Back to school ideas to teach your students about sentences and their parts. This color-coded resource is perfect for K-1 literacy centers.

Exit tickets are the key to finishing the class and assessing our learners! Read this blog post and learn more about them!

My favorite teaching units are my research and rhetorical analysis unit. I love teaching rhetorical analysis and assigning students a rhetorical analysis PAPA square. Read on to learn more about the rhetorical analysis PAPA square activity and to sign up to receive your own free copy! I love providing my students with the knowledge and resources they need to critically read and analyze text, know why it is powerful, and understand how the author crafted it. I feel that truly understanding the language and the text, primarily through rhetorical analysis, is something that makes all of my students critical thinkers.

Learn why one-pagers are one of my go-to activities for breaking down complex topics and texts. Understand what they are, why you and your students will love them, and how to implement them in your ELA classroom. I even have the advice to help you tackle the biggest obstacle you’ll encounter with this activity.

When assessing writing, the fine line between expected standard and greater depth can be challenging and raises questions such as: What tips a child’s writing into that greater depth band? Is…

Sure. There are probably some of you bike riding savants who had no need for them. You just hopped on and started riding, jumping ramps, and weaving through traffic, no problem. But most of us need…

Teaching students to use a variety of sentence structures or different ways to start sentences will improve their writing.

This is the first time in over a decade of teaching that I’ve gone through a stack of papers saying, “Yes! Yes! YESSS!!!!” I’m so proud of what’s been accomplished that I’m just dying to share with you how to make this happen in your own classroom. Here's how to write essay prompts, offer a new t

Etymology, which is the study of the historical word orgins and their meanings, is a powerful tool for improving vocabulary.

Notes about plot...

Grammar instruction can be FUN for kids! Take a look at these ultra creative ways to teach comparative endings in 2nd grade.

My ELD class is focusing on sentences this month. I thought our lesson on the four sentence types would be a great opportunity for me to try out my first from-scratch foldable. I was nervous. Coming from 2nd grade, the idea of having them fold and fold and fold and cut from verbal directions… what […]

Did you think teaching students to write would be a snap? I mean, you are a college-educated, certified individual. How hard could it possibly be? Well, it’s a challenge, especially when just starting out. In my classroom,

When teaching narrative writing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, there are so many writing skills to cover. They range from creating a sequence of events (beginning, middle, and end) to more difficult

Welcome to ELA Buffet where you'll find bitesize lessons your students will eat up! Here you'll find ELA lessons and resources for middle and high school.

Back to school time and need some 'getting to know you' activity? Ditch those reading interest surveys and try these fun & hands on activites!

A fun and engaing, problem solving spelling word game. No prep - simply print and play to learn. Use with any spelling word list.

Using strategies to make thinking visible can be incredibly powerful. Their power, however, hinges almost entirely on how willing teachers are to learn about their students. Far too often, I see vi…

Back to school ideas to teach your students about sentences and their parts. This color-coded resource is perfect for K-1 literacy centers.

This is a hard good item. This is NOT digital. There is no download included. Find this on my website: (Save $5 no Etsy fees) https://carolynscreativeclassroom.com/anchor-charts/ You will receive: Printed, laminated and cut out anchor chart ready to use! There are NO holes punched in the anchor chart. You may add holes using hole punch or add magnets to the back. Sizes: There are 2 sizes: Large 24 x 36 Medium 18 x 24 (You can find my desktop charts and MINIS only on my website) How to Use: Anchor Charts can be used to teach concepts and then be displayed to review skills. Students have a reference point. They involve students during the creation process and they are much more ENGAGED in lesson because they have input in the creation of them! The anchor charts can be displayed in the classroom and students can refer back to them when working on their own. Important Information Priority shipping (Usually 2-4 business days) Priority includes insurance if your posters get lost, stolen, or damaged in mail. If your charts get lost in the mail, you MUST contact me and start the process. You only have 30 days to make a claim. Shipping is $16 (Includes $8 length charge because these are shipped in tubes and are too large to go through USPS machines) Media Mail - Unfortunately I had to remove Media Mail. If you need this option, please check out on my website. Miss. Hacker carolynscreativeclassroom.com https://www.facebook.com/Carolynscreativeclassroom/

One of the most time-consuming things teachers deal with is student absences! I no longer worry about this because my students completely take care of it!

