As the publisher of The Sensory Spectrum, I'm often asked to make specific tool recommendations or toy ideas for birthdays and Christmas. I've broken them into separate categories to help you pinpoint what your child may like and need.

Shakespeare is the most quoted English writer of all time. Read Shakespeare quotes by play, subject and character.

Contractions are great for writing words shorter to save some time. But there is some confusion when students shorten the words. Contract means to make smaller. Students contract two words into one small word. This is what students need to remember about contractions: The first words always stays the same (except for the word; will not, won't). The apostrophe goes where the letters come out. I have a Free Contractions Bingo game to practice reading and writing contractions. This 2-Player game has students matching the two words that make a contraction to the contraction word on their bingo board. The first player to make a bingo is the winner! All you need to play are the Bingo Boards and Contraction Cards. Click the picture for your free download! Place the Contractions Bingo Game in you center rotations or use during small group time. Play after teaching or reviewing contractions. Feel free to send home for homework to play with a family member. Place the Contraction Cards and some writing paper at a Writing Center. Students use the cards to write sentences using the contraction word. Check students for understanding. It helps to remember the first word stays the same and the apostrophe replaces the letters that come out. The only time this rule doesn't apply is for the contraction word, will not - won't. Try this pack of Contraction Task Cards. It includes 3 centers. The first center has 40 task cards that students choose from multiple choice answers to find the correct contraction. The second center has 36 task cards. Each task card has a contraction. The students write the two words that make up the contraction. The third center has 36 task cards. Each task card the two words that make up the contraction. Students write the contraction that make up the the two words. This pack will keep your students sharp on reading and writing contractions all year long. Here are some resources you may need when teaching contractions. I linked them to Amazon to make it easy for you: Contraction Puzzles Contraction Chart If You Were a Contraction - book Thanks for stopping by today! See you soon, Check out more GRAMMAR activities by Teacher's Take-Out:

Quick, casual ways to make sure everybody's on board.

planning some of our Science curriculum, I couldn't help but find so many great human body learning activities for kids.

Are you looking for 2nd Grade Morning Work worksheets that will provide a spiraling review for your math, grammar, and ELA Skills throughout the year? This bundle contains 180 worksheets to use for 1st grade morning work. This Morning Work pack is Common Core aligned.Each page has math and English l...

Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), series of conflicts between Haitian slaves, colonists, the armies of the British and French colonizers, and a number of other parties. Through the struggle, the Haitian people ultimately won independence from France and thereby became the first country to be founded by former slaves.

Unless you've bothered to go into the Google documentation, which most people don't, you may not know of many of the little tricks available to you when

Spanish translation exercises are great resources for Spanish learners to use to learn how to write more naturally. Here you'll find six Spanish translation exercises using a range of resources like Spanish literature, language learning platforms, Google Maps explorations and more. Click here to start translating!

