It has been some time since I have posted. 5th grade is going GREAT! In the past, I have posted more often, but I am one who wants to try things out first, see how they work, and then give you all the
Graphic organizers are an essential tool for differentiating and supporting all students in your classroom. This pack includes 100 graphic organizers that can be used with any fiction books or reading passages. If you are looking for a paper and digital version, click here! This resource is packed full of a wide variety graphic organizers to practice skills and strategies needed while reading fiction! These organizers have been thoughtfully aligned to the ELA Common Core for Grades 1-6. Take a peek at some of the fiction graphic organizers in the preview! WHAT'S INCLUDED: *100 Reading Fiction Graphic Organizers Total* Topics (More detail included in Table of Contents in the product preview): • Story Maps • Plot Diagrams • Setting • Character Traits • Analyzing Characters • Character Relationships • Conflict/ Problem & Solution • Sequencing • Theme • Cause & Effect • Compare & Contrast • Summarizing • Using Text Evidence • Using Illustrations • Dialogue • Using Reading Strategies • Vocabulary • Using Context Clues • Point of View • Book Response • Ending Extension • Protagonist vs Antagonist • Round vs Flat Characters • Retelling • Character Perspective • Types of Conflict • Reading Strategies (Recently Added) • Making Predictions (Recently Added) • Visualizing (Recently Added) • Asking Questions (Recently Added) British/Australian spelling also available upon request by e-mail to [email protected]. Just e-mail me with your order number and I will send them along! This product is also discounted as part of these bundles: Fiction Digital and Paper Graphic Organizers Bundle Reading Comprehension Strategies, Nonfiction & Fiction Graphic Organizers Bundle Digital and Paper Reading Comprehension Strategies, Nonfiction & Fiction Graphic Organizers Bundle More Graphic Organizers: Nonfiction Graphic Organizers More Fiction Reading Resources: Fiction Reading Crafts Fiction Word Wall Fiction Posters & Anchor Charts ⓒ Raise the Bar Reading
Ooopps! So there was a little error in two cards (well 3, with the different spellings of color/colour) in my Voices 6 Traits Bulletin Boar...
Item description Comprehensive Novel Study, Novel Unit for Kate DiCamillo’s Flora and Ulysses Total pages in unit: 70 Teacher Directions (3 pages) Vocabulary & Phrases for Each Chapter (5 pages) Vocabulary Cards Template (1 page) Story Pyramid (1 page) Character Map (1 page) Summarizing Fiction (1 page) Plot Peak (1 page) Comparing & Contrasting Two Characters (1 page) Comparing & Contrasting Two Books (1 page) Flora poster (1 page) Ulysses poster (1 page) Comic Book Analysis (1 page) Amazing Incandesto Planning Guide (2 pages) Amazing Incandesto Templates (6 pages) 20-Minute Quick Write Prompts (15 pages) Themes (3 pages) Character Traits, Character Wordle Instructions, Wordle Samples (3 pages) Cause & Effect (1 page) Squirrel Poetry (1 page) Point of View (1 page) Chapter/Section Questions (14 pages) Final Test (4 pages)
This resource includes everything you need to teach students how to identify and use pronouns The materials will allow you to explicitly teach, reinforce, and assess pronouns in just a few minutes a day. What’s Included: •PowerPoint Lesson (Monday) •Practice Printable (Tuesday) •30 Task Cards (Wednesday) •Sketch Notes (Thursday) •Assessment (Friday) •BONUS: Interactive Notebook Activity Download the preview for a detailed overview of the resource. NOTE:This resource was written based on third-grade content standards. However, none of the student materials are labeled with a grade level. This will allow teachers to use this resource across grade levels.
Know how to write a book. This is a comprehensive guide for all beginners to become writers and authors, either through traditional or self-publishing.
