The start to the school year for newcomer ELLs can be overwhelming and nerve-wracking. It is our job to set them up with tools to help them feel comfortable exploring a new language in a

Are you one of the many teachers who is struggling to teach summarizing? Summarizing can be a difficult skill for students to master. It requires strong reading comprehension since students need to be able to

Theme is such an important concept when teaching reading. Students are asked to determine the theme of a text over and over again. However, many students struggle with how to identify the theme. That's why I'm sharing some of my favorite ways to teach theme. You'll find theme lesson ideas, theme activities, and theme passage suggestions to help your students finally figure out how to find theme! Sometimes when thinking about theme it is easiest to think about what it is not. Theme is NOT the subject of the text. The subject would be a single word like "childhood" or "friendship." It is NOT a summary. A summary would be several sentences describing the text. Instead, it is the underlying idea of a text. It is what the writer wishes to convey about the subject. Therefore, it is usually written in a phrase or clause. When teaching theme, I find that it's best to introduce the critical components of theme through notes and a class discussion. My favorite kind of notes are theme doodle notes, of course. Since doodles are more engaging, they're a great way to get students focused as you begin teaching about theme. Once students have a general understanding of theme, you might want to have a discussion with students. During the discussion ask students to think of texts that have a theme like "Be careful what you wish for" or "Never give up on your dreams." Then, have students discuss the theme of fairytales or fables like "Beauty and Beast" and "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." The notes and discussion will drive home the idea that the theme is not a single word subject, nor is it a multi-sentence summary. Students will realize that the theme is a truth about life revealed in a phrase or clause. A work's theme can apply to multiple texts. When you teach about theme you'll want to help students realize that themes need to be general enough to apply to many different texts. Take the theme "Be careful what you wish for." That theme can apply to "The Little Mermaid," "Jack and the Beanstalk," and even "Macbeth." It's important for students to realize that themes are universal. You'll also want to expose students to different genres of writing so that students understand that themes are evident in all writing including fiction, nonfiction, prose, and poetry. I've compiled different genres in this theme unit. Since poems are short and compressed, I love using poems to help students develop an understanding of theme. Take a poem like, "Life Doesn't Frighten Me" by Maya Angelou. In Angelou's poem, the speaker is a child. Angelou's message and the poem's theme is to "be brave when faced with your fears." You might share poems like this or some of my other favorites to help students read several texts and practice determining universal themes. The theme is the message that the writer wishes to reveal about its subject. It's what the reader is supposed to learn about life after reading the text. Therefore, it is usually not directly stated in the work. Instead, students will need to think about the plot, conflict, characters, and setting and then make an inference or educated guess. When students consider all the elements of the text, they'll need to infer the theme. One way to help students understand that the story is built around the theme is to have them develop their own stories with a theme in mind. At first, you can have students do this by providing them with themes that they will need to portray in a comic strip or skit. For instance, you might have students doodle a comic for the theme "Two heads are better than one." Or, you could have students work in small groups to come up with a skit that has the theme "Friends always show up when you need them." By writing their own texts, students will begin to see how the theme is infused throughout the work. As students determine the theme of a passage, they'll need to consider a text's plot, characters, conflict, and tone. In other words, they need to think about the entire writing piece and reflect on its message about life. That can be challenging for students. That's why I like to give students many opportunities to practice finding the theme. Task cards and mini-passages work especially great for this. I've taken the idea of theme task cards even further with Learning Take Out activities. Students read fiction and nonfiction passages that they grab from take out containers. The passages are the perfect way for students to develop the ability to identify a text's theme. ------------------------------------------------- As you can tell, there are many ways to teach theme. I think the more chances we can give students to develop their reading skills, the better! If you're looking for some ready-to-teach resources, grab these THEME resources: ⭐--- FINDING THE THEME MINI-UNIT - Doodle Notes and Activities ⭐--- THEME UNIT - 3-Day Theme Unit ⭐--- LEARNING TAKE OUT - Theme Task Cards Thanks for stopping by! Mary Beth P.S. Here's my latest resource for teaching theme!

In the second of the Elements of Art & Principles of Design series, we'll walk you through how to teach line in art to students in K-7th.

When teaching narrative writing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, there are so many writing skills to cover. They range from creating a sequence of events (beginning, middle, and end) to more difficult

Blog post on how to teach the right variation of R for your student - bunched or retroflex. Where to start in speech therapy doesn't have to be hard!

