Writing stories together can be a great exercise for little ones to develop storytelling, literacy and writing skills. Connect storytelling and yoga by asking kids to write stories about their favorite yoga poses. Use our Mountain Pose template to help kids develop proper story structure!

I've used the Cornell note method for years. Today I'm sharing my method for taking Cornell notes, plus a free worksheet that you can use to take them, too!

Free printable lined handwriting paper to practice writing in kindergarten, first and second grade. Several designs to choose from!

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,

Taking notes in school is different than taking notes in the professional world. In school you are sitting in a classroom, listening to a teacher and more likely than not, looking at a presentation. You’re expected to be typing or...Read More

Grab this free printable country fact sheet to write cool country facts all in one place.

For many students writing can be intimidating and overwhelming. That's why it's essential to provide students with a variety of writing activities to make learning meaningful and rewarding. Here are a few of my favorite ways to make writing engaging for reluctant writers in your classroom. TIMED WRITING ACTIVITIES Timed writing activities challenge students to race the clock as they write as much as they can during a fixed time period. Students are encouraged to “just write.” There is no pressure for perfection. In fact, the only parameter is that they need to write for the entire time. The fun nature of timed writing activities help students develop confidence as they experiment with the writing craft. Here are a few challenges to try...*** In 5 minutes...make a list of 25 things you can do with a hula hoop. *** In 10 minutes...write a fan letter to your idol persuading them to send you an autograph. *** In 15 minutes...create a new kind of toy for toddlers that entertains busy toddlers. CLICK HERE for 15 more! WRITING HANDBOOK (with examples and prompts) Another way to support reluctant writers is to teach short, targeted mini-lessons to help build students' writing skills. When students are provided with more support and examples of writing, their own writing improves. As their skills develop, so does their confidence. When developing writing mini-lessons, I like to include:*** A specific topic like audience, voice, or word choice. *** Written examples of the skill for students to analyze. *** A writing prompt for students to practice the skill. Find 26 writing mini-lessons HERE. CREATIVE WRITING LESSONS Reluctant writers benefit greatly from creative writing lessons. Not only are creative writing lessons highly engaging, they're also a lot less intimidating than formal writing genres. Also, creative writing lends itself to sharing. When students share their writing they build a community of writers and develop their skills as they listen to each others' writing. Here are some of my favorite FREE creative writing lessons:*** Spooky Story Writing *** Myth Writing Lesson *** Limerick Writing Lesson ENGAGING WRITING UNITS An essential part of writing instruction is guiding students through the writing process as they create different genres of writing. In my experience, the ideal writing unit is 2 weeks in duration and includes step-by-step instruction for each aspect of the writing process. To make longer writing units appealing to reluctant writers, the key is to make the topics engaging. For instance, here are some engaging topics for different styles of writing... *** Descriptive Writing - Imaginary Pet Sketch (mystery animal) *** Persuasive Writing - Write a roller coaster advertisement *** Informative Writing - Create a historical news article WRITING MINI-LESSONS One of the best ways to help reluctant writers build their skills and confidence is with targeted writing instruction. I love mini-lessons that can be easily incorporated into writing workshop, writing units, writing centers, or everyday writing instruction. When developing writing mini-lessons, I try to make sure they are... *** Quick and targeted *** Fun and engaging *** Filled with practice Check out my 10 favorite writing lessons HERE. CHOICES Teachers have long known that choices are the key for engaging reluctant learners. The same holds true for writers. One of the easiest ways to motivate students is to give them choices when responding to writing. Grab this free choice board filled with writing prompts here. WRITING PROMPTS Reluctant writers need lots of opportunities to write. The more they write, the easier it will get. The easier it gets, the more success they'll feel as they write. There are lots of ways to use writing prompts in the classroom... *** Warm-up activity *** Homework assignment *** Learning station task Grab a FREE set of 20 fun writing prompts HERE. ---------------------------------------------------------------- I hope you've found a few ideas for helping your reluctant writers transition into confident writers! Thanks for stopping by, Mary Beth P.S. Check out this blog post filled with 3 secrets to fantastic writing instruction.