You know that collective sigh, the one that choruses around the room when you enthusiastically announce, "Class, the next unit we'll be entering into is poetry!" If poetry is taught the right way, students should be cheering at the thought of a Poetry Workshop day. Below I will outline the "why" of Poetry Workshop along with tips and tricks that I have picked up to make any poetry unit a raging success in your middle school classroom. If you like what you read below and want to implement a Poetry Workshop in your classroom, make sure you check out the Poetry Workshop resource available in my TpT store. This resource will walk you through every single step of implementing Poetry Workshop in your classroom, along with the assembly of a student Poetry Workshop binder that can be utilized across the entire school year. Lesson plans, graphic organizers, grading rubrics, and so much more awaits you in this comprehensive resource. Why Use Poetry Workshop? *It’s a change of pace. We immerse students so heavily into Reading Workshop and Writing Workshop day after day. It’s nice to have the option to mix things up a bit with Poetry Workshop. It is also a great transition between units. For instance, maybe you’ve just completed a three-week persuasive writing unit and you’re about to head into a round of literature circles. Take a day or two hiatus in between to do Poetry Workshop once the Poetry Workshop Kick-Off lessons are completed. Poetry Workshop can serve as a natural transition between the big, heavy units throughout the whole school year. *It will reach unexpected students. You may have a pretty good idea right away of who in your class excels at writing or can already read college-level material, but you may be surprised at which students soar while writing poetry. Poetry Workshop is a great way to hook in students who struggle or are unmotivated when it comes to reading and writing because it appears to be a manageable chunk. The thought of writing a five-paragraph essay or reading a 300-page book scares them half to death, but reading or writing a poem may not seem as scary. *It’s a great way to teach literary elements on a smaller scale. Sometimes it’s too daunting for students to come up with the theme of an entire book, but starting out teaching theme through poetry is the perfect scaffold before teaching theme in relation to a novel. The concept of theme will transfer perfectly between a poem and a book, but more students will understand the concept if you start teaching it through a poem all students understand and can easily read and reread. The same goes for teaching figurative language. Poetry is the perfect pathway to finding examples of figurative language and teaching them how to identify and use it. Point of view is also a great lens to look at poems through and teach students about through poetry. *It gets students to appreciate words and how words can evoke images. Poets have a gift for saying a lot with only a few words. It’s important that we’re teaching students how to be impactful writers in few words and make every word count. A poet keeps his/her audience in mind and thinks about what emotions he/she would like the reader to feel. Teaching-wise poetry allows so many pathways into teaching students about word choice, organization, sensory images, and audience awareness. *Poetry removes the need for perfect capitalization and punctuation. The poet gets to structure his/her poem how he/she wants to, and there is an art in playing around with punctuation and capitalization while writing a poem. Releasing this pressure of having to write “right” will allow students to write freely and openly. *A lot of times when we think about teaching poetry we think about having every student write a haiku, an “All About Me” poem, a name poem, a limerick, and then we call it good. Students publish a few poems, and we call it good for the year. This is not what Poetry Workshop is. Poetry Workshop gets students to read poems, analyze poems, consider techniques poets use that they would want to use, and write their own poems once they feel comfortable doing so. Teach students what poetry really is. As teachers, sometimes I think we’re afraid of poetry ourselves and then default into teaching poetry through a set of “form” poems. We hate it and are uncomfortable with it, so these views get passed right down to students. Let’s shift this attitude! Poetry can be a beautiful thing that teachers and students alike have a positive attitude about. Tips for Teaching with Poetry Workshop: Tip One: Teach Poetry in Phases I was first introduced to the idea of teaching poetry in phases when I read Fountas and Pinnell's book, Guiding Readers and Writers. Here's how I've taken the idea of phases and broken them down to work for my middle school students. Phase One: Collecting & Responding Have students read through poetry books or poetry websites, reading as many poems as they can. If they come upon a poem that they really enjoy or relate to, they can copy the poem down. I also like to have my students respond to the poems they write down in Phase One using prompts from the anchor chart below. Phase One exposes students to poetry in a non-threatening way. Students think about the poetry they enjoy. As they copy down poems, they also have to focus on how the poet structured the poem, what letters they capitalized, and how they punctuated it. Phase Two: Mimicking Techniques This is where it gets fun. Students now take techniques they've noticed other poets use and mimic these techniques to create poems of their own. Take a look at the anchor chart below to get an idea of the types of techniques students could mimic. Phase Three: Original Poetry Students can now create poetry of their own choosing. Give them the green light to let their creative spirits fly. Also discuss with them what they've learned from the first two phases that will help them as they create poetry. Check out the anchor chart below to see ideas for what makes a good poem. Tip Two: Whole Class Poetry Stalking I teach grammar in my classroom through pulling mentor sentences from our class interactive read aloud and have students "sentence stalk" the sentences by noticing everything the author did to construct that sentence. I transferred this concept into our poetry unit by having students notice everything they could about a particular poem as shown below. What has been great about poetry stalking is we have realized together words to use to describe poet's techniques. It has also been a great way to show that poetry has flexible rules for capitalization, punctuation, and poem structure. Not all poets construct their poems the same, but it's fun to infer why poets make the choices they do while writing poems. Check out this website for a great list of poems to use with middle school students while sentence stalking. Tip Three: Use Poetry Interactive Read Alouds There are so many great books out there written in verse. As you kick-off Poetry Workshop for the year with a poetry unit, consider doing a read aloud with one of the amazing book choices below to complement the work students are doing in Poetry Workshop. Tip Four: Teach New Types of Poetry Mix is up with your students by showing them poems different types of poems. Three of my favorites are below. Book Spine Poems: Give book boxes from your classroom library to students and have them create a book spine poem of their own. Blackout Poems: Copy off pages from several different books and make photocopies, allow students to select one, and then have them black out the words they don't want leaving the words they'd like to use to create a poem. Sandwich Poems: Students take the first and the last line from a poem they copied down during Collecting & Responding and write a poem filling in the middle. Tip Five: Make Everyone a Poet Show your students that everyone is and can be a poet, even you. Model the work you complete alongside your students during Poetry Workshop. Also, make sure you give plenty of time to have students share what they're doing in Poetry Workshop with one another.