I like using Gerald McDermott's Native American folktales to teach the Common Core literature standards. The trickster tales are always a delight!

Filler Activities for ELA (blog post) What can you do with five extra minutes in secondary ELA? Here are a few ideas to engage students until the bell.

Are you looking for examples of "I do, we do, you do"? This blog post provides examples of it in action in the classroom and in lesson plans.

Teaching growth mindset can be done with read-alouds! Rosie's Glasses is a great book for this. Get ideas for using this book to teach being positive.

Exposing students to a wide variety of genres is so important to creating lifelong readers. It helps students begin to identify who they are as readers, including their likes and dislikes. By building genre background

Use STEM engineering activities in elementary school as a fun, engaging, and meaningful way to tackle the Next Generation Science Standards.

Teaching area and perimeter in your upper elementary math class? This blog post shares a collection of ideas for teaching area and perimeter!

ALL ABOUT EARTH Get ready for a month filled with so many fun activities to teach your kiddos all about our planet Earth . I teach this unit in April so it coincides with Earth Day. I’ve loaded up this blog post post with read aloud book ideas, free videos you can share with your students,

Do you teach simple machines? They can be so much fun to discuss and explore. They are awesome to create simple...

Read how I carried out an experiment on weathering and erosion with my upper elementary class. Students get to use background knowledge to make predictions!

Subitizing is the foundation for number sense and mental math. Learn about common mistakes teachers make when teaching subitizing.

These fun and engaging argument games will get your students reading for their analyzing rhetoric unit or their argumentative writing unit! Students will be moving and collaborating while practicing critical argumentation skills!

Are you ready to teach your students how to add 8 to a single digit number? Then, let's get hopping! Just as with The 9 Rule, I created two different resources for teaching The 8 Rule

We all know and love Kahoot, right? If you do not know about Kahoot then we have a few blog posts with tips and ideas to get you up to sp...

This activity is heavily scaffolded for beginners. Students orally create the word bank and sentences, but I write the words and sentences on the board using

These hands-on resources and activities for landforms bring learning to life for 2nd graders! The set is packed with fun, standards-based...

There's a lot of ground to cover when you teach creative narrative writing. Here are 5 creative narrative mini-lessons you should be sure to use!

Create a solid math foundation with these tips for teaching place value in 1st grade. Use these ideas to avoid place value mistakes!

Welcome! This blog post features a guided tutorial of how to create a drip sculpture inspired by one of my FAVORITE contemporary artists, Dan Lam. Before exploring this project, check out Dan Lam's eye catching drip sculptures on her website here and her Instagram page here. Dan Lam’s "tactile, technicolor sculptures use unconventional materials to

10 inexpensive rewards to use in your middle school class.

I've got so many great resources for making multiplication facts so much fun for elementary students! Check out my blog post for details!

My rule #1 in a series about bringing out the best behavior in middle school students, Helpful tips for managing adolescents effectively.

Paragraph writing is a big challenge for many students. This post includes a step-by-step method to help your students write great paragraphs in no time.

