Easy Reading Passages For Beginning Readers These easy, printable reading passages are perfect for beginning readers. 20 printable beginning reading worksheets PDF File Kindergarten, First Grade Read the passage, answer the questions. Please note: this is a digital file for you to print. No physical product will be sent. Kindergarten activities First Grade activities Kindergarten reading First Grade reading Reading worksheets Learn to read Kindergarten language arts First grade language arts Teach reading Reading comprehension Homeschool reading

As a teacher, I am always on the hunt for the perfect tools at the cheapest prices for my ELA classroom. Taking care of our students and keeping our learning

Looking for grammar lesson plans on how to teach sentence structure? Teach simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences.

During my teaching career as a language arts teacher, I have used the strategy of teaching with a rubric countless times. I used rubrics for independent reading projects and as assessment tools. I like

Characterization can be hard to dissect, unless you turn your class into a group of surgeons. Your students can dissect characters using body biographies!

When you make meaningful classroom procedures for older students, you are establishing comfort and familiarity for them.

Looking to incorporate more inquiry into your English classroom? Here are some easy ways to add some elements of inquiry into your lessons.

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!!

As writers, our class is in one of two categories - comma kings and queens or Nate the neglectful. So we, as writers, decided to make a ple...

In the first month of school, teachers are usually focused on classroom setup, establishing procedures, launching routines, and digging into the first unit. Although we DO want students to be organized and to feel safe as individuals, we also need them to open up and collaborate as part of a bigger classroom community. Read on for 9 ideas about how to create bonding, shared experiences, and interactions that foster community-building. (By the way, you can check out a similar blog post of ours about community-building here.) The SuperHERO Teacher Teaching kindness and collaboration amongst students is such an important part of a positive classroom community! I love using interactive bulletin boards to encourage students to motivate each other. Recently, I created this nature-themed bulletin board using Polaroid frames with inspiring quotes, twine, and clothes pins. Basically, if students need a bit of motivation, they can take a quote from the board, but they must replace it with a new quote! At the end of the year, students will be exchanging quotes from each other-- making a strong classroom relationship! Here's the link. Addie Williams I work hard to create a collaborative and welcoming classroom community and one way I do this is through writing about kindness. I share a kindness quote with my students as a writing prompt and have them work on it individually before sharing their ideas with a partner and then with a larger group. I ask them to look for similarities in their responses. Demonstrating to my students that I value kindness and community early on in the year will hopefully create a sense of caring throughout the year. Use these free Kindness Quotes to get started! Secondary Sara One of the hurdles to community-building is when students aren't willing to be vulnerable, they try to be perfect, or they compete instead of connect. As much as strengths and growth mindset are important, we teachers also need to help students identify and tackle their weaknesses in an honest way. I like doing this in a humorous way by "curing" student diseases. I joke about students who have "Procrastinitis", and when students own that problem, it becomes a springboard for other areas of concern as well (like upset binders, high test pressure, and silence infections). Get the poster set AND activities to accompany them here. Danielle Hall One of the ways students build our classroom community is by working together to solve problems or puzzles. I use team trivia to start out our class at the beginning of the year, getting students used to collaborating and thinking critically. They develop a healthy sense of teamwork and competition. Here's a free week to get you started. The Classroom Sparrow A simple way to create a positive classroom community is to display work from students around a classroom. It doesn't necessarily have to be an assignment, even a collaborative discussion full of insight from everyone in a class adds positivity and shows that everyone's opinion/view is valued! If you're lacking in work to display, simply begin a class with a simple prompt, motivational quote, or question! Here is a collaborative poem I had students create to begin a poetry unit. Everyone took 10-15 mins to cut out 30-40 words, then I paired students and peers to create a beautiful and colourful example of poetry, which remained on my bulletin boards for the length of the unit! The Daring English Teacher I teach at a very diverse school, and there are 23 different home languages represented in our student body. Bringing together such a diverse group can sometimes be challenging, so I created Classroom Community Bell Ringers to help us all find a common ground. These bell ringers include quotes about love, acceptance, diversity, and tolerance and a brief writing prompt. My students take the first five minutes in class to read the quote and quickly respond to the prompt. Then we share our responses aloud. This exercise has helped forge new connections amongst students who once thought there was no common ground. Stacey Lloyd At the beginning of the year we always spend time thinking about positive and negative behaviors in the classroom: social, emotional and academic. Students come up with their suggestions by walking around the room and anonymously adding their thoughts to various prompts. I then compile these into a list and have students all sign their names on the document - which stays on the wall all year. Any time I find a student acting out or being unkind or unhelpful, I point to their signature and hold them to account. Room 213 We spend a great deal of time during the first few weeks building our classroom climate. I want kids to feel free to discuss their views and to know that it's okay to disagree with someone, as long as they do so respectfully. We develop a class code of conduct, and I put up posters to remind them to be empathetic, kind and understanding of differences. They are a good visual reminder of the things we discussed and the exercises we do during the first few days of school. You can grab them for free here. Presto Plans Building a positive classroom community is an intentional process. One way to do this is by having students complete short challenges that encourage kindness, collaboration, teamwork, expression, and the sharing of ideas and opinions. Start your year or semester by presenting short classroom challenges that can be used as bell-ringers, a class close-up activity, or a fun way to start or end the week. I suggest you set up a bulletin board that allows you to build suspense and reveal one challenge at a time. Make the challenges fun, collaborative, and stress-free. For example, you might consider getting students to write a thank-you card for someone, write a funny top 10 list, play a game of 20 questions, or interview a classmate. We hope you enjoy these ideas! Tell us what you think, or tell us more ideas in the comments!