It's week two of Traits Tuesday---Must Have Traits Resources! A few years ago I started researching some resources to use in my classroom to help me teach the 6 traits of writing during Writer's Workshop. I came across some great ones that I would like to share with you:) 6 + 1 Traits of Writing: The Complete Guide For Primary Grades by Ruth Culham does an amazing job of helping teachers implement the traits. Included in this book are mentor texts you can use when teaching each trait, and scoring guides that are kid-friendly. www.writingfix.com This website is full of resources, lessons, and mentor texts that teachers can use when teaching the traits. I love this site. It does a lot of the "thinking work" for me. I just look for the trait I am teaching, find some lessons, and, boom, done! A couple of years ago I made the switch from fifth to second grade. I had a lot of experience teaching Writer's Workshop infusing the traits with older students---SO this year I set a goal to begin focusing on traits in the the Writer's Workshop setting with my second graders. One resource that was extremely helpful when I taught fifth grade was Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi's Craft Lessons: Teaching Writing K-8, so I recently began to look at this resource again--specifically the K-2 section. This is a MUST HAVE for any teacher of writing. To learn about the second edition of Craft Lessons, visit Ralph Fletcher's website. For a substantial peek into this resource, click the cover below. The "traits" of writing are not specific to one program. An author's writing is strengthened through word choice and sentence fluency. An author's voice "speaks" to us. Organization is always important as a writer conveys his/her ideas, and so on. SO please feel free to share the resources you use to help develop/strengthen any of these areas--ideas, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, voice, and presentation. We look forward to learning about the writing resources you are using! Simply save our button and use it to link back to us in your post. Have a wonderful week!
Holding students accountable for the writing process steps just got easier! Each step is laid out on anchor charts for your students and provides reminders and strategies for each part of the process that they are on! No more jumping from draft to publish! The writing posters explain the most common genre types of writing and helpful tips, while the checklists offer great reminders for students to keep them on track! These anchor charts are PERFECT for student notebooks as their own personal reference OR can be used on your classroom wall to help remind writers of the steps to take to achieve their best writing! The charts come in different sizes to save space, and make a great addition to your writing block! Here's what you'll get: Types of Writing Anchor Charts The Writing Process Anchor Charts Mini-sized chart options for each (4 charts fit on one page) Full-sized chart options for each (8.5x11) Student checklists Color accents and B&W options for both You will be empowering students and boosting confidence all while holding them accountable for taking the correct steps through the writing process. The charts and checklists are easy for students to understand and use… watch their writing become more thorough and drastically improve! Prep is quick and easy... select the chart size you want to use and PRINT! TEACHERS LIKE YOU SAID… ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ One “Hop” Shop says, "This is an outstanding pack to set up writer's workshop. The tools are great to lead students through the writing process both as a whole group and independently. Thank you!" ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Laura D. says, "Love these! I turned some of these into anchor charts and printed small copies of them as well so that students could take one and check it off as they were working. Great tool!" ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Alexandra P. says, "I printed them in color, laminatedthem, placed them in a ring, and put them on students' tables for them to use when needed. Students love them!" ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Amanda C. says, "I love the simplicity of these checklists. It has helped my students become more independent in their own and peer editing." You may also like… → Thesaurus Anchor Charts → 6 Traits of Writing Charts → Rules of Punctuation → Show Don’t Tell Charts → Writing Hooks Charts Copyright © The Literacy Dive Permission to copy for single classroom use only. Please purchase additional licenses if you intend to share this product.
In my 2nd grade class we spend about 2 weeks cover character traits. I wanted to find more in depth ways to have my students understand their story's characters. I create 4 reading responses to accompany your mini lessons in reading workshop. I also included an exit slip This pack contains... Crazy...
To master the traits, it might require more than a poster on the wall. Use a Cheat Sheet to identify the 6 Traits in student writing.
