GABRIELLE GR.8
Waldorf 6th grade geometry drawings and resources. This post is full of some great images of our main lesson book pages from this block.
Some ideas for teaching plot elements to help students recall stories in sequential order, summarize stories, and understand theme.
Are you a science teacher looking for an engaging and educational activity for your middle school students? Look no further! We have created a worksheet filled with riddles that will challenge your students' knowledge of cell organelles. In this blog post, we will provide you with the answers to these riddles, allowing you to effortlessly check your students' understanding of this subject.
Comic Book Onomatopoeia Inspired by Pop Art | Paper Craft
French games for grammar, vocabulary, and verb conjugation for Core and Immersion: French class made fun and engaging!
Today, 4th grade starting working on their self portraits, inspired by the art of Tad Carpenter, and the fabulous art teacher Katie Allain. You can check out their art on their Instagram accounts, if you click on their names. He's the artist who designed the cover for the book, Wonder! Here's how we created ours! Materials: Sax 90lb paper Sax liquid watercolors Sharpie markers Pencils hair examples Day 1: Talk about the book and movie, Wonder. I plan on playing the audio book, and listening to it while they work. I demonstrated how to draw a simple outline of a face and a simple hairline, like the artist did. I then demonstrated how to trace/color with a Sharpie, and paint with liquid watercolors. I also put up different hair styles on the screen. I think individual copies at their tables would work better, btw :) Here's my fist 4th grade class, working on theirs today!
Learn all about the medieval manuscript making process with a fascinating but short documentary, several living books, and simple DIY project.
Let me take a minute to address my post regarding Staples new rewards program for teachers. I thank everyone who commented. It seems I am not alone in my dismay with this revised program. Please, reach out to Staples and let them know how you feel, whether you agree with me or agree with them. It is important for our voices to be heard either way. I would love to see them revert back to the old program or at least offer up some reason as to why the change was necessary. * * * * * * * * * * * * I wrote a post a while back about foldables and lapbooks. If you haven't seen the post, go visit. I was able to link to some great pdfs of foldable books by Dinah Zike, the queen of all things foldable! :-) I used some of her foldable ideas on lapbooks my friends were working on recently. I have done lapbooks on occasion before, but they are not a staple in my teaching for one main reason; they take a long time to get done! While I do believe they are worth every minutes spent on them, the current curriculum I have to follow does not allow me to linger. I know that they can be done in less time if you do them on a smaller scale, but mine always seem to take on a life of their own! I like doing them because you can really do so much with them. Most importantly, my friends love the project feel of it all. Every time I have done them, my friends are always eager to work. Also, when they see their final project completed, they are a little in awe of themselves. Love it! In our guided reading groups, my friends were working in three different books, one on volcanoes, one on King Tut, and the last on the history of Jazz music. Speaking of which, on a total aside, do you know the Cheesecake song as sung by Louis Armstrong? If you don't know it, watch this! I show this to my friends every year, and we end up singing it all year long. I promise you will have this song stuck in your head! And, just wait for Bing Crosby to come hopping through! Too funny! Isn't that just great!!!! We will often substitute the word cheesecake with pizza or tacos or any featured lunch menu item. Any two syllable word will work. Most of my friends are also in their second year of instrumental lessons, so they love seeing some of the instruments they play featured. Anyway, back to lapbooks! I thought I would show you some of what we did. I forgot to get pictures of the Jazz books, but here is some of what my friends did with Volcanoes and King Tut. Be warned, many pictures to follow! One of the big lessons for this activity was getting my friends to effectively summarize and show synthesis. I'm happy to say they did a very nice job. What was also another perk was the interest my friends had for the books they didn't read. Once they saw the various lapbooks, they wanted to read all the books. I have to say, I do love doing lapbooks with my friends. But, for me, it can be very time consuming. It also requires a lot of pre-planning. You have to have the foldable papers cut to size and ready to go. You also have to carefully plan what you will be doing with each section. You also need to be prepared for that friend whose fine motor skills make a mess of the folding! Always have some extras ready to go! Having said that, I will definitely be doing lapbooks again next year. :-)
