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…

Visualizing the text is such an important strategy used for building your students’ reading comprehension. It is very versatile as it can be used in different ways with students of all ages and reading levels. I

I created this reading comprehension for my ESOL group who will be working on the theme of " Homes" online this term. I hope you find it helpful with your learners. - ESL worksheets

If you are looking for some high-interest activities, try using animated shorts to teach inference. Free handouts focus on student learning.

I created this reading comprehension for my ESOL learners who are working on the theme ' Going to Hospital'. There questions to assess the learners' understanding. - ESL worksheets

Teaching geometry can be FUN! Take a look at these geometry videos, books, anchor charts, activities, games, and freebies! Perfect for 1st and 2nd grade!

This reading comprehension deals with the theme ' Finding a Job'. It sheds light on applying online and the interview process. There are two activities after the reading passage for learners to complete. - ESL worksheets

This reading comprehension gives beginners some reading practice. They first have to read the passage, then complete all the activities that follow. I hope you find it useful. - ESL worksheets

These free printable reading worksheets will work for kindergarten or 1st Grade. These learning worksheets are fun and easy no prep.

Our principal has really been encouraging us to add more writing into our daily lesson plans. "They should be writing all day long" he tells us. The research is there to back him up. I bumped into this Roll and Retell page from Fun In First on Pinterest awhile back and finally figured out how to add it to our learning day. I printed and laminated four copies of the Roll and Retell page to hand out to each of my four table groups. After a round of Daily 5 I handed them out. I also gave each table one die. Each student at the table took turns rolling the die and then answering the question based on the number they rolled. They each used the individual book they were reading to answer the questions. I felt like it would be a great advertisement for new books for each child to read when they were done with the one they were working on. I also knew it would be great oral practice BEFORE they started writing. Once they had a chance to talk about what they were going to write, I set the timer for 5 minutes and let them write. Then we shared our responses. Here are a few of their responses. I had so much success with this activity with my students, that I created versions that cover the standards for 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades. There are 6 different Roll and Respond Sheets that cover all of the Second Grade ELA Common Core Standards for both literary and informational text. There are 5 different Roll and Respond Sheets that cover all of the Third Grade ELA Common Core Standards for both literary and informational text. There are 7 different Roll and Respond Sheets that cover all of the Fourth Grade ELA Common Core Standards for both literary and informational text. Before you go, head on over to our giveaway page to enter our current giveaway! Every week one lucky winner gets a $25 Teachers pay Teachers gift card! Dr. Susan Hall, literacy leader and founder of 95 Percent Group, mentions this Roll and Retell Activity as a Reading Comprehension Game that Students Will Want to Play Over and Over! Check it out for the other ideas there as well! What have you tried in your classroom lately? Link up with Fourth Grade Flipper for Tried It Tuesday and share! This post contains affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase using one of my links, which helps to support the blog. All opinions are my own and I only promote brands and products that I have used myself and truly love. I would love to hear from you! ❤️ Have a question? Idea for a resource you might find helpful? Be so kind and leave a comment below.

Exit slips are a great way to quickly assess your students on reading skills and standards that you are teaching. Grab free reading exit slips on this post.

Thanks to this website: issuu.com, it's easy to read and watch videos so that your kids can learn faster. Units from 1 to 13 have been linked to videos in order to make learning more fun. Enjoy!

Engaging, fun ways to teach your students summarizing skills. Strengthen their reading skills and provide practice with this challenging concept.

Are your learners ready for you to teach CVCe syllables {or sometimes called Silent e Syllables}? Maybe you teach struggling learners or you just don’t know where to start. Well, you’re in for a treat today! Find all the freebies and videos in our series, Tips for Teaching Syllable Types. *Scroll down to the bottom ... Read More about How to Teach CVCe Syllables

Have you ever thought about using wordless videos in your speech therapy lessons? It increases engagement! Start with these videos...

All about the science of reading - what it's based on, the research behind it, and how you can help ALL students become fluent readers.

