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,
Expanding Sentences Anchor Chart and Mini-Lesson
A district-wide unit that affirms the experiences of ELLs while teaching content and developing their language skills. ELLs voices were highlighted through this multi-grade, multi-school unit.
Check out these fun teaching materials for teaching comma rules to upper elementary including an anchor chart, videos, and graphic organizer.
Grade 5 Reading Comprehension Worksheets Fun Activities for Kids.
Give your child practice with his sentence building skills with this printable worksheet that's all about capital letters.
Teaching morphology can be a great way to help students with understanding unknown words, decoding multisyllabic words, and spelling.
Teaching morphology can be a great way to help students with understanding unknown words, decoding multisyllabic words, and spelling.
It amazes me how much class size affects my teaching and my students. I started the year with 31 students. I just lost my second one at the beginning of this week, so I'm down to 29. I've had 2 kids out all week on long vacations and 2 more out sick. So I've had a class of 25 ALL week!! It's been a big difference. Even though the ones gone are little angels and I still have all the hard ones, it really makes a BIG difference!! Our district and researchers keep telling us that class size doesn't make a difference but I have to beg to differ with them. It makes a HUGE difference in first grade. With a smaller class I can spread myself out more- work with more kids, more often, for longer periods of time. We can get more done- 25 kids take less time to finish an assignment than 31. With all the activities we do in first grade through out the day it can really add up. With less kids, fighting for my attention, I can give more attention to those that really need it. During class discussions, there is more participation by more kids. The shyer kids start to open up. It just feels more like a close knit community rather than a big city. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to teach less than 20. What a dream!! Back to reality. Our school has been doing training in SIOP this year. It stands for Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol. You can find out more HERE. It actually is training in teaching English Language Learner but our school does not have a very high percentage of ELLs. We actually have only 3 out of 180 in our grade level. But the SIOP model is really best practices and a great review in how to teach better. With the new common core our principal thought is would be a great help. We've had to do lesson studies and just finished one yesterday. Our team did ours on Synonyms. It's great to collaborate and work together as a team developing and analyzing a lesson. Here's a practice page we used and a cute song we found. I don't know who to give credit for the song but our kiddos really liked it. Click HERE if you'd like to grab a copy. Hey, believe it or not but it's FRIDAY tomorrow- again! Gotta love FRIDAY! I hope you all have a GREAT one.
Teaching your students to correct spelling is made easier with this helpful, printable writing activity. Click to view and print for classroom or home use!
Descriptive writing is all about describing something. This “something” could be anything ranging from a person to an object to events, memories, places, and just about anything that qu…
Even though I’m an upper grade teacher, not a single day goes by that I don’t read a picture book to my class. I love using picture books to teach a wide range of reading and writing skills. Even though they are older, my kiddos still love to come down to our rug to hear…
Is your kid having trouble with contractions? Try out this simple memory matching game.
PRIMARY GRAMMAR UNIT 5 - CAPITALIZATION We completed our grammar units 1-4, nouns , adjectives , verbs and adverbs . Who knew grammar could be so easy and fun right? These four units give students such a solid foundation of basic sentence structure and parts of speec
When I was little, we couldn't jump on our laptop and blog away our days and nights! ;) Boy, am I glad I am not little anymore. Oh wait...I mean I am glad to be older. No, that's not it LOL...wish I was still a little bit little hehe, but glad to be a bit more grown up, sometimes, wink wink! We have jumped in to complex sentence structures with both feet! The grammarian in me just LOVES teaching this! Well, I should say the grammarian-wanna-be! Lord knows, there was a time that teaching complex sentence structures made my head hurt and my eyes cross. That was until I spend one summer afternoon at the workshop of Mr. Jeff Anderson, aka "the write guy." Yes, I know I repeat myself at times, but I promise you that his wonderful book Mechanically Inclined changed my teaching life; can you hear the sigh? I swear I should get paid as his agent or something as much as I brag on his work, but all the same, I am thankful to have found it. Sadly enough, I have become a "write-guy groupie" of sorts, and if he ever makes it close enough, I go out of my way to make it to one of his workshops. I now look forward to this part of writing, and we have a ton of fun with it! So much so that I almost feel smart enough to call myself a grammarian. Just don't look to closely at all that I have written here. ;) Well now... how was that for a rabbit trail? Anyway, let's just say that there are plenty of "aaahhhhwwwwheewwbuuusss" howls happening in our room right now. Actually, that is our fun way of saying AAAWWUBBIS, which is an mnemonic device to help my kiddos recognize subordinating conjunctions and dependent clauses, comma causers: although, after, as, when, while, until, because, before, if, and since. One of the fun lessons in his book Mechanically Inclined refers to When I Was Little by Jamie Lee Curtis as a gentle introduction to the ever-so-lovely subordinating conjunction, and luck of all luck, wouldn't you know I already had the book. After reading the book, I display some of my own when I was little thoughts, and we discuss what we notice about the sentences. This truly is an easy bridge into complex sentences, and it is so simple that it's genius! The fun part is listening to their ideas of "when I was little." So cute, my kiddos! All of this opens the door to the idea of independent clauses, dependent clauses, and comma causers, and builds the habit of looking for where to put the comma if they happen to use one of these words in their writing, which is what we want, right?! We have fun with the poem on the first few days, and trudge through those first looks of furrowed-brow, open-mouth confusion until the light bulbs start glowing, the brow relaxes a bit, and the slack mouth forms into smiles as they see just how easy it can be. Don't you just love seeing those light bulbs start glowing! As the students publish their finished pieces, I will share them here. If you have any of your own when I was little thoughts, please share them here. I would love to share them with the class! This is another fun mentor text that I will pull out later to review and practice :) You should see the responses for this one! I have started reading homework this week to a chorus of boos, but for the most part, I think they are getting used to the idea as they see my expectations. It doesn't take long for most to see that I am not trying to torture them; yes I know, believe it or not! In discussing our expectations, we have reviewed common reading strategies that help on those benchmark like passages. Definitely NOT my favorite kind of reading, but it has to be done I guess. If it were up to me, we would all sit around in comfy chairs that are in cozy places and read whatever we wanted as long as our hearts content! But I guess they didn't ask me, LOL. I only have one little picture book to share today. Can you believe? Where's My Mummy? by Carolyn Crimi was one of the sweet (cheap) little finds I found on my minute hour long run into Books-a-Million. I really didn't buy it so much to read aloud, but rather just to add to my library. As soon as the kids saw it though, their begging and pleading won out, and I read it aloud. The pleasant surprise was all of the wonderful alliteration and onomatopoeia in it. So yet again, I planned that! With little baby mummy, I shall say goodnight! Happy Reading!
Check out this awesome set of engaging, 1st Grade Math and Literacy Worksheets. Practice Math, Grammar, Writing, and so much more in a fun way.
BOOM! This worksheet is full of all kinds of sound-based words, from creaks to squeaks.
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Winter is just around the corner and I have been working hard on our Winter Math and Literacy Packet for Kindergarten! I am happy to say that it is
Summary writing is a vital skill, which any English Language Arts student should acquire; learning to summarize will help them learn to analyze what they read, write concisely and paraphrase. This lesson will work well as part of a larger writing unit, or when studying writing. However, it would als...
Back to School is right around the corner for us and I am SUPER excited to kick of this school year with some fun, hands-on and engaging resources for The
Try this synonyms worksheet with your third grader. This synonyms worksheet gets your child to find words with the same meanings. Download to complete online or as a printable!
This is a funny reading about Chocolate. This worksheet can be useful for exams - ESL worksheets