I am happy to share this free reproducible sheet to teach enumeration and juxtaposition. This exercise IS PART OF a collection of 13 exercises, covering all of the ART language in primary school. Grades 1-2_________________________________________Follow this link for the entire collection:Art exerci...

The figurative language anchor chart shared in this blog post includes a cooperative activity. Visit this post to download the FREE materials and replicate this interactive lesson in your upper elementary classroom!

Subject-verb agreement worksheets. The subject and verb of a sentence must both be singular or both be plural. In these worksheets, students select the form of the verb that agrees with the subject of the sentence. Free language arts worksheets from K5 Learning; no login required.

Whether your students are lethargic or super-charged, adding movement to your lesson plans will help to solve both issues. Not only is it healthy to move throughout the day, but it can also help students focus and become more engaged with the content they are trying to master. Due to the nature of English classes, ELA ... Read More about 10 Ways to Add Movement in the ELA Classroom

There's a lot of pressure to display student work and have a "cute" classroom. But minimalist classroom design may be more effective. Here's why.

So the other day, I was looking at bathing suits for my kids at Target online. I put a few in my virtual cart, but then decided on buying from Lands End instead. Well, since

Subject English Language Arts, Science, Engineering Grade Levels 1st, 2nd, 3rd Resource Type Lesson Plans (Individual), Activities, Printables File Type PDF (Acrobat) Document File Be sure that you have an application to open this file type before downloading and/or purchasing. 8 MB|88 pages

Even in middle school, classroom jobs play an important role in building a sense of community. I am a big advocate of including my students in as many

If you are looking for some high-interest activities, try using animated shorts to teach inference. Free handouts focus on student learning.

These unique classroom supplies are must-haves if you teach reading!

