Our students need to be proficient in 5 Essential Literacies and School Librarians can integrate a Library Literacy component into any class visit. In Part 3 we look at Information Literacy Skills:…
Included in this product you will find an INB resource for teaching needs and wants. Students will sort items into needs or wants envelopes. Then they will reflect on their own lives to compete a journal prompt. This lesson is perfect for a consumer math class or financial literacy class. Please...
Need some graphic organizers for students K-3rd grade? Grab my free writing rraphic organizers to help students get started writing!
It's been a while since I've posted a project - it always seems to be that I'll have a couple of weeks where we are "in process", then sudd...
12 ways to build literacy in the secondary classroom: teachers share their secrets of getting older students to read and share books.
Teaching text features to your primary students should be fun and engaging for your students. See many activities and suggestions!
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Hi Friends…. The past two weeks we have been working on Prefixes and Suffixes in our second-grade classroom! My kiddos were having such a good time brainstorming words with prefixes and then figuring out the meaning. They really had a strong grasp of the concept… I was pretty impressed. After our whole … Prefixes, Suffixes and a FREEBIE Just for YOU! Read More »
Teach your students how to build simple sentences with this fun activity!
Get your students back into writing with these awesome August Writing Prompts!! Great opinion ideas, fictional narratives, and relatable informative topics.
Learn the essentials of research-based reading instruction! Understand its components, structure, and how it differs from traditional approaches. Share crucial insights with stakeholders to support student success effectively. Explore how to implement this approach for optimal literacy growth!
In this blog post you will find five mini lesson, in the order I would teach them, for your next informational writing unit. These mini lessons have been created based on standards and using common struggles students face with this type of writing.
Teach EVERY reading literature and reading informational text common core state standard using inspirational and engaging short films and video clips! For an entire year of highly engaging, no prep…
Find fantastic resources for teaching inferences (with free mini lesson). The resources are ideal for 4th graders but also features ideas for grades 1-3.
10 significant reasons to read aloud to students on a
Hi everyone! I've decided to share my lesson plan outlines with everyone each week or at least as often as I can. If you aren't signed up for my newsletter, please sign up now. I'll send the lesson plans and free resources out each month for you to have. If my newsletter opt-in doesn't pop up for you, just email me and I'll add you to the list. My hope is that we can collaborate and make the best learning experience possible for students. You will definitely find lesson ideas and outlines in these series of posts. You will not find detailed plans in these posts, but you will find links to my detailed units in my TPT store. The following lesson plan templates are from A Modern Teacher. Just like every teacher at back to school time I'm spinning my wheels and working through my exhaustion to get my plans up, going and best suited for students. Please be patient with me. Below you will find a very rough draft of my yearly plans. As the next month goes by I will be updating these outlines and replacing them. The first two weeks of my lesson plans are short. My main focus is building a classroom culture with students and going over procedures with students that will set them up for success. In my lesson outlines you will see T for teacher and Ss for students. Grizzly Bear Unit Superhero vs. Villain Character Education Print and Teach Phonics Games Mini ELA Anchor Charts for students Asking and Answering Questions: Differentiated Panda Passages The first week of writing is most successful when procedures are created to set students up for success. My main focus is on teaching students proper penmanship and a love for writing. Youtube has a ton of videos that you can use to walk students through handwriting instruction. Free Handwriting YouTube Tutorial
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14 Brilliant Ways to Quiet a Noisy Class! Check out these behavior management strategies for classroom management!
Scrambled paragraphs are a fun literacy activity your kids will love. This activity contains 5 interesting passages to scramble and re-arrange correctly. Students will use logic and transition words like "for example", "however", and "finally" to determine the correct order. Great activity to reinforce text structures!Each passage contains six sentences. The passages increase in difficulty, making this activity easy to differentiate. This works great as a station activity for helping teach students organization in writing. It can be useful scaffolding for students who are struggling with constructing paragraphs of their own.Answer key is included.No prep, ready to print and use! Teachers are saying: "We loved this resource. I set these up as stations. The kids went around in their groups and tried to put the paragraphs together in the correct order. It was interesting to see how the sequential one was the easiest one for him to complete. This was the perfect activity for our class needs." Format: PDF
5 key reasons to teach students to analyze differing perspectives
Quick and fun digital citizenship lessons for elementary students. Help them build their digital identity before they hit the social networks.
Introducing students to challenging words through Word of the Week can help increase their confidence in reading, writing, & speaking.