Subordinating conjunctions connects a dependent clause with an independent clause. Let's explore usage, function, list and worksheet.

Unit studies are popular with homeschooling families because they provide a hands-on, in-depth approach to learning about any topic of choice. This is a great way to provide individualized instruction for your students, allowing them explore the 'topic-du-jour,' and instills a love of learning! It might seem daunting at first, but anyone is capable of creating a unit study in just a few easy steps.... There are five basic steps to creating a unit study, and to help you stay on track, we've created a Unit Study Planner! You can find it on the Subscribers-Only page or pick it up here. Pick a topic. Keep a running list of ideas - this could include science, history, geography, literature, career, or just about any topic of interest! You could have one list for the entire family to work together, or each child could have a separate list for individual work. After choosing a topic for this unit, begin scouting resources to learn more. Our preferred method is to choose a novel as the basis for the unit - such as The Red Menace for our McCarthyism unit - but you might want to pick a movie or field trip for the base. Elementary units are going to be a little more free-form than those for upper grades (our novel studies tend more toward the middle and high school range), since work requirements are different for younger children. Decide when to start and how long the unit will last. Our unit study planner covers the length of the year, with room for five units - one each season and two in summer. Since we use them as a supplement to regular curriculum, this is a nice pace. If you're using units as a full curriculum, you will probably want to add more. Generally, a full week, or a month of Fun Fridays is a great pace for unit studies. Our experience has been going full-time when the kids were younger, but switching to Fun Fridays as they got older and needed to stay more on track with their school. The planner includes pages for monthly, weekly, and daily unit study plans - this way you can choose the schedule which works best for you! Choose resources and activities to flesh it out. Our family is comprised of book nerds. We love to read, so it makes sense that a novel would be the base for our units. When we were roadschooling, however, our unit studies were based around our location. We even got to spend an entire summer studying the Revolutionary War while visiting locations in VT, NY, MA, and PA! If you ever get this option, even for a few weeks, this can be an amazing way to do unit studies. Books The library is your friend! Gathering books for the topic is a family affair (if you're doing a family unit). Students should have some say in what gets chosen, and they get the added benefit of learning to use the card catalogue (virtual or otherwise). We usually take a big bag and fill it with various fiction and non-fiction books related to the topic. Even with older kiddos, don't skimp on using illustrated children's books. These are wonderful for teaching vocabulary and concepts, and are just fun to read together! DVDs For students with difficulty reading, or younger students, this is a great method to impart information. This might be a long movie or several short video clips. Hands-On Activities Depending on your topic, this might look like a STEM kit, newspaper article, or Lego build. A quick search will often help you turn up several options! Field Trips Roadschooling isn't for everyone, but day trips are a fun way to change up the pace and reinforce the concepts they're studying. Try to plan one or two for each unit. Make a plan of activities scheduled by day / week / month. How detailed your plans are will depend on the length of your full unit. A one-day fun study will cover considerably less than an in-depth one-month long study. This should include the core schoolwork (language arts, science, history, math) and the fun stuff (activities, movies, and field trips). You may want to use a regular curriculum in addition to your unit study for math, particularly in the upper grades. While it's good for students to understand how to research using internet resources, try to include hands-on research using the encyclopedia and library. These are still valuable skills. A creative (or non-fiction for some kids) writing assignment is a fantastic way to wrap up a unit...plus it gives you something to record the study. Don't forget to include vocabulary, spelling, and art! Decide how you’ll record your unit. Depending on the age of your students, this might be by creating a lapbook or notebook for elementary students, while upper grades may want to complete a portfolio that includes work samples and photographs. (You might even let them blog! Each of our boys has his own private blog for recording events and projects.) Creating a unit does take a bit of research, but it can lead to some amazing learning experiences with your kids! We've put together a unit study planner to help you get started, and it's free for subscribers. Not quite ready yet? Check out the Novel Studies page, where we've created several unit studies, each with a novel for the base. Not sure where to start? Check out these pre-made unit lesson plans! Empires of the Ancient Near East (free on our subscribers page!) Cooking Around the World Visit 12 Locations! Zoo Studies Journey Through the Continents World Mythology Cajuns & Creoles Chocolate! Jewish Holidays World History American History Fantasy Fiction Lego Holidays Lego World History Science Concepts STEM Concepts Elementary History Pick up the Unit Study Planner for FREE on our Subscriber Freebies page! Not yet a subscriber? Sign up here! SchoolhouseTeachers has a fantastic collection of unit studies included with membership! They span every subject and a wide range of topics, and the page is continually updated with new ones. Access those unit studies here.