Hey hey! Happy Throwback Thursday to you. I'm linking up with Cara over at First Grade Parade today. This was one of my most favorite writing activities this year. We were focusing on how to show not tell in our writing. I had found this super idea at Miss Radka's Rhapsody. The kids chose a strong emotion, and used this planner to brainstorm. **Originally posted October 20, 2012 I wrote here about the awesome lesson I found on Miss Radka's Rhapsody blog and how well it went in my classroom. Here are a few pictures of the final projects. We actually finished these up about two weeks ago. Details details. This is the lesson that keeps on giving. We were working on plans this week. I asked the kids not to just plan the feeling they were having, but how they were going to show it. This lesson has been PERFECTO to refer back to. I know it's going to be an anchor lesson we come back to all year long. Annnnd, here's a little tip for your kiddos that are really struggling with showing feeling. I was working with one of my little guys who was feeling terrified at a point in his story. I asked him how he was going to show it, we referred back to this lesson, and he was still struggling. He told me he wasn't feeling anything, he was just terrified. So, out of nowhere I yelled "BAM!!!!!!!" at the top of my lungs. He jumped a mile. We discussed how his body reacted physically and how he looked when I did that. We also had a good laugh before y'all think I tortured the poor kid. ****** Hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane. Going over this lesson again makes me ready to jump into teaching writing again!
A little bit of teaching, a little bit of learning, and a little bit of technology...
Although Shake and Drop is a simple game, I have many students get confused. You take a handful of beans and shake and drop. I have the students start with 6. Record how many red and how many yellows. I put the numbers on the bottom of the sheet to remind students of number direction. For this game, you roll two dice add or subtract and color in the square. You need to get four in a row to win. Many of my kids play this game adding two dice. I saw the idea of putting a cute border on a math game on Pinterest, and I love it!! The border is from Frog Spot. Tag Story Problems My class LOVES tag, so I know this will be a big hit!! We will probably create recess story problems soon. Click Here For Downloads
We are about to start our Fiction unit in 3rd grade where I teach. I always find that kids love fiction much more than non-fiction--probably because it is more imaginative. Fiction is fun to teach as well! There are so many wonderful books to use with fiction units! Here are a few we use to introduce (or reintroduce) the students to fiction! We use many more books, of course, but these are some of my favorites! They are full of wonderful characters, great changes with the characters and other amazing uses of the fiction story elements. We always start with an anchor chart--explaining what a Fiction book is! Here is an example: Fiction books have many different parts (elements)--Here is an anchor chart that I found on pinterest, it shows the basic story elements! We have our students create one of these to glue in their reading spiral notebook! I also love this page for the kids to put in their notebook! It is an easy way to remember that the elements are all part of the big "fiction" picture. Here is a link to it! After we do the initial teach of fiction and the different elements, we have students practice all year through responses and graphic organizers. The more they are familiar with the different story elements, the more comfortable they are answering questions about them. Here are a few of the graphic organizers and links to print them--some are younger level (for differentiation) and some are on grade level. Story Map-1st Grade Response I haven't made this yet--but I love it! Story Map--Any Grade! (Take out Theme for lower grades!) I have used this graphic organizer for enrichment activity before--the kids really enjoy it! Or they can use a friend instead of themselves. (Nice words only though!) :) Another great enrichment (or even whole group if you have them time) activity is to create a foldable with the different fiction elements. We are going to do this at the end of our unit--so I don't have any pictures yet...but I know the kids will love it! We will use this tool to assess the student's learning of fiction elements. The students will create the foldable--label it with the different parts, then fill in the parts from a book we have already read in class. Learning made fun! Yay! :) Here is one last resource that I hope you will enjoy! Our principal is huge into technology--which is great! He is in the process of trying to get an ipad in every classroom. The process is slow because they are expensive--but I believe there are at about 20 or so on the campus now, not too shabby! I do not have a school one, because I have a personal one (no need to have two.) But, this is a free educational ipad app called Toontasic! It has a lot of different features, but one thing you can do is create your own story map--and create your own characters, problems, and solutions for the characters. This is new for me...but looks like FUN for the kids! I am going to try it out next week with my kids! As you have noticed--character is a huge part of fiction so we actually teach those two concepts in the same week! We try to tie it all in together. There are a TON of resources out there...too many to list. I hope this helps you in your classroom though! I always believe that the more resources you have...the less likely the kids will get bored. :) Have a great weekend!