Although we may only think of using fables in lower grades, using fables in upper elementary can be very beneficial. Not only are fables an excellent genre for teaching morals and themes in stories, but because they are short, they are wonderful to use when comparing and contrasting the treatment of similar themes and topics. Using these short stories can be both beneficial and fun, even for our older students. Finding Free Resources Finding free resources for teaching fables is easier than you may think. One wonderful resource can be found at Library of Congress. This website contains a list of classic Aesop fables that you can print or display with your overhead projector for your entire class to use. Another website is Aesop's Fables that also contains a large list of fables. A Fun "Fable Strip" Activity Recently, my students read a variety of fables that I printed from Library of Congress. The students discussed the morals of each fable, compared fables, and completed a fun writing activity. For the "Fable Strips" writing activity, students worked in groups and chose a favorite fable. Then each group collaborated together to create a comic strip style "fable strip" to display. Students sketched and planned three or four scenes about the chosen fable. Once the "fable strip" was planned, students continued working in their groups to draw and color each scene on white paper. Then they cut out each one and used a speech bubble to write the dialogue. Each group created three to four scenes for their fable strip that were then displayed on the bulletin board. Students wrote the moral of the fable on a yellow strip of paper. The moral was then placed below each "fable strip." The final result was this fun fables bulletin board. Graphic Organizers If you follow my blog, then you are not surprised that if I'm discussing reading, I must include graphic organizers. I am a huge fan of using graphic organizers to help students write about their reading, to help them increase their thinking, and to help improve comprehension. This graphic organizer is one of three that are designed specifically for fables. All three graphic organizers can be found HERE in my best selling Reading Graphic Organizers for Literature. Plan a day or two for your students to have fun with fables. They will love it! Thanks for stopping by! Connect with Me: Blog TpT Store Instagram Facebook Pinterest
Students will love learning about a new animal as they create an informational report using this helpful guide!
Do your students find informational text activities boring? Your students will LOVE practicing their nonfiction reading skills while playing Jenga. The interactive component will help students retain the knowledge, too! Whether you're playing as a whole class or in small groups, this resource will leave a lasting impression on students. This (editable) Informational Jenga game is the perfect way to strengthen students’ informational text skills in a fun and engaging way. All questions are written in a way that will strengthen students’ nonfiction reading and overall comprehension skills. What's included? Teacher directions for setup Teacher directions for implementation 54 printable task cards for Jenga pieces All questions based on Bloom’s Taxonomy and encourage higher-order thinking Editable pieces for personalized questions and prompts Informational Text Jenga score sheet Bonus Features: Can be used with ANY novel or short story. An editable version of this resource is included so that you can customize, add and delete items that fit your students. This resource works well for grades 7-12. The questions are worth different points based on their level of complexity (differentiation). Pink: 2 points – Remember and Recall Green: 4 points – Apply and Analyze Blue: 6 points – Evaluate and Create Connect with Me SuperHERO Teacher Blog Find me on Facebook Find me on Instagram Find me on Pinterest Find me on Snapchat: Superheroteach
Learning the Parts of Speech will be fun and interactive using these Flip Flap Books®! Teaching about Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, and Adverbs will be made easy using this resource!
Oink! BOOM! Ker-plunk. POW! Cha-ching, cock-a-doodle do! This is what you would have heard if you were hanging outside my classroom door today! No, it wasn't bring-your -farm-animal-to-school day... it was actually onomatopoeia day! Ono Mato What??? Onomatopoeia are words that imitate actual sounds. For the next two weeks, my students and I are embarking on an exciting study of literary devices. For today's lesson we used the Literary Devices Poster and Foldable set from my TpT store. Students folded, cut, and glued their foldable into their reading journals. I showed them the poster for onomatopoeia and modeled for them how to write the definition and example into their book. Next, I had students meet me on the carpet and I shared with them a couple of my favorite books: Roller Coaster by Marla Frazee and That's Good That's Bad by Margery Cuyler. Both of these books are a lot of fun and students love to grab them up later to look more closely at the detailed illustrations. After I had shared some examples from children's literature and a list I found on the web, I had students choose one onomatopoeia (everyone had to choose a different one) and gave them speech frames to write them in. Here is their final display: You will find a lot of resources for onomatopoeia on the web. Here is a printable pdf list from Read Write Think . Tomorrow we will be adding abundant alliterations to our academics. Tongue twisters will be the talk of the town as we tinker with our language toolbox! I hope you take a moment to check in here at Literacy Loves Company!
Teach your students all about writing a detailed, interesting and well structured recount with these literacy centres!Included are three bright and engaging literacy centres where students will learn to create recounts, practice ordering information and select key information to retell events while ...
Looking for techniques to teach visual literacy? Read on to learn about the OPTIC strategy for rhetorical analysis of visual texts and images.
Are you looking for some new ideas or ways to use informal assessments in your classroom? This is a complete A to Z list of assessment ideas for you!
Full of fresh ideas, diverse pairings, and helpful resources, engage high school students with these fun activities for teaching Beowulf!
Creative lesson plans are important in secondary ELA because they challenge students to go beyond the obvious and think outside the box. Creative lessons plans are also highly engaging for struggling and gifted students. This list of activities encourages creative thinking and growth mindset all
Free Printable I Spy Back to School Activity. Classroom themed activity or game idea for the first day of school for students.
Looking for techniques to teach visual literacy? Read on to learn about the OPTIC strategy for rhetorical analysis of visual texts and images.