Your students are bright, but they don't always sound like it. Help improve student vocabulary with these 600 ways to say common things.

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Greek and Latin roots are sometimes the evil stepsister of vocab. Middle schools that use the Common Core (or any variation of it) must teach affixes, but high schools aren't required to, even though it’s valid vocabulary building. Affixes don't initially look glamorous to students, either; at first glance, affixes seem boring (a.k.a. memorization), and teachers are wary of how to teach them well (without just lecture and flash cards). Therefore, instead of viewing affixes as literary molecules - the building blocks to like, everything - classes often just go through the motions (or worse, ignore them completely). But what if you could teach prefixes, roots, and suffixes in a small amount of time, with higher student buy-in? Truth be told, I’ve done the full spectrum of bad to good with affix instruction: not enough of it, too much of it, successful flipped classroom, unsuccessful flipped classroom, too much in isolation, etc. Finally, I’ve got a balance that I’m happy with and that is starting to raise student awareness of the words they encounter while reading. Here's what that process currently looks like in our classroom. Yes, pretests are dry, but here’s the fun part: when my seventh graders bombed their pretest, they realized that they really DO need this instruction, and now they’re open to learning more about it. There are no egos in the way, and more students are willing to learn. (Steal my editable pretest here.) Side note: No, I don’t want students to fail or take a hit to their self-esteem… but many older teens and tweens assume they know or remember content that they do not. Next, we built flip books that contained essential lists of affixes AND practice for EACH chunk of them. Students rotated through stations to do things like… Complete the pages in their flipbooks Practice listing words that USE each affix Talk through how they could remember each one Play with a premade Quizlet set Pick up pre-made flash cards and start quizzing each other Yes, repetition is necessary, but practice can come from more than just index cards. Once students start to have a handle on some affixes, it’s time to do something creative (alongside your method of memorization) to make sure these meanings really stick. Start with an intermediate activity like this FREE puzzle challenge! The application level will look different, depending on your grade level and the extent of your students’ mastery. Here are a few ideas: Mixed Levels of Readiness: My 10-pack of application activities for affixes contains easier activities for students who are still acquiring roots AND more challenging ones for students who are ready, including pages about test prep and Harry Potter! (Try one for FREE here.) Embedded into Vocabulary: Start noticing the roots, prefixes, and suffixes in the vocabulary you assess elsewhere in your class. For example, in my Word of the Day program, we identify at least one affix and/or the language of origin for each word. Delve into REAL Latin: Don’t run from this idea! Do your students know common “English” phrases that are actually Latin, such as ad lib, per se, nota bene, pro bono, pro tempore, and status quo? If not, then maybe it’s time to build literacy with these common phrases. The REAL payoff... ...will come in that cute moment when a student raises her hand because she’s just noticed an affix in the text… or when a reluctant reader correctly zeroes in on what “agribusiness” means in a nonfiction article because he knows that “agri” means “farming”... or when a class tells you that they saw a root in their Science class and knew what the word meant. If students don’t get these affixes from us now, they never will, and it’s one of the best literacy graduation gifts we can give them. You Might Also Like... Tips and Activities for Teaching Vocabulary by Presto Plans Word Up Vocabulary Graphic Organizers by Tracee Orman

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Kindergartners will have fun practicing writing with this super cute book for them to write about their pet. NO PREP, just print FREE creative writing.

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

Prepositions of movement. To, from, into, out of, towards, up, down, round, through, across, etc. A2. Pre-intermediate English grammar and exercises.

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10 significant reasons to read aloud to students on a