Teaching today’s teens necessitates that we integrate technology into our practice. We get that. This is not new. But how? Sure, it does mean going digital, and many schools are making the move to 1:1 classrooms; that’s a great step in the right direction. Yet we cannot simply place laptops in front of students with digital versions of paper-based worksheets and feel as though we have that 21st-century-skills-box ticked. No; it cannot be an add-on. We as educators need to find ways to interweave our instruction with digital experiences, to infuse our lessons with social media interactions, and to permeate our practice with new media elements. That’s how we make learning relevant and instructive with the technology we have at our fingertips. MUSIC VIDEOS LESSON PLANS (click to view) So many teachers are doing this incredibly: teachers right here on this blog. For example, I have aimed to really do this with my music videos lesson plans which have students analyzing currently videos to help teach a range of ELA skills; Sara, from Secondary Sara has a year of multimedia poetry lessons which you really need to check out; Presto Plans has a great resource for using videos as writing prompts; and Nouvelle ELA uses webquests to help bring Shakespearean language to life. Here is another way to integrate technology and new media in your ELA classroom: PODCASTS. Ok, so there are a world of incredible podcasts out there, yet how exactly might they be used in the classroom? Here are just a few ideas for when/why I use them. 1. To teach LISTENING SKILLS: So much of communication is listening, and this really is a vital skill for students to learn. Podcasts are a great way to teach this skills as students really have to think about what they are listening to, and try to comprehend, engage with and respond to the contents. 2. To teach NOTE TAKING SKILLS: It is vital that we help our students learn to take notes and make sense of the information with which they are engaging. Therefore, having them listen to podcasts and try out different note taking strategies, is a really important part of the ELA skillset. 3. To help MAKE CONNECTIONS ACROSS GENRES: I love using podcast to pair with my novel studies: for example, when studying The Great Gatsby we might listen to a podcast about desire or the American dream. This will help students synthesise information across text and types of texts to provide more meaningful engagement and learning. 4. To facilitate PROJECT-BASED LEARNING: Why not have students create their own podcasts? Not only does this help teach new media skills (editing, recording, designing etc.) but it can also be great for collaborative work, as well as helping student to think about communication of information and skills of delivery. SKETCH NOTING 1) Hand out large pieces of paper and lots of colorful markers. 2) Play an engaging podcast and instruct students to draw, write keywords, link ideas, make connections etc. FLIPPED CLASSROOM 1) Instruct students to listen to a podcast for homework and to come to class with questions for discussion. 2) In the next class, facilitate a discuss / complete a comprehension exercise / have students write an essay as a response. SOCRATIC SEMINARS 1) Instruct students to listen to a podcast and take notes (You could use this FREE worksheet for this purpose) 2) Hold a socratic discussion in response to the podcast: this hits both listening and speaking goals! OUTSIDE TIME 1) Instruct students to find the podcast on their phones (if allowed). 2) Go outside on a beautiful day to have them listen and breath in some fresh air! WRITE POETRY 1) Have students listen to a podcast and just write down words and phrases, lots and lots of them that they pick up on. This could be a list, or sketch note. 2) Then have students write found poetry from these words noted: a great way to turn non-fiction into poetry, and scaffold the process of writing poetry. If you are new to podcasts, you may be wondering how to even select one to use in the classroom. So here are just a few of my current favorites; yet I encourage you to get listening to find others that will work for your students. TED Radio Hour TEDtalks are awesome. We all know that. But did you know that they also make fabulous podcasts? What I love about them is that often take a concept or idea, and then pull from a variety of talks on the stage, and weave them together with interviews and ideas. For example, their episode “The Hero’s Journey” would be an excellent addition to a mythology unit. This American Life If you haven’t listened to This American Life yet, grab a coffee, put it on, go for a walk and listen with joy (while thinking about all the classroom possibilities!). Woven together through the iconic voice of Ira Glass, each episode follows a theme, and then in 4 acts this idea is examined from varying angles. My absolutely favorite episode is 3 Miles: a story of two schools divided by huge class disparities. This episode has sparked many a lively and meaningful debate in my classroom. Radiolab If you are looking for a way to collaborate across subjects, ask the science or computing department what the currently teaching, and then head over to Radiolab and look for something on that topic: indeed, they weave stories and science into sound and music-rich documentaries which would be great to integrate into the classroom. A great starting place is the episode, Super Cool. Invisibilia Looking at the invisible forces around us in the world, the two female presenters (yay!) of this podcast present some really thought-provoking stories and concepts. For example, I recently played the episode on Fear during my Lord of the Flies unit as we discussed the fear the boys experience on the island: we did this while sketchnoting and my students made connections between the contents of the podcast, and the theme of the novel. The Allusionist This one is great specifically for the ELA classroom: the host, Helen Zeltzman, explores words and phrases of the English language - the weird and the wonderful. Each episode is only 20 minutes long, and will be sure to spark an interest in the way we communicate with each other every day. Serial There are many great teaching resources out there for this one! I would be surprised if you hadn’t even heard of Serial as it certainly created quite the buzz and even made listeners out of those who had never even heard of podcasts. It is investigative journalism which tracks a true story over many episodes. One of the great parts of this is that you can listening to the whole season over many classes and really get into it as you would with a novel study. Do you use podcasts in your classroom? We'd love to hear which ones and how you use them!

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,

Here is a quick reference guide on the different types of Reading Genres to use in your classroom. Some ideas on how to use the guide are: Have your students glue it into their Reader's Response Journal as a reference tool. Make it bigger and use it as a poster. Use it as a teaching guide. Like this product? Want to see more incredible items relating to Reading and Writing? Check out my store!!!