Wordless videos in speech therapy are a fun way to target a variety of goals, including inferencing. Check out these gems I found

A person recounts her visit to London. There is a reading passage and some images to talk about. They have to answer the questions and discuss the images. Full key provided. - ESL worksheets

A passage about a lesson where a cat came into the room and saved the day. True or false, comprehension questions and some gap fill activities on page two. Then they are asked to write a short ending to the passage. - ESL worksheets

Les élèves lisent les descriptions et doivent numéroter l'image correspondant et écrire le num des animaux.Si vous aimez cette fiche, vous pouvez en trouver d’autres sur le même sujet ici : https://fr.islcollective.com/mypage/my-creations?search_key=animaux&type=printables&option=published&id=5163&grammar=&vocabulary=&materials=&levels=&studentTypes=&skills=&languageExams=&dialect=&functions=&page=1&sorting_type=most_newest&filter_type=filter_all&view_type=list&view_length=12 - Fiches FLE

This worksheet first works as grammar practice where learners have to complete the passage choosing either the present simple or the continuous. Then they attempt to complete a true or false activity & answer the questions. - ESL worksheets

Songs are an excellent way to build phonemic awareness skills because they focus on the task of listening. Click to hear them all!

Anger Management Chart Free Printable Anger Management Chart Free Printable! Do you have a youngster who needs a little help in the anger management department? I certainly do! My 3-year-old has a major hitting problem right now and it has been a struggle trying to figure out how to help him. One thing that … Continue reading "Anger Management Chart Free Printable"

As requested… Here are my favourite ways of helping reengage the ventral vagal nerve. I’ll add to them now and then. Please click here to see the video and/or the notes I made about combining IFS and polyvagal theory for the Stroud IFS drop in in 2023. https://www.stroudtherapy.com/news/polyvag

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 »

As requested… Here are my favourite ways of helping reengage the ventral vagal nerve. I’ll add to them now and then. Please click here to see the video and/or the notes I made about combining IFS and polyvagal theory for the Stroud IFS drop in in 2023. https://www.stroudtherapy.com/news/polyvag

Begin teaching theme with fables. Kids easily find story elements and consider how a character's actions affect the outcome.

I love using short films to teach reading comprehension skills, and my students love watching them! Why do I love using them? Show a short film and students are engaged! Visual learners and students who typically struggle with reading comprehension, including English language learners (ELLs), have greater success practicing comprehension skills with shorts. Most shorts do not have dialogue, they're all action. My students, regardless of their level of language proficiency, "get" the lesson more easily because the shorts are visual. Where can you find short films? My go to place to find great shorts is YouTube. Be careful to always view films before showing them in class. You don't want any unexpected surprises! Also, sometimes there is an advertisement to get through at the beginning, so I always set it up beforehand, that way it's all ready to go for the lesson. Which reading skills can be taught using shorts? Just about ANY reading skill can be taught with shorts: making connections, asking questions, sequencing, predictions, drawing conclusions, plot, character development, theme, and this list goes on and on! Learning what the skill looks like visually, and practicing with a media kids are already familiar with, is an effective first step in students applying the skill to their reading. One of my absolute favorite lessons to teach is "theme." Last year, my fifth graders were having trouble grasping the concept, so I searched for a good short film to visually "show" them theme, and I found the perfect one! Disney Pixar's, LAVA I describe theme as the heart of the story. I then share common themes found in stories, such as, perseverance, family, friendship, hope, honesty, self determination, courage, etc. For this lesson, my students watched the film twice. The first time was simply to enjoy the story. After their first viewing, I asked them to share what they noticed about the film. Then I asked, "What do you think the message or big idea was in this film?" They shared lots of thoughts, and I noted the common ideas the group came up, which were love and hope. Then I showed the film again. This time I set the purpose to look for symbols of love, and evidence of hope. After the second viewing they shared many of the symbols of love, and they noticed that the song lyrics sang about having hope. Discussions got pretty deep, which made my teacher heart happy;) To support my beginning ELLs, I printed pictures of the different scenes that symbolized love (couples- turtles, birds, whales, clouds). By the end of the lesson my students had a good understanding of the skill, and they were ready to practice looking for a theme in their own reading. We continued to practice during guided reading, and spiraled back to theme as we read throughout the year. Other favorites... Piper: Character Development For the Birds: Infer, Predictions or Cause and Effect Home Sweet Home: Asking Questions This short is a bit long (10 minutes). Kiwi!: Drawing Conclusions (Warning- this one is sad.) Boundin: Lesson, Theme, Plot Lifted: Plot Dustin: Inferring, Conflict, Conflict Resolution (Compare with "Joy and Heron") Joy and Heron: Problem/Solution, Story Elements, Lesson/Message (Compare with "Dustin") Take Me Home: Inferring Jinxy Jenkins and Lucky Lou: Compare and Contrast Soar: Predictions, Plot, Story Elements Sweet Cocoon: Story Elements, Drawing Conclusions Changing Batteries: Drawing Conclusions, Inferring (This one is sad too.) A Fox and a Mouse: Plot, Character Development, Setting, Conflict Snack Attack: Flashback Dia De Los Muertos: Character Development, Symbolism (blue flower) One Small Step: Plot, Theme, Character Development The Box: Making Inferences, Making Prediction, Character Development, Story Elements Spring: Making Inferences, Plot, Mood The First of Spring: Compare/Contrast, Character and Plot Development Dust Buddies: Character Analysis, Plot, Conflict Monsterbox: Plot, Asking Questions, Drawing Conclusions La Luna: Theme, Character Development, Plot, Symbolism (hat) After the Rain: Plot, Cause and Effect (warning: death scene) Pip: Character Development, Story Elements Scrambled: Author's Message, Symbolism Wings: Theme, Making Inferences, Draw Conclusions Lava: Theme The comprehension skills listed above are simply suggestions; there are many more skills that could be taught with each of the films listed. I have found that using short films in my reading mini-lessons has given my students a deeper understanding of the skills being taught, which allows them to then transfer the skills to text. And the fact that the kids are so engaged makes it a win-win for all! These are just some of the short films out there that are great for teaching reading comprehension skills, there are a lot more! In an era where kids are visually stimulated more than ever before, using film to teach reading comprehension is effective, fun and engaging for ALL students. UPDATE: Typically, I grab a good graphic organizer, pull up the short film and GO! But during this time of distance learning, I've needed to adjust my instruction, as we all have, so I've made some short film resources with both print and digital materials. As more are created, they'll be added here. Happy teaching!