The Georgia Department of Education English Language Arts division has its very own Twitter account and has been hosting a weekly series this academic school year of “Twitter takeovers”…

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If your district is anything like mine, you are being asked to do more with less. Since the recession, funding has been slashed. Teacher jobs have been cut, and class sizes have been increased. Ten years ago, there were 20 - 25 students in a typical classroom in my district. Now, there are 28 - 35. To many people who are not in the field of education, that doesn't sound like that much of a difference. We teachers know, though- it's incredibly difficult. It's inevitable, isn't it? As soon as you get the classroom routines going and you have a good rhythm happening, you get the phone call. You know the one I am talking about... a new student has arrived! You look at your classroom and see this... I've been in this situation more than once... and it isn't pretty. I happen to be in the most over crowded school in the city, and in the most overcrowded grade. We have one less teacher than the other grades do, although our student population counts stay the same. Aren't we lucky? I've worked hard at identifying the ways in which I was successful (and not so successful) over the past few years, and used that information to help me plan for the future. So, here are my tips: Time Management When you have 30+ students in front of you, time management is key. You are only one person with (likely) only one planning period, but you are expected to do a whole lot. Grading alone can eat up a huge chunk of time! If you spend even 5 minutes grading each paper- which is easy to do- you are looking at about 150 minutes of grading for one assignment. That is two and a half hours.... which is almost all of my planning time for the week. There literally just are not enough hours in the day... and I mean literally by the OLD dictionary definition, not the new "figurative" meaning! Points to focus on with time management: grade student papers in a conference with the student. They get immediate feedback, and you get to spend the time you need focusing on their work. correct homework as a class, then collect it to give credit and do "spot checks." accept that sometimes you have to just give a check/check plus/check minus and not traditional letter grade for less important work prioritize the grading that you cannot complete these ways. Do the most important things first, and accept the fact that you will not always get caught up. give students jobs! Not just some of the kids... ALL of them. I have as many jobs as there are kids in my class. Everyone does something. Kids sharpen pencils, fill the paper supply trays, and even reset the behavior chart. I give them some of our classroom currency as a "paycheck" each week, and they can save up to trade it in for prizes at the end of each term. Every day, set up 3 priorities that you have to complete outside of instruction. If you accomplish those three things, then consider the day successful. Do these before ANYTHING else! Peer Learning & Collaboration I am a big believer in allowing kids to learn from each other. Sometimes, hearing something explained by a peer can be the "magic ingredient" to get kids to understand something- for both kids! The student that is explaining the concept deepens their understanding by teaching someone else, and the student that is listening has an opportunity to hear the concept again. I like to have students work together a few different ways. Peer tutors that are "experts" on subjects help other students while I work in small groups during guided reading and guided math. For some activities, I pair students of differing abilities so they can learn from each other. Assign reading activities in guided reading groups, so they can discuss and collaborate before coming back to me to debrief. Routines & Optimizing Space Making all of this work depends routines, clear expectations, and space optimization. I start engraining routines into my students on day one. Much of what I practice I learned in Fred Jones' Tools for Teaching. If you haven't read this book, I seriously highly recommend it. This book is what saved me my first year teaching, and I have revisited it before going back to school every year since. What works for me: Have a routine for everything. Throwing out garbage, turning in assignments, sharpening your pencil, using the bathroom. Clear routines that are always followed help to keep a class going without interruption. Teach students how you like things done. This one seems simple- but if you focus on it, you will save yourself some serious time! I spend a few periods early in the year showing students how I like them to correct their work. What marks to use, what to write (or not write), and what writing utensil to use. After doing this a few times, they have a clear idea of what is expected and I can collect the corrected papers to record in my gradebook. I "spot check" them once a week or so, and the students rarely cheat with this because they know I look at them. Setup space so it can be used for more than one activity. My guided reading conference area is also my guided math conference area, and doubles as a place for me to grade papers after school. My math centers are next to my reading centers so students can use one space for both. Use every inch of space! Hang pocket folders on walls with extra work, get stacking trays for paper, and put sterilite plastic drawers under tables for extra storage. Let the Little Stuff Go No matter what, you will never be able to do it all as a teacher- and especially not with an overcrowded classroom. Learn to let the little stuff go! Prioritize what is important to you in your classroom, and learn to let other things go. This is a huge struggle for me- and I'm sure so many other teachers! We are perfectionists by nature, it seems. So, that's what works in my upper elementary/middle school setting. Some of these would work in other grade ranges, and some could be adapted to work. Good luck out there, fellow teachers with overcrowded rooms. I understand the struggle!

