We show you How to Make a Reading Pillow. An easy to follow step by step tutorial with pictures on how to make a Reading Pillow.
14 Literary quotes about life 1. “If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.” 2. “Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.” 3. “There is nothing like looking if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”
Blondie recipe that is perfectly chewy, ready in less than 30 minutes, and topped with crackly cinnamon and sugar!
Haven't tried a book tasting with your students yet? This fun reading activity is an awesome way to introduce genres in your elementary classroom or library!
Are you feeling particularly lonely right now because it’s Friday night and you have no friends, no family or simply no one to hang out with? If you are wondering if you are the only
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, […]
Kids love music! I try to find ways to incorporate it throughout our school day. It is such an amazing learning tool. My Songs for the Year
If you’re new around here, you may not know that I am ALWAYS preaching on and on about managing your time in the classroom efficiently , especially when it comes to centers. This is because I am of the firm belief that centers clear space for the best teaching you can possibly give: small group
Making connections is a strategy that readers use to better understand the text they are reading. It's one of the most powerful strategies your readers have in their tool belts. Readers use their prior knowledge to make a text to self, text to text, or text to world connection to what they are reading. I have put together some lessons and activities for the elementary classroom that can be helpful in teaching this valuable reading strategy. The first thing you want to do is make sure students have a basic understanding of the word connection. You can start with this simple opening activity. Put four of the provided cards into a bag. Pull them out and show them to students. Ask them what the connection is between the objects in the bag. Have a conversation about how they are connected. Then talk about any connections they have to those objects. It's a very basic way of discussing what connections are. You can then relate that to making connections in a book. I included five sets of cards that you could use each day of the week or you could split the students into groups and have them discuss connections with their groups. I would model describing the connection on the card above, because students will have to describe their connections in writing during the unit. You could laminate this to use again. The posters I included cover the three different types of connections that readers can make. For the anchor chart, I also included sentence frames for students to refer to throughout the unit when describing their connections. Text to Self Connection Craft I would explicitly teach one type of connection each day at first. You can uses these crafts for students to record their connections each day. Lots of modeling will probably be needed. Text to Text Connection Craft Text to World Connection Craft Once students have learned the different types of connections, you can go into making them understand that you can make different types of connections within one text. Give each student the 3 strips for the different types of connections they can make to a text. You can then make them into a chain connecting these cards to the name of the text you read. Close your lesson by summarizing the connections made on the cards above. This is a great visual for students to understand how making connections works. I always like for my students to have these little hats to wear while practicing the strategy. They also can get these bookmarks and badges. Always use some sort of exit ticket to close your lesson. This is where you will get an additional assessment to guide your instruction for the next day, as well as your small strategy groups. I like to always include additional graphic organizers for additional lessons on making connections, as well as for small groups and centers. I made them for the three different types of connections. You can use these case files for your whole group lessons or during small group teacher table. After you have taught how these work, these are great for a literacy center! Finally, a fun Friday activity we love to do are Brown Bag Book Clubs! You fill the bag with popcorn and have students fill out the graphic organizer over a read aloud. They then get into groups to discuss their connections with their book club, as well as to review other strategies previously learned. I hope these making connections activities are helpful for your readers! You can find it HERE or by clicking any of the images in this post. If you own the Reading Comprehension Bundle, it has been added there, too, so be sure to download it in your My Purchases tab. Happy reading!
That’s what happened to me, so I know what I’m talking about. I want to share a very painful experience. I want to open my heart […] Read More
Here in third grade, we practice fluency daily with: -Word Lists -Phrase Lists -Passages/Running Records My Mental Journey I have had a love-hate relationship with fluency. As a third grade teacher, my students are subject to end of year, high-stakes testing for the first time. Fluency is not tested on these exams, students have
Ok so…I know I haven’t posted much of anything lately. That’s because I’ve been working on a Pacing Guide to use this school year. I wanted to make it editable…
The Unfair Game is a totally unfair twist on Jeopardy that your students will LOVE to hate! Learn how to play and find sample game boards in this post.
While all of our students don’t need ALL of these strategies, I’ve organized a lot of the things mentioned in this series of blog posts into six big categories. I hope that they’ll help you wrap your mind around SIMPLE things that you can do to help your students with some of their biggest learning obstacles in math. Place Holders & Trackers For many of our students, keeping track of their place is HARD. However, I love to have a few tools handy to help them keep track of where they are and what they’re doing. Bingo Markers Desk Pets…
That’s what happened to me, so I know what I’m talking about. I want to share a very painful experience. I want to open my heart […] Read More
Liven up your next Socratic Seminar with these fun games and strategies to get students talking about ANY text!
