Do you hate to teach poetry? Do you want your students to learn and enjoy poetry? Try these simple ways to learn how to teach poetry...
Conjunction junction what’s your function? I cannot get that school house rock song out of my head after arranging this activity for my second grader! Ahhhhh! Somebody help! Oh well. The focus with…
This introduction to poetry gives teachers ideas on teaching poetry minlessons that make a difference in how your students think about poems.
Shorthand, Shorthand alphabetsEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc.a system for rapid writing that uses symbols or abbreviations for letters, words, or phrases. Among the most popular modern systems are Pitman, Gregg, and Speedwriting. Besides being known as stenography (close, little, or narrow writing),
Ready to help your students move beyond "nice" and "mean" when describing characters? Here are 6 ways to build their character traits vocabulary!
Steal these for your writing unit!
Hey Ya'll! Today I'm going to share with you our adverb posters. We actually did these about 2 weeks ago and am just now getting around to sharing it with you. Adverbs are always so tricky for our little ones. To get started, we brainstormed a list of different types of adverbs onto our anchor chart. After reviewing these for a few days, some of my kiddos just weren't getting it. Of course, Amy from Step into Second Grade came to my rescue! She blogged about making adjective posters. I loved the idea so I decided to use them for adverbs instead. I printed out 4 verb pictures (eat, write, run, and sleep) and glued them onto butcher paper. I split my kids up into groups and had them rotate to each one. They had to write adverbs that described each picture. Was it perfect? No! Was every word spelled correctly? No! Was it effective? YES!!! This just seemed to click with my strugglers. They used the anchor chart posted above to help guide them. I didn't hear one conversation that didn't have to do with adverbs. It was fantastic! I displayed our final products underneath our whiteboard. They were so proud of their finished product. A lot of the same words were repeated but that is OK! Sometimes I get so caught up in the cuteness of things that are on TPT that I forget how effective the simple things can be.
Each school year a unique mix of middle school students enter the doors of my classroom. Each with a story, each with different strengths, each with different weaknesses. I never take this responsibility lightly because what this means for me, as their teacher, is that I don't get to take the already published book off the shelf and write the same story as I did last year. Instead, we create and co-author a new story together. A story that I could never dream up or predict until it happens the way that it needs to happen. After all, doesn't every new class that enters your classroom door deserve a story of their very own? Because of this, the walls of my classroom to begin the year aside from staples I keep up each year, begin as a blank canvas. The anchor charts that fill my room happen naturally, as our story is being created, new anchor charts are being created to match the learning that is happening in the classroom. When students need to be reminded of a concept we have covered or an expectation that is expected of them, they can refer to the anchor charts on our walls and be brought back to that moment in our journey. Anchor charts help with retention of material, they help with developing student independence, and they also help to anchor routines and expectations. Below is the story of our learning so far this school year. "Before you turn in any piece of writing, ask yourself..." This anchor chart is designed to help students self-assess their writing and be that self-talk that many of them need. Teaching students to be reflective is one of the hardest yet most beneficial skills we can teach as teachers. This anchor chart is a great reminder for my students and for myself. The best thing about it? My co-teacher who teaches the same group of our students math and science is on board with holding students to these same writing expectations with this same language. During our weekly sentence stalking, students can use this anchor chart to gather ideas of different items to notice so that they're not always noticing the same types of things. These are the symbols I use when editing student writing and also the symbols I want them to use when they self-edit and edit their peers' writing. This anchor chart is a helpful, quick reminder of the editing symbols. I LOVE this anchor chart for middle school students. During the first few weeks of school, we referred to it often to self-assess how we did as a class and as an individual with following the expectations in order to make independent reading and writing time productive. If we have a rough day with following expectations, I come right back to this anchor chart and reinforce the positive behaviors students ARE exhibiting. Our current interactive read aloud is Killing Mr. Griffin, and it's written in 3rd person omniscient. Students are loving the almost spooky way the narrator of the story seems to know EVERYTHING. We had an awesome discussion about point of view through that and now students are actively identifying the point of view in their independent reading books. Reading is thinking, and one of the strategic reading actions to show that thinking is by summarizing. I like to start the year with a few minilessons on summarizing because it seems to be a building block for the other reading minilessons. These are some of the criteria we set for what summaries should include and not include. Writers use transitions for a variety of purposes. Crafting transitions smoothly into writing improves sentence fluency and help make ideas clear. This anchor chart will be a great reminder to aid students in doing this in their writing all school year.