The creativity and generosity of the online teaching community never ceases to amaze me. I have spent a couple of weeks collating resources for my department from my Twitter back catalogue, an…

Teach your students Greek and Latin roots using a fun and interactive card game! This resource includes 2 decks of cards and covers 120 different Greek and Latin roots. You will love the flexibility this resource offers; it can be used with any vocabulary program and is easily differentiated to meet the unique needs of your students!

I don't know if you have noticed, but I LOVE ROOM TRANSFORMATIONS! I probably love them more than my students do....and my students want them all the time! This one was new for me this year! I've always wanted to do an operating room, but didn't know exactly what standard I wanted to cover! Well, I finally figured it out (obviously)! ---------------------------------------------------- SET-UP & MATERIALS COVERING WALLS: Whenever you want to cover up your walls to transform your space, I highly recommend using tablecloths from the Dollar Tree! They are super light-weight and easy to hang up. I always hang them up with tacks. I have ceilings where tacks push in very easily and it takes no time at all. Typically it takes me between 45 minutes to an hour to cover 80% of my room and my room is LARGE. OPERATING ROOMS: To create the rooms, I hung up one tablecloth on each side. This help create a small space where students could feel like they were in separate operating rooms, but I was still able to see all students. LIFE-SIZED OPERATION CHARACTER: These were made from butcher paper. I taped a piece that would fit nicely on each table onto my SmartBoard and traced over a picture I found Google. Once I was done, I traced around my pre-made operation "organs" so that I knew they would fit. I DID NOT trace around the ones from the Google image. OPERATION ORGANS: I free handed them! I looked at the images online and copied! Of course they are larger than normal. I wanted them large enough so that students could write character traits on each one. I only made 9 out of the 13 on the original board game. See the picture below to see what I mean. STUDENT COSTUMES: I purchased everything from amazon and created the badges which are linked below. Gloves where provided by my school. All items where waiting for the students are their assigned operating room. -Face masks -Caps -My doctor outfit DOCUMENTS: Thank You, Ma'am The Scholarship Jacket (Mature words and content) Possibility of Evil Badges, doctor files, & patient files I made one for each group. I paced all of the stories, doctor, and patient directions on one clipboard and provided enough clipboards for each student in the group. PowerPoint Presentation-surgical room sounds -The first slide lasts for 50 minutes -Second slide has the flat-line video (Lasts for 15 seconds) -Third slide shows what the students need to do to save their patient (Lasts for 2 minutes) -Fourth slide goes back to the original beep. (SLIDES SWITCH BY THEMSELVES! All you need to do is click the start button of each video.) ---------------------------------------------------- CONTENT RL 3 Describe how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution. Identifying character traits can be very tricky for students especially when they have to infer them and then tell me how a character's traits develops the plot. We practiced this skill for two weeks before I felt like they were ready for this transformation. The goal is that they demonstrate mastery of this standard. STEP ONE: Read the patient's file. This is a short story I provided each group. Now, I always teach to the top. I do not differentiate during transformations. I provide more assistance if need, which is rare. Kids can do amazing things when you give them the chance! Once the entire group finished reading (they read it together), they could move onto step two. STEP TWO: Identify the character's "symptoms" aka character traits. Student's analyzed the file for all the components to identify each trait (refer to the document linked at the bottom). I heard so many awesome conversations during this time. As student's diagnosed the patient, they would raise their hands and call Dr. Schrempp over (me). They would have to provide me the evidence from the file that support that diagnosis. If they were correct, they earned an organ! Then, the group would record the trait on the organ and translate it back into the patient's body. In the end, each operating room identified nine qualities. This part took about and hour and a half! BUT of course I had to add a little twist.... PATIENT FLAT-LINED: I made a timed PowerPoint that at about the hour mark the screen switched and all the sudden the flat-line sound went over our speakers. My student's FREAKED! Student's learned that their patients were dying and they only way they could save them was by solving the hard math problem that was on the board. They only had one minute to solve because the human brain only last about 3 minutes without oxygen. You can choose whatever problem you like! I'm all about rigor so my students had a nice long multi-operation expression. & I'm happy to say that all surgeons saved their patients. EARLY FINISHERS: I only had 2 out of the 4 groups finish about 20 minutes before the rest. You should always have a backup plan for when this happens. I used ReaditWriteitLearnit's character trait autopsy files from her TpT. I handed the task cards to each group and they worked on their already made person. Checkout the link for more details! I have provided all of my documents above. Please sure them as you please! I kept the parts for names editable so that you can add your own character names. Remember I have to rights to all of these documents. If you plan on using them, you must give me credit. Please tag me in your Instagram photos! I'd love to see this all in action!