Look at the definition of differentiation—in terms of what it is and is not—in this infographic to further your learning from the book. Post it in your office, share it with your colleagues, or circulate it on social media to keep best practices for differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all students top of […]

Here is a list of comma rules with examples and explanations.

The British Townshend Acts imposed taxes that enraged American colonists and led to the American Revolution and Declaration of Independence.

This week, we started our new writing unit -- Looking Closely: Observing, Labeling and Listing Like Scientists. The kids love it. We have been working on looking closely at things in real life, observing things that happen in videos, and learning/writing about what we've read in books. Is it bothering you that I used "you" in 2 and "my" instead of "your" in 4? It's bothering me. We all make mistakes. Especially when we're not paying attention. :( On Monday, I showed students a video of Cheetahs playing in the snow from the Cheetah Cam at Richmond Metro Zoo. You can check it out HERE. Children observed the cheetahs closely and drew exactly what they observed. Most students labeled the picture and wrote something to teach about their subject. I like it when we all write about the same topic because then I can bind our work into a class book for the library! On Tuesday, I brought in my rock collection from when I was a little girl. When I was in first grade, my teacher had some rocks in the classroom that I was obsessed with. Because I was such a good student (or so she said), she gave me the coolest rock I thought she had ... a perfectly oval, incredibly smooth gray rock. I loved it. And it led me to collect rocks every time I saw them... actually good ones from museum shops, ones my mom and dad brought back from their travels overseas (like one from the Dead Sea and a path in Azerbaijan) and ridiculously unimportant ones I picked up on the side of the road. (Which I justified because "they were shiny.") Anyway, I brought these rocks in and passed out one to each student. The common response was "Mrs. Richardson, I like your rocks!!!!" Students got one rock each and a magnifying glass. We discussed how to draw what we saw and label interesting things we noticed. My example. If you're concerned about the spelling, please see my post on phonetic spelling. We drew, labeled and then listed some description words. After, we tried to use one of those words in a complete sentence. I meet with students who have difficulty sounding out words on their own at the reading table. For them, it's more of a shared writing exercise with me sounding out the words and them matching the sounds to their letter charts. They tell me the description words or we brainstorm some together (i.e., Is your rock hard? Is it pretty? Is it big? What color is it?) Writing Workshop isn't the only time for writing class books, though. We've done some as reading response activities in place of our Readers' Response journals. The example below was after we read Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Mo Willems's Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs. I just LOVE kindergarten writing. Young children are so creative and their capacity for writing changes so drastically in a year!

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I’m back from my little hiatus, and we are LOVING our new home!!!! My life has been absolute CRAZY TOWN, and I really haven’t taken enough pictures lately. Honestly, snapping photos has been the absolute last thing on my mind. I did manage to capture a few snippets of our classroom activities though. We have …

Way back at the end of March 2007, a couple of MAKE interns sealed the lid on a ghost shrimp and a few snail friends on what the staff thought would be a

10 ideas for planning engaging novel units: creative, engaging lesson ideas for your next whole-class novel unit

After reading Wonder by R.J. Palacio, students worked in small collaborative groups to create character posters about each of the characte...

You can get all the details for this very creative, engaging project HERE!

I’m a teacher. Now what do I do? There are several ways to engage learners in the classroom. Here are a few ideas if you get stuck. Additional resources: ~Mia

Many of you were wanting more information on Mentor Sentences (warning there aren't many pictures in the post). I guess let me first defi...

Okulda veya evde oyunlar oyarsınız çizimler yaparsınız.Japon katlama sanatı olan origami de çocuklar için vazgeçilmezdir.Kolay origami örnekleri burada

What types of accommodations can help students with dyscalculia? Here are dyscalculia accommodations teachers can use at school. These math supports can also help at home.

Here is another handy visual we created for those of you teaching students with special needs. This work is based on a chart we posted here a few months ago. The visual features some very good iPad apps for teachers and parents of kids with learning disabilities. We have arranged the apps into four main categories: apps for dyslexic learners, apps for autistic learners, apps for the visually impaired and apps for learners with writing difficulties. We invite you to check them, print and use the visual with your students in class and share with us your feedback. Enjoy

Teacher Burnout Explained in Two Pie Graphs This is a non-scientific (but probably pretty accurate) graphic I have created using my experience as a teacher. Another title for this chart could be "Teacher Burnout Explained

Photo Credit: Public Domain Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards may be one of America’s greatest thinkers, but what exactly did he believe and what else did he contribute to Christianity? Here’s yo…