Here is a worksheet on taxes. We live in California so I used the taxes that apply to us. I also used a minimum amount of income tax. The majority of my students will never work. The couple that will, will most likely work part time. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Life-Skills-Paying-Taxes
Financially savvy kids are future leaders!
I'm back! I totally apologize to all my readers for disappearing for the last couple of months. I took my first real grad class this fall and had no time to breathe. Something had to give and unfortunately it was my blog. But, the class is over and I am back! I have so much to tell you but instead of one long post, be looking for short posts over the next week or so to catch you up! The class I took was TONS of work but also very rewarding. In Massachusetts, if you have even one student in your class who is and English Language Learner, you need to take a class called Rethinking Equity and Teaching for English Language Learners (RETELL). It's basically an intro to ELL and walks you through tried and true activities that helps ELLs succeed in the classroom. Being my second year in district, I found the class to be EXTREMELY helpful and my biggest takeaway is direct vocabulary instruction. I have always felt that vocabulary is such an important part of teaching social studies and last year I just knew I wasn't cutting it. My students were just understanding vocabulary on the most superficial of levels and I knew it was because I was teaching a population I had never really experienced before. In the class they taught us a vocabulary activity called the Seven Steps to preteach vocabulary. Here is a fabulous example of Seven Steps from an elementary teacher: I knew this was exactly what I needed but I decided to tweak it for my class. Now, almost every day, my kiddos walk in and we preteach a word or term they are going to need in order to understand the upcoming content (Tier 2 and Tier 3 Words). We do it in the same order every day: Introduce word and have them pronounce it twice. Ask if they know anything about the word and identify and prefixes, suffixes, and/or base words. Have them write down a student friendly definition. Tell them how we are going to use it in content. I also like to tell them how it is used in other contexts (for the word "convention" this week, we talked about the Constitutional Convention but we also talked about ComicCon). I show the kids a YouTube video that better illustrates the word or a visual. Lastly, the students are given a sentence stem that they need to finish with the students in their table groups. We then share out as a class. This method has truly revolutionized my class! Not only are the kids truly understanding the vocabulary, it has allowed me to frontload my teaching. As an example, I taught the term Articles of Confederation three days before we really learned about the Articles of Confederation. The kids absolutely love it and have been acing their vocab quizzes like champs. They can use the words weeks later in a sentence and I really feel like it has helped me make bigger connections in my content. I showed two different videos with this term. The first clip, I explained to them, is how the British knew how to fight and the second video was how the Americans learned to fight from the native Americans. We were able to compare and contrast the two styles and this whole lesson took less than ten minutes of my class. If you're interested, I have started to gather together these vocab lessons and have made them available on Teachers Pay Teachers. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Mesopotamia-and-First-Civilizations-Direct-Daily-Vocabulary-Instruction-1675580 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/American-Revolution-Direct-Daily-Vocabulary-Instruction-1672787 Head on over to TPT to check these out and look for more as I progress in the year!
{Download FREEBIE pack here.} Economics is my absolute FAVORITE social studies unit to teach. There are so many hands-on activities to do with students and they are so eager to earn and spend money! One of my favorite activities is to end with our "Madden's Marketplace." This is a chance for students to put into action all of the things they have learned about being producers and consumers. To begin with, I send home a letter asking students to create paper goods. Why paper? It's something all of my students have at home (or I can easily give them). I want my marketplace to be fair for all students. I'm sure I could let them have the freedom to create any product, using any materials and I would get some amazing masterpieces. I would also get some elaborate (and expensive) items. That's not what I want. I encourage parents to spend NO money on this and for it to be STUDENT CREATED. I really want them to take the initiative. Here are some samples of paper products my students created to sell this year - everything from rockets to bookmarks to lanterns to hats. I incorporate the making of goods into my students' homework schedule, encouraging them to create two products per night. Before the due date, we work on creating "shops" in class. We create our "shop" by gluing two file folders together. The picture below is using legal-sized file folders, but that just happens to be what we had available. Shop Parts: Signs: Initially, we create the signs for our shops, color the awnings to make them eye-catching. Open/Closed: Next, we create open/closed signs that sit atop our shop so we can easily flip the sign to show the status of our shops. Slogan: We then come up with a catchy slogan. We talk about slogan's we know from commercials. Why did those stick in our heads? We learn to use a play on words, alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc. to make our slogans