BEST SELLER!! Does it seem like you give students the same generic compliments on their writing over and over? Do you struggle to find kind, supportive ways to suggest improvements? Have you given up on detailed feedback because it's just too time-consuming to provide? This document contains hundreds of comment suggestions to help you give meaningful feedback to students on their writing assignments. You can use these comments to help guide your conversations during writing workshop and writing conferences. Or, use them in your written feedback at the top of student work or on sticky notes. These comments can also be used to help describe student writing for portfolio assessments, progress reports, report cards, or in parent conferences. This 21 page PDF includes one set of the following for narrative writing assignments AND one slightly modified set for expository writing assignments: • General compliment phrases • General suggestion phrases • Specific compliments and suggestions on effort and overall writing progress • Specific compliments and suggestions for each of the 6 traits of writing: Ideas and Content, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions I used the 6 Traits model because it's a simple way to organize the types of feedback. However, you can use these comments with ANY writing system. *************************************************************************** See what other teachers are saying! Great product! Sometimes I feel that I am using the same comments for everyone. This will be my quick "cheat sheet" of comments. Thanks! - Sheila R S. This has so many things I wanted to say, but didn't know how to say them. Thanks. - Melinda S. Comments are for narrative and expository writing. This resource is well organized. Teachers can use this to arrange these comments based on success criteria to make it quicker to use. Very good product. Creative way with words. Thanks. - Melanie L. Today one of my students commented on how my comments were so personal. Obviously this was a great buy! - Bobbie Bonilla Very helpful. I used this very often this weekend when grading writing and it saved me so much time! - Cassie W. Used them this year for the first time and found my writing conferences with the students more productive. - Sandra R. This packet contains clearly organized expressions to encourage, support, and celebrate writers in your classroom. It's a great buy! - Sharyn T. I have printed this out and keep it with me for my writing conferences. I am always struggling to give students meaningful feedback that is in kid friendly language. This product helped immensely! - Heather L. *************************************************************************** You might also like: A Stress-Free System for Generating Report-Card Comments in Half the Time! The Quick Skill Assessment Form: A simple system to document student progress Be sure to check out my website where there are hundreds of pages of classroom management resources that make teaching more effective, efficient, and enjoyable! You'll find photos, activities, printable forms/posters, and more. Enjoy! Angela NOTE: This resource is included at no cost for members of the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club, as part of our focus in the month of JANUARY on Grading and Assessment in the Full Year Program and week 6 of the Fast Track program.
This resource includes everything you need to teach students how to form and use frequently occurring regular plural nouns. The materials will allow you to explicitly teach, reinforce, and assess regular plural nouns in just a few minutes a day. What’s Included: •PowerPoint Lesson (Monday) •Practice Printable (Tuesday) •30 Task Cards (Wednesday) •Sketch Notes (Thursday) •Assessment (Friday) •BONUS: Interactive Notebook Activity Download the preview for a detailed overview of the resource. NOTE: This resource was written based on third-grade content standards. However, none of the student materials are labeled with a grade level. This will allow teachers to use this resource across grade levels.
Hey hey! So this week in first grade we are writing friendly letters. As part of our school's training in the 6+1 Traits of Writing, we ar...