I don't know about you, but it seems like writing always gets the shaft in my room. I start off every year with this grand scheme to make sure my students write daily, yet when something needs to go off of my schedule, it always seems that this subject is the one on the chopping block. Honestly, it just isn't fair to my students. They will not become better writers unless they are actually writing. So what I started to do, to ensure that they would write daily, was begin a Paragraph of the Week. The basic idea is simple. The students are given a prompt to write a paragraph about and they have the week to do it at home. However, I knew that if I just gave my students a prompt and let them at it....all heck would break loose. They *needed* some scaffolding and a bit more accountability to decent sentences than that. So I thought and thought about what I do to teach a basic paragraph in my room. I always start off with a brainstorm/pre-write. It gets the juice flowing and gives the kids a lot to pull from when narrowing down their topic. So I made sure that each week, they start with a prewrite. We use Thinking Maps, so the students begin on Monday by filling in a Circle Map on the topic at hand. Then, and here is where I may differ from many, I have them write the body sentences. I just feel like they get a better paragraph if they start with the middle and work their way to the frames of the topic/closing sentence. They don't get so boxed in....or give it all away....when they leave the topic sentence for last (and when brainstorming and prewriting our multi-paragraph essays, this is how I do it as well, so it only made sense to me to have them write a small paragraph this way as well) I also have the students write a supporting detail sentence and then another sentence with evidence or explanations of that original sentence. Again, this gives the students a chance to really add pizazz and life to their writing. I actually have my students color code the sentences as well. This helps them with organization (especially when we get to multi-paragraph essays). Wednesday has them writing their topic and closing sentences. They then put it all together for Thursday. What I am loving about this is that my students now have a body of work that we can pull from for our writing mini-lessons. They have actual authentic writing to revise and edit in class. What I am also loving is that it is forcing me NOT to let writing slip away. I have time built into my day each day to do a little mini-lesson because I know that they will be doing writing at home. The last thing I want them doing is practicing BAD writing....so I am doing so many more mini-lessons....and their writing is getting SO SO SO MUCH BETTER. SO MUCH. We have taken a few of the paragraphs to final draft publishing, now that they have a bunch of paragraphs to choose from. I am finding that this is also turning into a great record of their writing growth throughout the year. And I have put all of this together in a HUGE 200+ page packet for you. There are 36 different writing prompts, with all the scaffolding you see in the first 18 weeks. Then the second 18 weeks switches the focus (which I plan to do in my room) to revising and editing with rubrics and checklists and all. The pack also has a one page explanation of the weekly task in case copies are a problem (I know, I know...I love copies) Anyway, if you would like the entire pack with everything done for you, it is available in my TpT store. The preview download actually has one week in it for free so that you can see if this is a fit for your room. I really, honestly am in love with this right now. I see SUCH a difference in my students, and I am sure you will too.
These all about me, back to school art activities for kids are engaging icebreakers. Encourage creativity and build community during the first week back
These small, square books “explode” into a series of square and triangular pages when you open them. Each student constructed their own book with decorative papers, cardboard, ribbon, and construct…
Eight Most Common Editing Errors In Self-Published Books
These English teacher supplies are must haves for quick ELA lesson plans. Pair your back to school wish list with ideas for English teachers!
Main lesson books are where children record their learning. In the Waldorf approach, children create their own book of what they learn during each 3 to 6 week main lesson block. Check out how to make a main lesson book here. #waldorfhomeschooling #mainlessonbooks #mainlessonblocks
Liz brought home her main lesson books yesterday and I snapped a few photos--they are a bit dark but I think they show her work for this ye...
I’ve been spending some serious amounts of time this summer leading conversations around the country focused on the integration of social studies and literacy. And for the last few years, I…
LOTS of FREE Printable worksheets for kids to practice math, literacy, science, & history with kids of all ages from 123Homeschool4Me.