So, I posted recently that my sixth graders were writing a mystery that was going to take place in the library. I took two of the best mysteries that were submitted and combined them! Here's how our mystery looked: The Problem: Mrs. Svarda got to school on Monday morning and saw the mess. At first she was just mad that all of the books were out, then she saw that all the books were missing their endings. She picked up a book and noticed that the barcode was missing, too. She looked around and found that several books were missing their endings and barcodes. The scanners were also missing so no one could check out books! Then Mrs. Svarda was scared and mad. Who could've done such a thing? What happened here? How could this happen? She needed help. Starbelly Sneetch Alibi: It was 5:00 and I heard a knock on my door. It was Fox in Socks. He came in and I turned off my music and put away my IPod. We played at my house until we got bored. We decided it would be fun to go to the movies. We texted Hop On Pop and Yertle the Turtle to see if they wanted to come, too. Everyone came to the movie except Hop on Pop. After the movie we couldn't think of what to do so we walked around. We thought we might stop by the library to visit Hop On Pop. It started to rain as we walked so we stopped at Fox in Sock's house to pick up some blankets to keep dry on our walk. Hop On Pop Alibi: It was 5:00 and I was looking at my clock when the doorbell rang. It was Yertle the Turtle. He had brought me some homemade bread. He asked if I wanted to go to the mall. My mom said, "No. I had to work on my homework at the library." Yertle the Turtle got a text right after that asking if we wanted to go and see the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie. Bummer. I really wanted to see a movie and hated that I had to go to the library instead. Yertle the Turtle left to meet everyone for the movie. I headed to the library with my homework. My animal report was due on Monday and mom said I couldn't do anything fun until I was finished with the report. The fun thing was that everyone came by the library after the movie and told me all about it. They had a great time. At 8:00, everyone had to head home. I had about thirty minutes left of homework, so I told them I'd have to stay around just a bit longer... Yertle the Turtle Alibi: It was 4:00 and I was cooking some homemade bread. When it was done I wanted to have some fun so I took some bread over to my friend Hop On Pop. I asked if he wanted to go to the mall, but then I got a text from Fox in Socks and Starbelly Sneetch asking if I wanted to go to the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie. My mom said I could go to the movie, but his mom said he had to do homework. He tried not to show it, but boy, was he mad. I had to leave Hop On Pop to make it to the movie on time. I told him if we had time, we'd stop by the library after the movie to hang out with him. Fox in Socks' Alibi: I was sitting in my room when my mom came in and said when I finished my chores I could play. I decided to go over to Starbelly Sneetch's house to play. We thought it would be fun to go to see a movie and texted our friends to see if they could come, too. When the movie was over we went by my house to get some blankets because it was raining and we didn't want to get wet. Then, we headed to the library to visit Hop On Pop because he was doing homework there. At the library, I looked for the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book. I really liked the movie so I thought I would like the book. What the students do: When the students entered the library, they each grabbed a clipboard with a pencil, ingredients of a mystery checklist, alibis, map of the crime scene, and suspect list attached to it. They also grabbed a highlighter. I had the problem and alibis typed up on my SMART board including pictures of the characters. I read the problem and each alibi to the students. We walked through the ingredients of a mystery and checked off all of the mystery elements that our mystery had on the list. Then, I separated the students into two groups. One team surveyed the crime scene and drew the map of the evidence in the crime scene first. The second team worked in teams to read through the alibis and highlight evidence they found in the text that made them believe a character or characters might be guilty. After ten minutes, the teams swapped stations. We returned together as a group to discuss all of the evidence the students had found in the crime scene as well as the alibis that led them to believe that specific characters could be guilty of the crime. We completed the suspect list together. Students work in teams to highlight evidence in the alibis. Students sketched the crime scene. We taped off the crime scene with caution tape. The crime scene included Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, barcodes with fur on them (from characters), endings ripped out of the end of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books (these were really just copies I ripped), a blanket, movie ticketes (3), and a book about bumblebees (this was the book Hop On Pop was using to do his research for homework). I found the copies for the ingredients of a mystery checklist and suspect list from Beth Newingham's Scholastic post about the mystery unit she teaches in her classroom. The Solution The students really thought like detectives in this lesson! I did catch a few of them off guard with my red herrings, though. The fuzz on the barcodes made some of them immediately suspect Fox in Socks and the Starbelly Sneetch. One of the kids said, "This is the best lesson we've had in the library all year!" So, you can make whoever you want responsible for the crime. I decided that Hop On Pop was guilty. He was mad that he did not get to go to the movie with his friends. He was working on his report about bumblebees (since bears love honey) and had to stay later than his friends in the library to finish up. All of the other characters visited the library to visit Hop On Pop and they did not say anything about something being wrong in the library. Hop On Pop tore the endings out of the books when his friends left. To excite the kids about checking out mysteries in our library, we created a mystery display. All of the books were sealed in brown paper bags with the barcodes on the outside so we could check the books out without opening the bags. Each bag had a different mystery inside. This was a fun way for our students to try reading something new in the library and practice their detective skills we learned in our lesson together! Mystery books in mystery bags!