I wanted to stop by today and share some a few of my “go-to” activities during the first week of school to build our classroom community and set expectations for […]
Why not teach common core standards for English Language Arts using Pixar short films, Ted Talks, popular film clips for students and other inspirational video clips for students? Need a fun Point …
I took the character cam out on a field trip and look at all of the engaging anchor charts we spotted: Anchor charts make me happy!
Anchor chart inspiration for elementary teachers. Use my Not-So-Pinteresty Anchor Charts for Reading, Math, Grammar, and Writing.
Use these apps to help your child get his creative juices flowing - and improve his writing skills in the process.
My new obsession this year has been making and using anchor charts for my lessons. Here are just some of the anchor charts I have made this year. Some of these charts are original ideas but many are ideas I have seen and used from other teachers. I am not good at drawing so I use clipart from my computer to add pictures to my anchor charts. I print them out and glue them onto the chart! It’s so much easier and looks so much better than what I could draw! I also laminate my anchor charts so I can use them year to year. By laminating the charts I can easily write and erase on them by using an Expo marker. Click HERE to download the worksheet writing templates for opinion writing, informative writing, step writing, personal narrative writing, fictional narrative writing, and postcard writing that match these anchor charts from my TpT store! Click HERE to download the files needed to make the Sequence of Events and Transitional Word Examples anchor charts from my TpT store! Click HERE to download the file needed to make the Fiction/Non-Fiction Sort anchor chart from my TpT store! Click HERE to download the words I used on these anchor charts on my TpT store!
Emotions are of many but grief is the most painful one. Loss of parents is a sad moment but sadness has to be controlled. Unless the emotion of pain is controlled the present would get wasted.
Anchor chart inspiration for elementary teachers. Use my Not-So-Pinteresty Anchor Charts for Reading, Math, Grammar, and Writing.
The author looks at the Hero's Journey and Existentialism and and the difficulties of a life not lived authentically.
Describes major research terms. Done for MFA
Check out these FREE character trait activities! This blog post contains a character traits anchor chart and an idea for a character trait lesson where students learn more challenging character trait vocabulary to create a collaborative class book! If you want students to move beyond "nice" and "mean" character trait responses, check this out!
Aplica a estas becas para estudiar inglés en el exterior o becas de cursos de inglés online. Expande tus logros académicos y profesionales.
Show, Don't Tell: A Writing Minilesson! This blog post focuses on teaching students to write showing sentences instead of telling sentences. It includes an anchor chart and a FREE Bingo game!
What if?
When teachers give students the space to pursue inquiry, kids can take more ownership of their own learning and generate authentic questions.
The audience’s participation in The Hero’s Journey Original source for the image. Writers Write – Write to communicate
Take a closer look.
Follow this ancient script to face any problem. “The secret to Disney’s storytelling formula” is published by Tim Cigelske in The Creative Journey.
Guide students through the five steps of understanding and writing literary analysis: choosing and focusing a topic, gathering, presenting and analyzing textual evidence, and concluding.
This is the second part of a mini series about songs for teaching parts of speech. If you missed the first post about nouns and verbs, you can find it here. Click on any picture
There are two broad language families: Indo-European and Uralic. The Indo-European languages are native mainly to Europe. Some languages (English, Spanish, Portugees) spread throughout the world in the colonial era. The Uralic languages are spoken by about 25,000 people, mainly in Northern Eurasia.
This worksheet includes an interview example for students to practice vocabulary related to jobs. It also features a writing task which is a job application letter.This worksheet promotes speakng, reading and writing. - ESL worksheets
Is grammar outdated or still necessary for a homeschool education? Learn the pros and cons and find some great, free resources for teaching this often maligned topic.
What would I take with me ... if I were going to the Bahamas on holiday, or trekking in the jungle, or travelling to the moon (and back)! You can use this lovely printable frame in so many ways. Younger children can draw or cut and stick, older children can write.
In this lesson plan, students will practice satire by creating puns with the name of Edgar Allan Poe. They will take a Meme form and write their Poe puns on the form to put on display in the classroom for our satire unit. Students in middle school and high school will love this engaging lesson pla