Here we are again, talking about our book study (can you tell I am LOVING the Core Lit route???) So today I wanted to share what we did with character traits. In our book, Bridge to Terabithia (Movie Tie-in) , there are two main characters that we follow throughout: Jess and Leslie. The first few chapters do a great job of describing them, so I asked the kids to create a foldable with a picture of Jess and Leslie on the front. They were to take evidence from the story (you know, reading closely and all) and create their character sketches. Then, on the inside, I asked the kids to make a double bubble map about these two. They were to find character traits and then list the evidence underneath the bubble. I asked for direct quotes, but if you remember this post from a few days ago...we are still working on that. Anyway, what is AWESOME about this is that as the characters change, and we learn more about them and their personalities, we just go back to the sketch and Double Bubble and add to/change it! One place in this book that we definitely noticed a change in Jess' character was in Chapter 5. He was a nice, 10 year old kid who does something that seemed to be a bit out of character. However, some kids didn't see it that way. They thought that this was deep down "him" and that there were clues all along to prove it. So what did we do? We broke out our journals and set out to prove it! I had the kids pose the question "Was Jess always like this or is this a new development?" at the top of the page. They then created a T-Chart with one side for "Yes, he was always like this" and another side for "No, this is a new development". Next, the students broke open the book and began searching for evidence to support their side. This really was interesting, as students were scouring to find evidence to support their own personal point of view...even if the evidence wasn't quite there! As a class, we eventually came to the conclusion that this was mostly Leslie's doing, and deep down Jess is a person who cares about the feelings of others....as that is what the evidence supported! What are you doing as of late to get the kids to dig into their reading?
Last week we looked at the beautiful language and sentence fluency in All the Places to Love by Patricia MacLachlan. I decided to do a small writing project with the kids to help them adopt a more fluent writing style and to write more like Patricia MacLachlan. We noticed that all the places the characters loved in her book had to do with nature. I modeled for students how I thought of a place in nature that I love (the Horicon Marsh), followed by nouns that I see, feel, smell, hear, and taste while I'm there. After all, good writers appeal to a reader's senses! Students then followed my model and thought of their own special place in nature and filled out their pre-writing sheet with powerful nouns. We also used a page from All the Places to Love to help us look at different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, and adjectives. We recorded several examples of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and similes. Students kept track of this new learning in their Powerful Words & Phrases tab. Eventually we used our pre-writing sheet to fill in our drafting sheet. I gave students a general outline to encourage the sentence fluency of Patricia MacLachlan. With their new knowledge of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and similes, students could better understand the different words they were to include in their draft. Good writers have their pre-writing sheet right next to their draft so that they can stick to their plan! After students read their writing to a peer, it was time to publish. We used the computer lab to help us with this task. Fourth graders aren't the most fluent typists but the short length of this piece allowed them to get a feel for publishing using a computer without feeling too overwhelmed. We will be putting each student's page in our own classroom book called All the Places 4B Loves. :) Our literacy coach, Mrs. Johnson, came to help us get better with answering short answer questions. She used this anchor chart to help us learn the steps to writing a great answer! We looked at two different sample responses and together we evaluated whether the responses were strong or not. We looked specifically for a question stem, complete sentences, details and examples from the text, and whether the student truly answered the question. Then it was time for students to try out their new learning. They received a short reading about dolphins, a short-answer response sheet, and a self-assessment sheet to evaluate their answer during and after writing their response. The next day we had a chance to look at some of our own answers from the day before. I scanned a few samples and we discussed what each writer did well (strengths) and what the writer could do to improve (goals). In this sample, we noticed how the writer used part of the question to help her formulate the first line of her answer. Bravo! In this sample, we noticed this writer also used part of the question to help her start her answer. We also discovered that this writer needed to include more examples or details from the text and do some rereading of her answer as she writes to make sure it makes sense. This writer used great transition words to write her answer. We noticed that her topic sentence actually appeared as the last sentence in her response so we thought it would be a good idea to move it to the top of her response. After we discussed as a class about strengths and goals, I handed back students' short-answer responses from the day before. They reread them, and then I had them write a response about their strengths and goals in their My Thoughts tab of their Thoughtful Logs. In guided reading, we continued looking