What is the best way to teach main idea and details in your 1st or 2nd grade classroom? Peruse our collection of engaging ideas!

Take a look at how I set up my class and organize my stations for a successful start to Daily 5 in kindergarten.

Last week in reading, we introduced figurative language. We will dive into all of the sub-categories of figurative language (including similes/metaphors, idioms, exaggerations, hyperboles, etc.) this coming week. I used this anchor chart to demonstrate the literal meaning and the author's meaning of "a frown that breaks rocks" - a phrase from one of our mentor texts. (Please don't judge my frown with big muscles. I've never claimed to be a good artist!) When students came to the carpet for our lesson, I had them each bring a post-it on a hard surface and a pencil. For guided practice, I paired students up and asked them to draw the literal and author's meaning for the following phrase from one of our mentor texts: "Slowly dusk pours the syrup of darkness into the forest." Students who had to draw the literal meaning for this phrase came up first. Each student described what they drew. We saw a lot of pictures of dusk with real hands squeezing an actual syrup bottle over the top of trees in a forest. Two of the pictures had other trees asking, "Where are the waffles!" It made us laugh and truly helped to establish that we can't always take author's words literally when we read. Understanding figurative language means we need to think beyond the literal meaning of words. I was pleased to see that the author's meaning drawings students made for "slowly dusk pours the syrup of darkness into the forest" didn't have any actual syrup bottles in them. Students simply drew a peaceful forest getting darker. As a class, we wrote out in words the literal meaning and the author's meaning for our phrase. For independent practice, students returned to their desks and glued the following chart into their Author's Craft section of their Thoughtful Logs. Students drew a picture and wrote out in words the literal meaning and the author's meaning for the phrase: "a laugh that creates tidal waves..." In other news, we have been working on pre-writing, drafting, editing, and publishing our Mother's Day projects. For the sake of wanting to surprise any of our mothers who follow our blog, I'm going to refrain from posting too many pictures of what we're doing so that I don't completely give away what your little munchkins will be giving you. Here they are in the publishing process: Last week, we also worked on writing our thank you cards to the Jefferson County Courthouse and the Kutz Farm for letting us visit and learn about government and agriculture. I printed off several pictures from our field trips and each student used one of the pictures on each of their cards to kind of 'personalize' our experience at each place. Prior to writing, we reviewed the parts of a friendly letter, in addition to a topic sentence, three supporting detail sentences, and a closing sentence for a strong paragraph. Lastly, Nina was our Person of the Week last week. She brought in her dog, Meatball!So tiny and so very cute. :)

Provocations can be overwhelming. Let's take a look at some simple ideas for literacy provocations found in a Reggio-Inspired Preschool.

I administer four kinds of summative assessments to my students: Reading comprehension assessments Listening comprehension assessments Presentational writing assessments Presentational speaking assessments (Read here about why I don’t administer summative Interpersonal assessments.) Each quarter, I try to get three or four grades in the book for each of the first three assessment categories. I adopted…

This set of 10 hilarious English classroom printable posters are a great way to add humour into your class, while also engaging students in their learning! This set of 10 posters come in 5 different sizes: -18x24inches -16x20inches -8.5x11inches -8x10inches -11x14inches How it works: Upon purchasing, you will receive 5 PDF documents in your Etsy account. These are your posters! You may not resell these designs! Refunds: This is a digital download, which means you will not receive a physical product. Therefore, there are no exchanges or refunds. If you have any problems with your product, please reach out to me and I will be happy to answer any questions!