catchy so consumers will remember them. Product Description: Students each write a product description detailing WHAT their product is and HOW it works or can be used. We talk about the importance of letting consumers know exactly what they are getting. Commercial Script: Finally, students write commercials to "sell" their products to their classmates. We use hooks to get their attention, repetitions of our catchy slogans, and persuasion. Other Components: We also glue on the Consumer Comments, Price, and Interest Inventories, but we leave all of those blank initially. On the day of the marketplace, students set up their shops and lay their products out on display. Then, they have a chance to walk around the classroom and "window shop." They are encouraged to take a good look at all of their options, reading the product descriptions and examining the merchandise. After students have had a good look at all of their choices, I give them stickers (I would recommend 3-4). They walk around and place their stickers on the "Interest Inventory" of the products that interest them the most. The results of the interest inventory are used by the shop owners to determine if they have a high demand or low demand for their products. Knowing the demand helps them determine a price for their product. High demand = higher price. Low demand = lower price. The only rule is that all prices have to be in whole dollars. Once prices are set, then students are ready to go shopping! There are many different ways to let students shop. Some years, if I've done economy-based management system, my students will use "money" they've earned to shop. This year, I just gave them all $12 to shop with. I'm always torn about letting my students split into groups to run their shops (half shop while half work) - it always seems that students don't get to shop at all of the stores in that scenario. To solve that problem, I let all of my students shop at the same time. To do this students create "tokens" to leave at their shop. They create the same number as products they have to sell. For example, if Katie has 10 kites to sell, she creates and leaves 10 tokens with her name or shop name on them. Once each shop has tokens, students are ready to shop. Since there are no workers at the shops to collect money, I give my students "consumer spending logs" with pictures of dollars on them. Since I gave my students 12 dollars to spend, their consumer spending logs had 12 one dollar pictures. As students go around to the shops, they color in the dollars they've spent and pick up tokens (NOT products) that they will trade in for their purchases once the shops close. Once all of the tokens are gone, that shop is "closed." Once a student has colored in all of the dollars on his/her spending log, they are done shopping. It really works out quite well. Once students have traded all of their tokens in for their goods, they are given paper for providing feedback to the shops. They slip these into the "consumer comments" pockets on the storefronts. They love reading the feedback from their customers! <3 After wrapping up our shops, students are often left with some extra products. Instead of having them take their own products back home, I let them put another economics concept into practice - BARTERING! They have a blast working out "fair swaps" for their products and really working to get the other things they may have wanted but didn't have the money to purchase...and of course, they do all of this while proudly wearing some of their favorite purchases. :) All in all, it is a fun day of learning. Students take their roles as both producers and consumers seriously and come away with a real sense of accomplishment! If you would like to download this packet of FREE resources to hold your own Economics shop, you can do so HERE. Enjoy!
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
Make teaching about past vs. present in your kindergarten social studies lessons a breeze with these fun and engaging resources.
A booklet about belonging: •Family •School •Community Cut and paste pictures are provided for school and in the community groups. Staple the booklet together at the top when completed. BE SURE TO DOWNLOAD THE PREVIEW BEFORE PURCHASING TO MAKE SURE THIS PRODUCT IS WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. ========================================================== OTHER PRODUCTS SIMILAR TO THIS ONE Social Alphabet Groups I belong to ————————————————————————————————————--- ★ If you enjoyed using this resources, please FOLLOW ME by clicking on the green star at the top of the page. You will be the first to know about new products. ★ —————————————————————————————————————--- Don’t forget to leave feedback to earn credits toward future TPT purchases! Thank you for your purchase!! Dancing into First Pinterest Facebook
It´s my 5th logic task. The ss have to know 5 tenses: present simple, present continuous, present perfect, past simple and future simple. It´s good to have some fun before or in the Summer Holiday. Hope you like it. Hugs, Zsuzsapszi. If you don’t know how to solve this kind of game, you can look at the Einstein riddle on the net or have a look at my 33rd logic game, called Best friends where I wrote down the solution step by step. - ESL worksheets
This infographic presents twelve ways you can shake up and energize learning with tried and true instructional strategies.
The immediate trigger that led to the start of the Great War (or First World War as it was subsequently known) was, relatively, innocuous enough - another assassination in the volatile Balkans. However what followed quickly resolved itself into a direct causal sequence of mobilisations & declarations of war by all the major European countries in turn - like a line of toppling dominoes.