Kindergarten is a most delightful ages for read alouds–kids are full of wonder and silliness, and the selection of excellent picture books is enormous. Here are 50 of the best books for kindergarten.
Thrift furniture is my LOVE language! These DIY thrift find makeovers are not only budget-friendly but can really make a statement in your home decor.
Brown Bear Printable Activities {Free Printable Kindergarten Worksheets}If you love reading the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? By Eric Carle to your little one, than you want to check out these fun free printable activities for your kids. There is a matching game with all of the characters from the story, a coloring book, alphabet flip cards, a sequencing activity, and more.View This Tutorial
As receitas da revista Cláudia Cozinha são fonte de inspiração para mim. Por passarem pelo teste da Cozinha Experimental dá aquela segurança da comida testada e aprovada. E quando reproduzo alguma receita de lá sempre dá certo. Uma delas é o...
Hi friends! Today I want to share with you our dinosaur inquiry from the past few months! We originally had some dinosaur wonders on our February wonder chart, so we went back to those questions and I also invited students share more questions they had about dinosaurs. Here is what they came up with initially: Why did the dinosaurs go extinct? How did dinosaurs go extinct? Is it true that the dinosaurs died because it go too cold? Back then, were the dinosaurs real or was it just a story? What do dinosaurs eat? Where did dinosaurs live? Did dinosaurs live in caves? Why do dinosaurs have tails? Why did dinosaurs run? What did dinosaurs sound like? Why did dinosaurs make loud noises? They weren't brainstormed in that order, but I grouped them like that so we could look at questions that were similar consecutively. For our lessons, we first started by reading the book "What are dinosaurs?" by Bobbie Kalman. In this book we learned that dinosaurs were real but lived long ago and that no dinosaurs are alive today. After we learned this information, I had the girl who originally asked the question "Back then, were the dinosaurs real or was it just a story?" come to the teacher table during centre time and record the sentence "Dinosaurs were real but they lived long ago. There are no dinosaurs alive today." It's hard to see but it's the writing at the bottom left corner on the bulletin board! Here are two centres I put out early on in our dinosaur inquiry. First, I bought this egg at Dollarama and posed the question "What do you think will hatch out of the egg?" and had students observe and write their predictions. They loved looking for changes, especially after seeing a few cracks develop! After it hatched (it was a triceratops inside) we talked about how all dinosaurs hatch from eggs. Another centre we set out early on was this dinosaur provocation. This centre lets the students freely explore different dinosaur items and also record their observations and questions about dinosaurs. I bought the dinosaurs from Michaels. You can get the tracing/matching cards you see in the picture for FREE by clicking here on the image below: The next day, we continued to read the book "What are dinosaurs?" by Bobbie Kalman learned that dinosaurs eat plants and meat. We learned the words carnivore and herbivore. After the lesson we prepped for our next lesson by making the titles "What do dinosaurs eat?", "plants" and "meat". Then I made 2 eggs and printed the herbivore and carnivore signs. I also printed the herbivore and carnivores that were in "What are dinosaurs?" and "First Facts: Dinosaurs" by DK Publishing (that I planned to read the next day). The next day, we put the chart pieces up on the whiteboard and read the pages about what dinosaurs eat in "First Facts: Dinosaurs" by DK Publishing. As we read the book, we sorted the dinosaur cards on to the correct egg. We also went back to the "What are dinosaurs?" book and re-read the pages that had information on herbivores and carnivores ands sorted the corresponding dinosaurs on those pages as well on to the egg. Here is the finished chart: (this activity and the map activity below was inspired by @playexplorelearn on Instagram!) The next morning, I set out this invitation to sort dinosaurs based on what they eat. I left out the two books we read to make our chart the previous day as a resource and our completed chart was also on the bulletin board for them to reference! Next, we looked at the question "Why and how did dinosaurs go extinct?" First, we watched the video "Where did the dinosaurs go?" by Pink Fong on YouTube. We watched the video twice and then the students recalled the steps to me about how the dinosaurs went extinct. I wrote each step on a different whiteboard. Then at centre time, students volunteered to record the steps and draw a corresponding picture (if they wanted to) so that we could display the steps on our bulletin board. Next we explored the question "Where did dinosaurs live?" We read pages from "Dino Encyclopedia" (I can't remember the author, sorry!) and "You Can Be a Palentologist!" by Scott D. Sampson to learn that dinosaurs only lived on land (those other creatures that flew or lived in the water were flying reptiles or ocean reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs! Who knew!) but they lived on every continent. I drew up a