Can I be really honest with you? Don't judge me, but I really hated teaching reading, writing and grammar during my first few years of teaching. I dreaded my ELA block every day. I found it boring to teach! I LOVE to read and write, but I felt like my lessons were causing my
This zoo themed literacy pack includes a lesson plan, center work mats and story telling-sequencing visuals to help you teach using the book by Rod Campbell titled “Dear Zoo”. PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT THIS LESSON PLAN IS A SAMPLE EXTRACT ( 1 out of 20 lesson plans) INCLUDED IN MY ZOO MEGA PACK Dear zoo lesson plan Lesson plan Learning Objectives (Common Core) • CCSS.ELA.SL.K.2– Confirm understanding of text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification is something is not understood • CCSS.SL.K.1.– Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics • CCSS.SL.K.1.6– Speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly • CCSS.SL.K.4– Describe familiar people, places, things and events and with prompt and support provide additional details • CC.SS.RL.K.10– Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding • CC.SS.RL.K.7– With prompt and support describe the relationship between illustrations and the story in which they appear. Lesson plan Learning Objectives • To listen to and participate in story telling (“Dear Zoo” by Rod Campbell) • To talk about and express ideas about the story • To sequence the events in the story: Beginning, middle and end • To make sense of animals, their sizes and the possible box/basket they may fit into by problem solving, rationalizing and using prior knowledge from the book Materials included in this package • Color and sort the animals into correct boxes and baskets art activity • Full large cut outs to use on bulletin boards or during your group time when you are reading the Dear Zoo story. • Center work mats where students assemble the missing key words from the story to complete each sentence. I am very happy to work with everyone. If you have any concerns or comments regarding this teaching tool, please contact me at [email protected] before leaving negative or low ratings and I will ensure you are 100% satisfied. All the best Marcelle Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell lesson plan and centers, Zoo animals literacy lesson plan and centers,
An early lesson you want to teach your students is the difference in books that tell stories and books that give information. I have found that the best way to teach this is within context of different types of texts. Let's read more about some resources that I have used to teach the differences in the two types, as well as meet our pesky friend, the BOOK BANDIT! We begin the unit learning the text features of both types of texts by creating this anchor chart and using real text examples to discuss the differences between the two. I print the anchor chart from the pack as a poster, along with the two mini posters, for students to reference throughout the unit. I printed the sorting cards on cardstock and students helped me attach them to the anchor chart during our whole group discussion. They then completed their own sort below. This is great to glue into their reading journal for additional reference during the unit. I have lots of activities that I use included within the pack, but you don't have to use them in the order laid out in this blog post. ;) The activity below is one I like to always do with a new reading skill. My students become reading detectives during this cooperative group activity. Each group gets an envelope with the following recording sheets and a text, which might be a book or a passage, inside. They work with their group to decide if the book tells a story or gives information. They have to prove their thinking by providing three pieces of evidence from the text. After you do a few rotations of these throughout your unit, you can add it to a learning center for additional practice. Throughout the unit, I kept two bins of books labeled books that tell stories and books that give information. I referred to a few of them during the unit. But at the end of the unit, I threw them all over the classroom for students to walk in and find the next morning with a letter from the Book Bandit! He had came in and made a mess of our sorted books, so it was the students' challenge to sort them back into their proper bins. They had to provide three pieces of evidence from the text to prove their thinking and they attached it to a craft of the Book Bandit that they had made. This was such an engaging activity and a great assessment! I have included lots of other resources in the pack to use during your lessons. Throughout the unit, students pretended to be detectives, so they wore these little badges! We used these interactive notebook pieces for different texts. If you have Scholastic flyers, you can have students sort them in these flapbooks. This is another great quick assessment! We always finish our lessons with an exit ticket for me to quickly assess their understanding of the different features of these two types of texts. After completing a unit, I love to give my students new bookmarks for them to use during independent reading just to remind them of the previous skill taught so that they can independently apply those skills during reading. Click any of the pics in the blogpost to check this resource out! As always, happy teaching and happy reading!
Looking for a simple, print-and-go resource for José M. Hernández? This reading comprehension packet features the Mexican-American astronaut. It’s perfect as an in-class activity, literacy center, a substitute lesson, or as a weekend assignment. This packet can be used for Hispanic Heritage Month or any time of the year. This informational text is written for students in Kindergarten through 2nd grade. It includes a 6-question comprehension quiz plus answer key. Expand your student’s knowledge of historical figures and build your students’ confidence in their reading skills with these one-page reading passages. This packet includes: a one-page reading passage reading comprehension questions answer keys available in ENGLISH AND SPANISH. ✨Great for use with emerging bilinguals/ ELs/ ESOLs/ ENLs.✨ Prep work is minimal... Just print the reading passages and worksheets and give them to your students! You may also like… Tito Puente One-Page Reading Passage Vicente Fernández 1-Page Reading Passage Reading Comprehension Passages: Famous Afro-Latinos (vol 1) Hispanic Poets: One-Page Reading Passages ---- Copyright Monica Olivera, 2023 Follow me on... TPT Store | My Blog | Facebook | Instagram
The Invisible Boy activities. Reading comprehension lesson plans with student response activities. Vocabulary, grammar, sentence study, and a craft, too!