at different types of print. Students showed evidence of being able to identify the definitions of words in a different type of print. They recorded their thinking in their Thoughtful Logs. Today we added another non-fiction text feature to our list: headings! I photocopied a page from our social studies text book and a page from a question and answer book to help model the different headers and sub-headers we see in texts. This anchor chart communicates my explicit teaching point for our reading lesson today. I modeled my own thinking when I got to the first header of an article about satellites. I activated my schema and made a prediction before I read on. After I modeled my own thinking, I gave students their own copy of the article so they could practice the strategy themselves using the next header in the article. The header read: Movers and Shakers. During guided reading, students read a non-fiction article about Yosemite National Park and did a similar response show evidence that they understand how to think when they get to a header in a non-fiction text. Students used the header From Paris to the Parks. During Writer's Workshop today we learned that we need to indent and start a new paragraph every time our topic changes. We looked at real published writing from a book about koalas to help us see that indenting is really something published authors do when they switch to writing about a new topic. Then I modeled for students how to pre-write for a piece of writing that's about three different topics. I used the listing strategy to jot down several key words about each of my topics. Then I modeled how I took each of the key words on my pre-writing plan and expanded them as I drafted each paragraph. Each time I switched to a new topic, I was sure to indent! Students got a chance to practice this strategy independently. I had them glue a prompt sheet in their own notebooks, pre-write their ideas, and draft from their plan. You can see this writer showed evidence of understanding that she should indent every time she switches to writing about a new topic. This small writing assignment also helps me assess students' convention use, sentence fluency, word choice, and their ability to draft from their pre-writing plan. You'll notice in the above piece of writing that the student highlighted the words 'a lot' three times. Students in our room know to highlight anywhere in their writing when they know they're meeting their writing goal. For this writer, one of the goals we set for her a few weeks ago was to make sure to spell 'a lot' as two words rather than one. When I looked at this students' writing, I saw the highlighting which was a signal for me to mark in my writing binder that she met her goal. Now that she showed evidence of applying her writing goal three times successfully, I officially signed off on her goal! Way to go, girl! Homework: 1. Reading - 15 mins., Pizza Log 2. Math - 10 mins. of facts, WKCE prep questions 3. Handwriting - pgs. 22-23 4. Social Studies - test tomorrow! Extra: Costume in a bag! Our party will begin at 2pm.
Use perspective-taking skills, emotion, and character trait vocabulary to solve problems in each scenario in this fun, easy to use set! The half-page format will let you easily view the PDF on your device as a basis for discussion, just printing the worksheets. Or you can print the entire set and fo...
We are knee-deep in our 5th grade historical fiction unit right now. This is always a favorite each year. We've blogged about our various HF adventures HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. In 5th grade, kids have already completed a HF unit when they were with us in 4th grade. During that time, they all read the SAME book. This year, to take them a little deeper, the kids main focus is studying the ERA they selected. Due to this, kids are all reading DIFFERENT books that are within the same era as their book club members. Our students also had to select a different era this year from the one they studied last year in our space. Eras we focused on this year: Colonial America, Revolutionary War, Westward Expansion, Civil War, WW2, and Civil Rights. Our favorite part of this, is that kids of all levels are in book clubs together, really creating fantastic discourse tied to era understanding and how their book fit together. A huge part of any historical fiction unit is nonfiction understanding of the era they are studying. We spent the first week+ immersing ourselves in nonfiction materials tied to our era. Kids shared ideas with each other and created a group timeline outlining important events from their era. As we have been working through our books and discussions, they started to bring up and share where their books fit into these non-fiction timelines. Last year, we made "double timelines", which were fun, but only one book could fit in that framework. This year, our amazing student teacher, Megan Leverence (she's looking for a job, people...anyone hiring?? :) found a great blog post. You can read it HERE. She took the idea and changed it up a little bit, and found a way to connect it to the timelines the kids created. Rather than write up "reviews," like the blog suggested, she had the kids create "book timelines" of the books they had been reading. She had them find 5-10 important events in their books (no spoilers allowed), and create a timeline "flipbook." Once the kids created their "flipbook timelines", they placed their books on the nonfiction timelines. This created a fantastic visual of where all of the books we were reading fit across history. We utilized a huge bulletin board in our hall to hang all the timelines and books on. It's been a great discussion and visual tool for all of our kiddos. How have you taught HF units? How do you bring in nonfiction? We'd love to learn with you! Happy Teaching, Angela