Hi friends! I'm super excited to share with you how I made graphing in Kindergarten fun and independent this year! Every year my kids find graphing super fun and engaging but teaching JK/SK (that’s Pre-K/K for my American friends) it was always hard to make this an independent centre. This year I found a solution that worked well! Here is how I taught it: Day 1: Learning Goals & Success Criteria First I introduce the learning goal "We are learning to make graphs". Then we start by talking about the first step in the success criteria: I know I can do this when I can make a question. I give them a few examples first then have the kids share and added their questions to a chart. Then I typed up the questions and laminated a couple copies to keep in our question folder so that the students can reference them if they need help coming up with a question. Day 2: Make a Question and Collect & Graph the Data On the second day, I introduce the rest of the success criteria I can collect and record data on my graph. Data=information Sidenote: I followed some of the kids around as they graphed the first couple of days and asked them questions like "What do you need to do first?" and "How do we record _____'s answer?" etc. to uncover some student thinking. I took pictures and notes as I followed along and then printed a couple out as exemplars for the success criteria "I can collect and record the data on my graph." I can answer questions about my graph using the words most, least and the same. Then we practiced making our graph. I was going to start with a concrete graph (in theory that might be better) but I have a higher group of kiddos than usual this year and I wanted to introduce the graphing papers that we they would be using at the graphing centre so I could open it that day. So I put this graphing paper up on the smart board and we went through the steps together. First we read the question together and I showed them how to trace the question. Then we picked three colours for the choices. We talked about we could do a small scribble with crayon to indicate our colour choices if copying colour words from the word wall was too tricky. I also told them that even if they can copy the colour word to do a small dash of the colour with crayon underneath to help them remember what is what. Then I modelled how to ask the question to each student in the class and add the data to the graph. At the end we talked about which colour was the most popular, least popular and if any were the same. I left out this paper with clipboard, pencils and crayons for the kids to try. Here is an example of a completed "What is your favourite colour?" page. I told the kids that if there were no colours that were the same they could either put an X or write "none". The kids also used these "Photo Class List"'s to keep track of who they've asked. As they asked their question and graphed their data, they crossed out the person they asked. On the third day we made our first concrete graph. First we reviewed that the first step was to make a question. I told them that the question we are going to answer and graph today is "What is your favourite animal?" I then quickly taped 5 different animal pictures around the room. Then I had the students move to the picture of their choice. Then we called 1 group at a time and graphed the kids on the carpet. We have the perfect carpet for this as our carpet is a grid! We had the person at the front hold the animal picture, took a picture with the iPad and showed the image on the SMARTBoard. Then we talked about which one was the most, the least and the same. Here is a sample of an favourite animal graph they could complete at centre time: On the fourth day we made another concrete graph. This time we graphed siblings in our class! We followed the same steps as favourite animal but I taped the signs for "sisters only", "brothers only", "brothers and sisters" and "no siblings" instead. The rest was the same as the third day :) On the fifth day we created our birthday graph! First I had some of my kiddos write the months of the year for me. Then I put them up on the bulletin board. Then I printed out a square picture of each of my kiddos and mounted it on black construction paper. Then we added the pictures during whole group math time and we talked about which month has the most birthdays, which month has the least birthdays and if any of the months have the same. Next time I would have the students write their birth date on a whiteboard and hold it in from of them when I take the picture so that I could easily get that information from this graph. I also used this graph on my graphing wall and put it under "I can answer questions about my graph using the words most, least and the same." Then I put a velcro dot on top of each column and the words most, least and same on a velcro strip underneath. This way, the kids can come and practice identifying which month has the most, which month has the least and which months are the same number of birthdays on the graphing wall. If you would like to try the pre-filled favourite animal graphing sheets click on the button below to download them for free :) All of the printables above can be found in my newest product, Graphing for Little Learners! You can click on the image below to check it out in my TPT store :) My kids are still loving graphing and it is a popular centre every day. How do you teach graphing in Kindergarten? I would love to hear your fun ideas!

"It was like herding cats!" That was my answer to my husband the other day when he asked how my day had gone. Seriously, the days I have first and second graders are just hard - fun, but exhausting. That is until I found the SECRET to STEM and the littles! Are you ready for

Looking for esl task cards to use with your english language learners? Try these picture cards that are perfect for quick and effective language practice!

I absolutely LOVE teaching plate tectonics. What kid doesn’t love learning about earthquakes and volcanoes?! I’ve compiled a list of activities you can choose from to make this one of your students’ favorite units (and probably your favorite too).1. Why do Earth’s plates move in the first place? Use this demo to show students how ... Read more

Design and categorize your exit tickets to improve your formative assessment strategy and improve your teaching.

Teaching area is engaging and authentic with this hands-on applied math activity! Students arrange furniture to find the area and perimeter of their house.

If you liked my Question Matrix blog post (the most popular blog post I’ve written) then you’ll appreciate this one too! Inspired by Rory’s Story Cubes and a desire to check for student…

Corkboard Connections is a blog written by Laura Candler who enjoys connecting terrific teachers with amazing resources!

Are you a first year 5th grade teacher? Find out how to have a great first year with this post! Get tips that work well in ALL 5th grade classrooms.

Text evidence skills are important, but how do you even begin to TEACH text evidence skills to primary readers? In this blog post, I'll share the activities,

There are a few elements to building influential student relationships. Keep on reading to find out the six keys to fostering strong connections in your classroom.

Learning the patterns in addition strategy can be tricky for students, especially when using a patterns in addition table. I'm sharing...