These fun reading games are quick to make - and so effective for learners in kindergarten and first grade! Such a great addition to your language arts instruction. #teachingreading #kindergarten #firstgrade

Compare and contrast is, in my opinion, one of the easier text structures for kids to work with. If they get good practice early on, it becomes easier and easier for students to look for similarities and differences.

This is a fun passage - a look at perceived stereotypical English behaviour. An Italian girl decides to be English for the day. They put the verbs in the past simple tense, then complete the T/F exercise and answer the questions. There is an optional exercise on page 2. Full key included. - ESL worksheets

This worksheet was created for elementary and pre-intermediate students. It consists of eight different exercises. Hope you will find it helpful in your own classrooms. - ESL worksheets

Are you looking for some activities for teaching suffixes? Check out these free materials including activities for Google Slides, videos, anchor charts,

Have you ever thought about using wordless videos in your speech therapy lessons? It increases engagement! Start with these videos...

Storyline Online is one of the best sites for viewing children's book read alouds. Let me share some details you might not know yet, and I'll throw in a helpful Freebie you'll use again and again. If you've looked on YouTube for kids books being read aloud you've found thousands of them. Any given children's book title usually has several different uploaded read aloud videos to choose from and there is a wide range in quality. I found Storyline Online this very way, while looking through all the YouTube videos for read alouds. Storyline Online is made possible by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, SAG-AFTRA. It is absolutely free to use. As I write this they have over fifty children's picture book read aloud videos available. Here's a sample. Each video starts with the actor, or actors, holding the book and giving a book introduction before beginning to read. The camera zooms in on the illustrations, where often little parts of the pictures become animated. Throughout the story you go back and forth between seeing the illustrations and the actor reading the book, so kids never forget they are being read to. Fully animated video movies of children's books are great, to be sure, but it is easy to forget those cartoons come from books. I think when kids watch books being read by live people there is added value and emphasis on reading. Because I had always viewed the Storyline Online videos directly on YouTube, I didn't realize that there are activity guides written for each story, which you can only get on the Storyline Online site. The activity guides, written for teachers mostly, but some with activity guides specifically for parents, are chockfull of ideas– some suggest before, during and after the story discussion points, themes, writing ideas, art, movement, even cooking activities... all sorts of things to choose from. You can find them by going directly to StorylineOnline.net under the All Books tab. You can watch the Storyline Online read aloud videos on YouTube, but when watching on YouTube it is pretty easy to get to other videos and ads, some of which you wouldn't want your kids to view. You can also watch Storyline Online videos directly on StorylineOnline.net, with options of watching via YouTube or SchoolTube, with SchoolTube being the safer option. Either way you choose to watch on the Storyline Online site, when you get to the end of the video, other Storyline Online videos will pop up. That isn't a bad thing, unless you want kids to only watch one particular story, or you want other kids to use the same device and watch that one particular story. So to keep kids on the correct story I created QR codes for the stories through Safe YouTube. Click to download Safe YouTube QR Code cards for Storyline Online videos Safe YouTube is better than safe mode on YouTube, and it takes away all those many buttons and videos that cause distractions and allow kids to click and end up anywhere on YouTube. No online connection is completely safe and kids seem to find a way to other things no matter what, so always keep an eye on what they are watching. I created one for each story on Storyline Online, currently fifty three in total. You can print out the QR Code cards in color, or they come out crisp and clean if you choose to print in black and white. Laminate, cut apart, and you'll have a set of cards for kids to use on any device with a QR Code reader. It will take them to that story and no other. These work great in classrooms as centers, Daily 5 and Readers Workshop stations, and independent reading choices. If you're a parent you'll find them useful at home or on the road with devices. To get this Freebie just click on the picture of QR code cards above. There are six pages in all. I will update as I see new stories appear on Storyline Online. Be sure to Pin this post so you can get to updated pages. I suggest you cruise by StorylineOnline.net to see the full list of read aloud titles. I found many good books there, books I hadn't heard of before. I like to have actual copies of the books the kids are going to listen to, and I like to read the book to my students first, so I can make the most out of that read aloud– focusing on vocabulary, story problem, characters, etc. But if I'm low on cash, Storyline Online is a way to let my kidpeople hear quality books at no cost to me. Many of my favorite Flashlight Press books are there, too, and if you are a regular reader you know how I love Flashlight Press. (News Flash– I'll be giving away another Flashlight Book soon!!) Storyline Online has won lots of awards and that is for very good reason. Good book selections, VERY well read! Hope you found this post about Storyline Online and the activity guides helpful. And I hope you'll download the QR Code cards and find them useful with your kids. I am not being paid or getting any perk for telling you about Storyline Online. I just wanted to share a great resource. See you next time!