I love fresh beginnings ... especially the fresh beginning of a brand new class novel. Our start back to school this month meant the start of a new novel for us - The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau. Knowing I wanted to do this novel with the class at some point this year, I bought the 4-book series this summer. We're four chapters in right now, and my students are LOVING it! I bought two different guides from TPT for our novel study. You can see them HERE and HERE. I really like having the huge variety of activities to choose from - and it's so easy to differentiate for my students. We've also been using my Story Elements Question Fans for discussion questions after our daily oral reading. I have been blown away by the depth of our conversations. The students are really into this book and it shows - I can't believe the intricate details they have remembered ... and the way they are challenging and building on other students' answers is amazing! We've been focusing a lot on setting at the beginning of the novel. I ask them questions from the setting pack in the fans, then we've been filling in our map, discussing significant places after each chapter. We're building towards this fabulous idea of a 3D Mural I saw on Jen Maschari's blog. You've got to click HERE to see the picture - trust me! I showed my students this pic and they are SO excited to create this mural - they've already requested certain jobs and parts within the mural. Later this week I will group them into 3 groups (above Ember, Ember, and below Ember) and they will begin writing down setting details and deciding on their roles. I don't think I can hold them off much longer. I already prepped a bulletin board for this project - I think I'm as excited as my students! ;) What are you currently reading in class? Happy Tuesday! (oh my goodness - is it really only Tuesday???) Jen
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
For many of us, just hearing the words book report gives us a flashback to tedious reports that we were tasked with completing when we were in school. I remember standing in the front of my class, reading my book report, being bored by my own review, and just as bored by the reviews of the others. The big problem was that they lacked creativity. There was an exact format and so even though we did different books, they all sounded exactly the same. So needless to say, I don't want to be THAT teacher, but I do want to know that my students are reading, especially since we do a 40 book challenge. So I started to play around with the idea of book reviews. I'm a voracious reader, and Goodreads is one of my favorite websites. I love to keep track of the books I want to read, the books my friends are reading, and also write book reviews when I've completed a book. I like getting my voice heard and sharing my opinion. What's that? A book review is opinion writing? That's right! This doesn't just cover reading comprehension, it's also going to cover opinion writing. Don't you just love it when you can double dip? I know do! Now, there are tons of formats for book reviews. I know this just from reading reviews on Goodreads, but I also saw that teachers are doing these in many different ways. I did a lot of reading on what others are doing, and then decided what I wanted to see in the reviews of my students, as well as what was appropriate for fifth grade (which ruled Goodreads out). I knew right away that I wanted students to share their reviews so that they would serve as recommendations and encourage their classmates to select the books they were reading about. The first thing I did is decide what components I wanted to see, or what my requirements would be. I decided I wanted the following, not necessarily in this order, but pretty close to it: a creative review title an introduction with the title, author, and genre a short summary that DOES NOT give the ending away - again, I want these to serve as recommendations, so it's important that they not give the ending away so others will actually want to read and find out what happens the above bullet can still apply for nonfiction, but the summary would be focused on the main topics a detailed description of the main character or characters/a more detailed description of interesting topics if nonfiction their opinion of the book with a rating on a five-star scale two personal reactions - reasons why they rated the book the way they did, with supporting evidence a recommendation - a sentence or two describing the perfect audience for this book Students had two options for presenting their book reviews, Kidblog, which I love because it is private to just our class. You can get a free membership, but I did the paid one just so that I would have all of the perks since I used it for more than just book reviews. Below is what the main Kidblog page looks like. It displays all of the book reviews for our whole class. We did talk about coming up with more creative pictures for their headings (as well as copyright issues related to that) and I plan to more strict about that this coming school year. T his is what the student book reviews look like when you select one from the main page. Students are required to comment at least one review per week. If you are interested in using Kidblog, you can grab a copy of my step-by-step directions for creating their post by clicking the picture below: The other option was a video review and womp, womp, womp - no one did it. 😞 But, I did give the option, and even made my own example video (after about 200 takes...thanks to my extremely patient hubby). Maybe this year will be the year of the video review. My fingers are crossed! As these are graded, I did create a book review rubric. You can click on the picture to download the rubric. If you are interested in grabbing everything I created, I recently listed my book review pack in my TPT store. You can click the picture below to see the listing.
The Montessori Silence Game: Resources to use at home, school and outdoors with recommended silence themed book list.
This worksheet explores the types of extreme weather with a short reading comprehension exercise.
This blog post explores innovative and engaging lesson plans for any novel unit... ranging from task cards to book instagram pages to a novel podcast project. Student choice is key here, and students can find something they would like to complete in order to convey their reading, comprehension, and
Lots of science printables for free, with no strings attached. I'll be adding to this list as time goes on - Enjoy!
This week we are working on an abstract art project using names. Students have the option of using their first, last, or nick names, or those for someone else. Here are some examples of how the pro…
Try these easy sound experiments -- Elementary & Middle School kids will LOVE testing the science of sound with this fun wave experiment to create a 'gong' and explore how sound waves travel!
Need poems for middle school students? Here are 12 that are funny, quirky, interesting, and poignant. Perfect for teens and teaching poetry.
Grab these free spelling dictionaries for kids in first, second, and third grade! I love how they come in different versions depending on the needs of your learners. They're great to support children's writing and their learning of sight words. #spelling
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
Are your students disinterested and tired of the traditional ways of learning characterization? Have you been searching for a really fun, student-centered, interactive way to eliminate their boredom? Well, look no further! I present to you a wonderful student-collaboration activity that will get your students involved and excited for a character analysis for any novel, […]
