Creating collaborative art is a wonderful way to encourage teamwork among students, celebrate diversity and enrich classroom culture. This collection of hands-on group art projects is designed to build meaningful skills such as taking turns, discussing ideas, and making group decisions. They are a fantastic way to foster community, allow students to connect with their classmates, and teach them to focus on cooperation instead of competition. Students are sure to have plenty of fun while letting their imaginations run wild!
Places In Town Reading Comprehension Passage Free For Kids.
For many of us, just hearing the words book report gives us a flashback to tedious reports that we were tasked with completing when we were in school. I remember standing in the front of my class, reading my book report, being bored by my own review, and just as bored by the reviews of the others. The big problem was that they lacked creativity. There was an exact format and so even though we did different books, they all sounded exactly the same. So needless to say, I don't want to be THAT teacher, but I do want to know that my students are reading, especially since we do a 40 book challenge. So I started to play around with the idea of book reviews. I'm a voracious reader, and Goodreads is one of my favorite websites. I love to keep track of the books I want to read, the books my friends are reading, and also write book reviews when I've completed a book. I like getting my voice heard and sharing my opinion. What's that? A book review is opinion writing? That's right! This doesn't just cover reading comprehension, it's also going to cover opinion writing. Don't you just love it when you can double dip? I know do! Now, there are tons of formats for book reviews. I know this just from reading reviews on Goodreads, but I also saw that teachers are doing these in many different ways. I did a lot of reading on what others are doing, and then decided what I wanted to see in the reviews of my students, as well as what was appropriate for fifth grade (which ruled Goodreads out). I knew right away that I wanted students to share their reviews so that they would serve as recommendations and encourage their classmates to select the books they were reading about. The first thing I did is decide what components I wanted to see, or what my requirements would be. I decided I wanted the following, not necessarily in this order, but pretty close to it: a creative review title an introduction with the title, author, and genre a short summary that DOES NOT give the ending away - again, I want these to serve as recommendations, so it's important that they not give the ending away so others will actually want to read and find out what happens the above bullet can still apply for nonfiction, but the summary would be focused on the main topics a detailed description of the main character or characters/a more detailed description of interesting topics if nonfiction their opinion of the book with a rating on a five-star scale two personal reactions - reasons why they rated the book the way they did, with supporting evidence a recommendation - a sentence or two describing the perfect audience for this book Students had two options for presenting their book reviews, Kidblog, which I love because it is private to just our class. You can get a free membership, but I did the paid one just so that I would have all of the perks since I used it for more than just book reviews. Below is what the main Kidblog page looks like. It displays all of the book reviews for our whole class. We did talk about coming up with more creative pictures for their headings (as well as copyright issues related to that) and I plan to more strict about that this coming school year. T his is what the student book reviews look like when you select one from the main page. Students are required to comment at least one review per week. If you are interested in using Kidblog, you can grab a copy of my step-by-step directions for creating their post by clicking the picture below: The other option was a video review and womp, womp, womp - no one did it. 😞 But, I did give the option, and even made my own example video (after about 200 takes...thanks to my extremely patient hubby). Maybe this year will be the year of the video review. My fingers are crossed! As these are graded, I did create a book review rubric. You can click on the picture to download the rubric. If you are interested in grabbing everything I created, I recently listed my book review pack in my TPT store. You can click the picture below to see the listing.
An activity to practice listening with students to increase their skills and have some fun using the song. Let them listen at least twice and fill the gaps. Enjoy! - ESL worksheets
These are still a work in progress...but I am already loving them so I wanted to post what I had so far! We began our project with the book LMNO Peas by Keith Baker. It is a fun alphabet book about these tiny green peas that show action. It is a great book for talking about action verbs and having students come up with verbs that would go with each alphabet letter. I had mine try and predict what action the peas would be doing as I turned each page. By the end of the book they were getting much better with developing their action verbs! One of my friends that teaches Kindergarten had given me these great alphabet stamps that she had purchased from Lakeshore. They are jumbo and perfect for little hands. So, naturally, printmaking came to mind and who better to go along with the alphabet book than the king of printmaking....JASPER JOHNS! So we did an artist study on Johns and I displayed several copies of various art pieces in the room. Then my 2nd and 3rd graders completed an art writing piece about Johns where they reflected on interesting or intriguing aspects of his work and stated some facts that they had learned about Johns. They glued these writings to the back of their finished art work (I decided if they actually keep their artwork then they will always have the background information on Jasper johns. We did print making with the alphabet stamps in cool colors then we painted around the letters with warm colors. I love them! My K-1st graders completed a slip with the photo of the cover of the book printed on it and the statement “___ is for ___”. I had them put their first initial and their first name in the blanks. This week they are finishing by using green paper and cutting out small peas and giving them faces to glue on their piece. Here is a short power point on JJ: http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/huskeyj72501-1347957-jasper-johns/
Gallery walks are a great way for students to observe each other's work. Padlet makes this possible to do virtually while distance learning!
How to decorate an ESL Classroom; 8 ESL classroom decorations for a welcoming and inclusive environment for your multilingual students.
Teaching Honesty in the Classroom; character education; classroom community; honesty for kids
One of the most effecitve parts of a lesson plan is the anticipatory set. It can set the mood for interest, enagement, and wonder. But how?
I know that many of you are excited about using Notice and Note by Kylene Beers and Robert B. Probst in your Language Arts classrooms. I have previously posted about some short stories I used last …
Download these capacity worksheets and collection of capacity activities to help your students work on exploring in the classroom.
OK. I was mildly obsessed over meeting Mr Slope Guy for the first time. I was observing two novice teachers, and they were using Mr Slope Guy as a mnemonic for students in analyzing slope. But I think he could be fated for bigger and better adventures. Since my son Xavier is a budding comic book artist, we put together the following (PDF of the whole comic), with some inking support from Ysabela. The problem was whether MSG was a hero or villain, and he wound up needing to be defeated. He is a personification of algebra. Be interested in your feedback. Only one more thing to say: Marvel, please don't sue! Spider-man is a wholly owned trademark of Marvel, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, and starring in a major motion picture this summer.
As we approach Matariki, there are some wonderful Matariki crafts you can do with your children to celebrate.
Want to help your students find credible, reliable, and relevant sources for a research project? Then this is the perfect resource for you! Helps students organize their information in a visual way. Helps them see if their sites are legitimate. Gets them started with accurate and quality websites f...
In this phonics puzzle worksheet, learners will color in all of the words with a short A sound to reveal a mystery picture!
Geometry resources for teaching and learning mathematics. Fun and visual resources for maths teachers and kids.
What if your students could manage your classroom on their own? Come learn how to create a sense of agency in your classroom.
Well, I'm back to the daily grind...teaching and such ;)! How was your first day back?! Some very fortunate teachers out there said they always have the Monday after Thanksgiving off. Which means t
My kids love playing Jeopardy! It's such a great review game and the competition always gets crazy! We play mostly to review phonics skill...