Teach characterization using short films to engage students and aid in analysis skills. Pixar films, commercials, and cartoons create a fun lesson.

This blog post features five free idiom activities, like a free idioms PowerPoint, game, task cards, and an engaging anchor chart!

Hello Everyone!! Happy New year to all of you! The end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 have been very emotional for me. We started off our winter break visiting my son, Jordan in Indiana. He has made his way into the hearts of the people of southwest Indiana with his amazing storytelling and reporting for the local news station. And...He just bought his first house. We are so excited for him! We loved spending time with him over Christmas. --- On our drive back home, we kept getting texts, phone calls, and e-mails from friends about the 12 tornadoes that ravaged their way through the towns around our home in Texas. Oh my goodness---our emotions went from bliss to absolute heartbreak. So many of our friends lost everything, including a couple of teachers from our district. One of the elementary schools was hit and is now deemed unsafe. And sadly, 11 people lost their lives. The past few days have been filled with helping school and church groups gather needed supplies for those affected by this disaster. Texans do tend to jump in and help whenever needed!! The cleanup and rebuild will take years, but the support will be there. If you would like to help those in need during this time, here's a link to the red cross donation sight. Thank you in advance for sharing your blessings! http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/2015/12/28/how-to-help-tornado-victims/77965462/ These events really put things into perspective for me. What is important? Where should we put our passion? So many of us are blessed beyond measure. We take for granted who and what we have in our lives. Herein lies the resolution. Giving. The more you give, the more you receive. Throughout the coming year, I will continue to share things on this blog for anyone who can use them to help teachers, parents, and kids get excited about learning. Teaching is sharing. Teaching is giving. I will give the best I have. It may not always be perfect, it may not always fit everyone's bill, but, if what I share can help even one person, It is worthwhile!! So, having said all that, I am sharing a new unit. This one is all about Opinion Writing. You all know how much I love Lucy Calkins. This unit is based on her "Writing Reviews" book for first graders. When we get back from winter break, our firsties will be learning all about opinions and how to share them through writing. This unit is a precursor to one we will do on writing book reviews and other type of persuasive writing. It includes everything you need to print and go! Here are a few pics. The unit is about 32 pages. If you think you might be able to use any of this, simply click HERE for the printable download. As always, thanks for taking time out to stop by and read this little blog. I appreciate you! My New Year's wish for you is that you are surrounded by love and joy, and that you are blessed to be a blessing to others. If you are heading back to school next week, have a wonderful reunion with your littles. Give them the best you have!! Joyfully! Nancy

Sarah Andersen knows what it is to be a bookworm. Here are 3 times she nailed it in her webcomic.

A woman writes about her breakfast. It is all true except my blood pressure is fine. I am one of those annoying people who upload their meals onto fb ;-) True or false and some comprehension questions. A key is included. - ESL worksheets

Grab a muffin tin and play these super easy and fun learning games!

Need to teach story elements to your Kinders? We’ve got activities, videos, games, and suggestions. Includes FREE printable literacy posters.