20 Reflective Qs to Help Ss Respond To Common Core Texts via @TeachThought http://t.co/bgz2UMKH23 #edchat #cmsk12chat
Cultural Observation: An Observation of My Experience at La Mexicana
Not sure where to begin when teaching collective nouns? This blog post contains ideas, visuals, and activities for teaching your students all about collective nouns!!
You just never know if you will win, who knows maybe this is your lucky time. Go to my previous post and scroll down to enter or just clic...
Teaching historical fiction? Connect reading and writing activities for a powerful genre study. Then throw in a full-length novel.
Teach English Writing and Arguments Teaching ESL students how to write logical arguments supported by warrants is a slow but worthwhile exercise. Once ESL students learn how to write these arguments, their text becomes clear and persuasive. This mini lesson writing lesson incorporates several s
I’m going through ideas I have for this blog. I have a lot planned so far. But I have one thing missing from that schedule. I don’t have anything education related! I’m not kiddin…
One of my favourite strategies to get students to think critically about text is a “gallery walk.” Students form groups to discuss a topic and record their ideas on a piece of chart paper. I give them markers and instruct them to write their response, ideas and/or quotations in an organized manner, so readers can […]
The personal financial literacy math standards include challenging vocabulary and concepts. Use these 5 tools to make it easier and more fun for kids!
The Socratic style of discourse lends itself quite well to establishing critical thinkers due to the fact that Socrates believed that enabling students to think for themselves was more important than filling their heads with knowledge. With so much talk about the Common Core standards and truly increasing our student's argumentative powers and critical thinking skills, I decided to launch a Socratic Seminar style of instruction in my sixth grade classroom this week. Our Seminar The Text My approach began by engaging in a guided reading of a novel titled I Can't Believe I Have To Do This by Jan Alford. Throughout the course of the week we read the novel and discussed story events and critical vocabulary associated with the readings. The Questions Students were given a Socratic Seminar "Prep Sheet" at the beginning of the week. The sheet asked the students to do the following: #1. Summarize the assigned reading #2. Identify 3 compelling quotes or statements from the reading #3. Develop one Knowledge based question #4. Develop one Application style question #5. Develop one Synthesis style question Download at: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Socratic-Seminar-Packet The Set Up I then arranged my room in a double horseshoe configuration and assigned five students to be the inner circle. The inner circle students were slated to be the ones discussing and interacting. The outer circle of students were slated to observe and reflect and provide a 'backchannel'. The Discourse Relinquishing control was the MOST DIFFICULT thing!! Once the seminar began I truly had to force myself not to jump in and facilitate. Initially, it was truly awkward. Students nervously giggled and looked down at their papers. No one seemed willing to emerge as a leader. Once they realized that no one was coming to their rescue, the dialogue began and WOW. DID YOU KNOW?? A website called blockposters.com can take any .jpg or .gif image and turn it into a larger printable poster with overlapping edges for assembly?? Backchannel To occupy my outer circle, I distributed 5 ipads (1 for every 3 students) and allowed them to connect on todaysmeet.com. There they posted thoughts, questions, comments and even prompts to assist the inner circle. This back channel scrolled on the Smartboard throughout the seminar. (Admittedly, I didn't love the lack of grammar conventions demonstrated in the statements below.) Reflection/Assessment Without a doubt, we will do this again. Once the awkwardness ended, the dialog went FAR beyond what I've ever experienced with this novel. Students shared events that related DEEPLY to the characters, the character's choices and experiences. They also extrapolated character traits and applied them to new situations. As an assessment tool, each student completed an Exit Slip paragraph where they exercised their argumentative writing skills by completing a one paragraph reflection on the grade they deserved as a result of their participation in the seminar. Socratic discourse....making the kiddos use THEIR Smarticles!! All of my materials are available at: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Socratic-Seminar-Packet
In 2nd grade we began our talks about the future by reading Someday by Eileen Spinelli. This book is a great springboard into careers because it takes a young girl imagining her future career, then ties it into how what she is doing today is preparing her for each pathway. For example, she is digging in the couch cushions for coins and dreams of being a paleontologist digging for bones. After the story we played "I Have, Who Has" with careers. I downloaded this game from The Career Day Activity Packet from Teachers Pay Teachers. Each class competed to get the fastest time. Then I challenged them to come up with as many careers as they could using an Alphabet Chart. For an extra hint, I played them this video:
Need a creative idea for teaching money to kids? The Money Game is a fun hands-on way! Inspired by the Beth Kobliner Book- Make Your Kids a Money Genius
Making a connection to the past through hands-on learning helps a child to remember what he has learned and develop critical thinking skills.