Prefix and Suffix Sandwiches is a hands-on reading and language arts activity. This lesson provides students with practice of building words and describing how the meaning of a word changes when a prefix or suffix is added to a root word. This activity works great in literacy centers or in collaborative groups. I have included both a color version of this activity, and a black and white copy for EASY printing. This activity was created using The Common Core Standards and The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. Click on the links below to view additional items in my shop: Abstract Nouns Word Wall Cards: Long Vowel Sounds Word Wall Cards: Short Vowel Sounds Graphic Organizer - Word Work Graphic Organizer - Story Elements Making Sense With Sentences *************************************************************************** How to get TPT credit to use on future purchases: Please go to your My Purchases. Beside each purchase you'll see a Provide Feedback button. Simply click it and you will be taken to a page where you can give a quick rating and leave a short comment for the product. Each time you give feedback, TPT gives you feedback credits that you use to lower the cost of your future purchases. I value your feedback greatly as it helps me determine which products are most valuable for your classroom so I can create more for you. Be the first to know about my new discounts, freebies and product launches: Look for the green star next to my store logo and click it to become a follower. You will now receive email updates about this store. *********************************************************************** Terms: Copyright © educatingeveryone4life. All rights reserved for this prefix and suffix activity by Educating Everyone. This reading/language arts activity is to be used by the original downloader only. Copying Prefix and Suffix Sandwiches for more than one teacher, classroom, department, school, or school system is prohibited. This prefix and suffix 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. Intended for classroom and personal use ONLY. See product file for clip art credits. The Common Core Standards were written and developed by The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.

Read about eleven different ways to meaningfully incorporate art in ELA class. Keep the focus on students' learning, not their artistic abilities.

Flipping my classroom has dramatically impacted both the way my students learn and the way that I run my classroom each day. I often receive blog comments or emails asking how to make it all come together and be easily managed by the teacher as well as easily accessible by the students. I invite you […]

Survive Homecoming week with these fun games and creative activities to share with your students.

What would I take with me ... if I were going to the Bahamas on holiday, or trekking in the jungle, or travelling to the moon (and back)! You can use this lovely printable frame in so many ways. Younger children can draw or cut and stick, older children can write.

My students presented their Paper Bag Character assignments today. LOVED it!!! They worked so hard on these projects, and it definitely paid off. Their final projects were awesome! When the students finished presenting their 10 items inside the bag, we set all the projects up in the nutrition area outside my classroom, and had a gallery walk-through. This is the first time I've done the gallery walk-through with these projects ... but not the last. Next year I'd like to invite a few classrooms to see our fabulousness. I was so excited about these projects I stayed for a bit after school to get them hung on the bulletin board. I'm just waiting for a few more projects to come in, then I'll hang our learning goal - and I'll be one happy teacher! (As you can see, I've got some Suzanne Collins fans in my class - I had 5 different projects on Katniss (but from all three books in the trilogy), and 3 different projects on Gregor the Overlander (a five book series from Suzanne Collins). I've never been one for traditional book reports - we usually only do one a year, just to practise the writing form ... whenever possible I try to give my students fun variations to share their reading with the class. For this project students must illustrate the front cover with a picture of their main character. I also had them add the title and author of their novels. One of the side panels is for the character's likes and dislikes, and the other panel is for how other characters react to and interact with their main character. The back panel has the character's growth throughout the novel. Students have to provide supporting evidence and their own thinking for all the panels. But my favourite part is the inside - students must place 10 objects in the bag that symbolize something important about the character. They also present this information to the class - making sure they give a deep explanation about why the object is significant to the character - not just how it is connected to the book. My students had such amazing insights this year ... hard to believe some of them are only in grade 5! If you're interested, my Paper Bag Characters assignment is a product at my TPT store. You can view it here. I also have this assignment included in a larger Characterization bundle which you can view here. And now, if you'll excuse me ... I must go read. My Fifty Shades trilogy arrived today and I've already started the first book. I'm thinking it's about to get a little hot in here ... (and no, I won't be doing a paper bag character assignment on this one). ;) Happy FRIDAY!!! Cheers to the weekend!!! Reading Comprehension Strategy Bundle Book Report Bundle Building Better Reading Responses Reading Concept Posters Bundle InLinkz.com

Ready for some super simple, inexpensive, but FUN speech therapy articulation games? Check out my fast and easy favorites!

If you establish these other 5 elements along with the other three, you’re on a roll for a well-crafted story for others to enjoy for years.