big map on poster paper and told them that we will be painting it together and then adding dinosaur stickers to show our new learning. First, students were invited to show their new learning about the world map by painting one. If they were able to paint the map correctly (green for land, blue for ocean) then they were invited to come and paint on the large collaborative map. We projected a large world map on the projector so that students could use that as a reference when painting. Here is some of my girls adding to our collaborative map! After we painted the map, we also made labels for the continents, the title and the writing piece to show our new learning. The next day, we glued the continent labels as a class and also added the dinosaur stickers whole group. And here is the completed map and corresponding title/writing: I got the stickers we used for the collaborative map at Michaels. The next day, I also let the students add mini dinosaur stickers to their original maps! I bought the mini stickers at Walmart. I started with a limit of 10 but I realized not everyone made a map so increased the limit to 15. These tiny stickers are great for fine motor development! Here is a sample of a finished map! I had some requests to share the printable for this activity so you can click here or on the image below to download it for free! Next we investigated the question "What did dinosaurs sounds like?" We watched these two videos: and we learned that scientists think dinosaurs did not roar like they do in movies like Jurassic Park. Instead they think they made a hissing noise. Then the girl who originally asked the question came to the teacher table at centre time and wrote her new learning to display on our bulletin board. It's hard to see but it's the top right writing piece in the picture below: Another centre I put out was this story making centre! Students were invited to make a dinosaur story with play dough and loose parts and use ChatterPix to record it. They LOVED this activity! On the last day, I wrote some of the remaining questions on chart paper (Did dinosaurs live in caves? Why do dinosaurs have tails? Why do dinosaurs run?) and we used google and our own inferencing to come up with the answers. I don't have a picture of this... sorry! To consolidate our learning, we also made these non-fiction dinosaur books! This was a great guided group for my higher writers. First we made our cover page and talked about titles, authors and illustrators. Then we learned about table of contents and how it helps us find information in a non-fiction book. We wrote our learning on each page, added a title and went back and added each new topic to our table of contents. It took about a week to complete but it was worth the time! Next time I think I'll start with less pages in the book though, especially for our first book! Here are some other books in case you are interested in looking! They used our bulletin boards as a reference when thinking of facts to include in their books which made our bulletin board more interactive than usual which I loved! If you are looking for these non-fiction book making printables, you can find them in my "Inquiry Writing Templates for Kindergarten" pack on TPT. You can click here or on the image below to see what else is included! Here is the finished bulletin board again: We had some amazing questions come up during our dinosaur inquiry (see below). We recorded them but the kids were losing steam with this inquiry and our caterpillars arrived so we switched gears without exploring these questions. I just wanted to share that because it's ok to not explore every question! Don't beat yourself up if you can't find the time! We can only do what we have time for :) That's it for our dinosaur inquiry! I hope this post gave you some ideas if your students have similar wonderings or are interested in dinosaurs too! - Yukari
Learn about about 24 greek god and goddesses in this fun, Greek Mythology for Kids printable pdf book filled with Greek myths.
Interactive notebooks have been one of the biggest trends in education over the last few years, but are something I’ve never been able to buy into. I've
There are many things to do in Catania and its surroundings. This is one of the most beautiful and lively cities in Sicily, with plenty of attractions to keep you busy for a few days,
I talk quite a bit about classroom management on my blog. I have to be honest here. I have tried so many different things. I have tried the clip chart, I have tried check marks, I have tried the “flip the card”. NONE of them work for me. The book Dream Class really changed my thoughts on...
This rainbow fish craft is the perfect companion to the beloved book "The Rainbow Fish." It is so bright and colorful - kids love it!
If you love the book Enemy Pie, here are some great reading and writing lessons that go great with this story. Enemy Pie is one of my students' favorites.
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.
Here's the best taupe and beige cabinets for your kitchen makeover
Want to do a project centered on emojis? Kids love emojis! Check out this Create Your Own Emoji activity that can be completed in Google Drive.
Amigurumi Jawa of Star Wars Free Pattern & Tutorial Ideas – If you’re a Star Wars enthusiast and a fan of crochet crafts, you’re in for a treat! Amigurumi, the ... Read more