Hi friends! Are you off this week? I am and I am SO excited to have a few days to spend with family. I get to hang out with this […]
Do you use CNN Student News in your classroom?! I LOVE it! It's one of my most favorite memories of being a 5th grader! My teacher used to record it nightly on the VCR and play the recording for us every morning before we started our day. When I became a 5th grade teacher 3 years ago I knew I wanted my students to have the same memory! Obviously in 2014 it's played online and no recordings or VCRs required! ;) Sometimes I get flack from co-workers about spending 10 minutes of my day watching the news with my class; which inspired me to create an accountability component to the news. Each morning students grab their clipboards and news tracker and come to and around the carpet. I show CNN Student News (previewed by me the night before to make sure the content is appropriate...sometimes not all of the news can be watched). Students then watch the stories and choose one story to complete the chart for. At the end of the week I collect them for an informal Social Studies grade. Occasionally, our Time For Kids magazine aligns with CNN Students News and then we discuss how the stories are similar/different in presenting the information using a Double Bubble Thinking Map. You can grad your free copy of the the news tracker by clicking the picture above! If you download it, I would appreciate feedback on how you use it in your classroom. Until next time...
Learn About the 7 Continents! Exploring the 7 Continents has never been more exciting! It’s a Small World Continent Study is filled with over 35 activities to help your students gain a greater understanding of the seven continents. This 130+ page unit is filled with great resources, posters, printables, activities, and projects that will open […]
I am always looking for ways to blend subject areas together to get more bang for my buck! 🙂 This FREEBIE file can be used to teach students about culture and our human fingerprints. It can also be used in tandem with Tanny McGregor’s trash can inferencing lesson! Hope you can use it!!! 🙂 CLICK …
How are you meeting the needs of the English Language Learners in your classroom? There so many ways to assist your English Language Learners in your classroom. Let's focus on a few Dos and Don'ts that will help the most. Did you know that it takes between 1-2 years for ELL students to acquire social language, but between 7-9 years to acquire academic language? For this reason, it is important to give all ELL students support in the mainstream classroom. Even though an ELL student may carry on a conversation with you, he still may be struggling with academic language. But, there are many strategies that you can use to help your ELL students become successful. First, build a classroom community that fosters kindness and acceptance. Foster a love of all languages and always value a student's diversity. Do provide visual support to ELL students. Visual support comes in various forms. Have a print-rich environment. Label your classroom. Provide pictures with word walls. Model what you expect. Show, don't tell. Simply telling and talking will be too challenging for an English Language Learner. Do provide plenty of wait time. Pay attention to how quickly you speak. Too often teachers are in a hurry to say everything they need to say to finish a lesson. Remember that less is sometimes more when it comes to speaking. Slow down and speak clearly. Do value a student's home language. Take the time to get to know the cultural background of your ELL student. Ask him about his home language and cultural. If he knows that you value his background, he will be more likely to feel comfortable enough to participate more in your classroom. Do promote activities that allow your ELL students to participate in group work. When English Language Learners are given a chance to work in groups, they can practice language with their peers in a more relaxed and lower-risk setting. These are just a few suggestions for assisting English Language Learners in the mainstream classroom. Want to learn more? If you are new to my blog, please consider joining me on Facebook, Instagram or at Teachers Pay Teachers for more great ideas for working with ELL students. For more bright ideas from tons of different bloggers, please browse through the link-up below and choose a topic/grade level that interests you. Thanks for visiting! What are you waiting for? Have a great time checking out the links to find more BRIGHT IDEAS! An InLinkz Link-up
Your economics activities should not be boring. There are SO MANY fun ways to make it engaging for students, as well as teach vocabulary.
SS colour one part of the memory and then cut it. It helps a lot to teach them to read in english - ESL worksheets
“Types of Motivation” by Grant Snider on Incidental Comics – via Laughing Squid
Here is a new worksheet I put together over the weekend for my kids. I have felt so "un" creative lately for some reason, and actually haven't put together a worksheet in a couple weeks. I set myself a goal of covering 4 areas this weekend and finished 3 of them, so not that bad. This one is on citizenship. I hope you enjoy it! http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Citizenship-Skills-Worksheet
Need some extra verbs? Here you go! ~Mia Via Marta Torán
