Critical thinking questions include, 'Why is this important? What are the causes and effects of this? How do we know if this is true?"

Writing Worksheet – Endings (PDF) In honour of NaNoWriMo, this month’s worksheets will have one purpose: to increase your word count by hook or by book. The final writing worksheet in this marvellous month of November is inspired by the last virtual NaNoWriMo write-in. Imagining the best endings for each of your characters is a…

English speakers borrowed apropos from the French phrase à propos, literally 'to the purpose.' Since it first appeared in the 17th century, apropos has been used as an adverb, adjective, noun, and

What Is The Thesis Statement? Examples of Thesis Statements Thesis Statement A thesis statement is the must-have sentence of an article. You must use a specific and understandable thesis statement. In our article today, we will explain what the thesis statement is and show you examples. What Is The Thesis Statement? The thesis statement consists of one sentence. This sentence is in the introductory paragraph of an article. You can put the Thesis statement at the end or beginning of the introductory paragraph. It is generally preferred to be put at the end. So what is the purpose of the

Comic: Too Much Backstory by Inkygirlcom Backstory is anything and everything that happens before your short story or novel opens. Because we need to know our characters’ histories, we think the reader needs to know it too. Here’s a secret—readers don’t care. They want action, they want forward movement. Decide how little backstory you can get away with. […]

Writing first drafts follows on from prewriting in the writing process. Read ten ideas to make drafting work for your story.

Clauses contrast purpose. English grammar practice exercises. Multiple-choice and gap-filling exercises on clauses of contrast and purpose.

Teaching students to write for a specific purpose is one of my favorite skills to teach. Students enjoy drawing sketches that illustrate different writing

“We don’t need to spend much time on that, we all know the moral purpose.” The moral purpose of schools is obvious isn’t it? Last week during an NPQML session we were tasked…

Ok, just because I've been gone from 'blogging land' doesn't mean we haven't been working hard in 4B. I've definitely been documenting a lot of what we've been doing! To start, it was clear to me that our old way of peer conferencing just wasn't working. Kids seemed to be goofing around, not really helping each other, and it was a waste of everyone's time. It frustrated me when most of my one-on-one conference time was spent managing unruly PEER conferences. I knew something had to change. I decided to revamp our workshop so that our peer conferences would hold both the author and the peer more accountable AND work on our 6-traits language. I introduced our 'new' method for peer conferencing using this anchor chart to document our process. After students finish drafting, they are to grab a 6-traits peer conferencing sheet and assess themselves by circling all the descriptors for each trait that they feel match their own writing. Mind you, we did a lot of whole-class practice with scoring writing based on the 6-traits criteria so students would feel comfortable doing this process on their own (and being HONEST!). Through our mini-lessons we've learned that it's possible to have high scores in some traits but lower scores in others. That's how we grow! Here you see Devin circling where he thinks his writing falls on our 6-traits rubric. (Note: The link to the 6-traits peer conferencing sheet above will bring you to an even more updated version than the one shown in this blog posting! Just FYI!) Here's another student assessing her own writing after she's drafted. This student has finished assessing her writing using our rubric. She decides on a final number score and circles it to the left of the descriptors. Then it's time to meet with a peer. (We have a peer conference sign-up sheet in our room which helps students know which other students in the room are also ready to peer conference.) Here you see this author reading his story to his peer. After he's done reading, he will explain to his peer the scores he gave himself and why. It's important for the peer to listen carefully to the author because it will soon be her turn to assign a score to this author for each trait . On the lines on the rubric, she will write to explain the scores she gives him. The peer needs to follow the following sentence stems in his/her scoring response: * I give this a writer a ___ because... * This writer needs to work on ... This process requires peers to truly work together, hold each other accountable, and it gets the kids using our 6-traits language a lot more. The second sentence stem helps the writer establish a goal for what to work on when revising! To see more of this peer conferencing process, watch a clip of us practicing this stage! Our focus lately has been on the trait of organization. We've been looking thoroughly at different beginnings and endings of both student and published writing. Here is our anchor chart documenting what we noticed! In other Writer's Workshop news, these are a few additional anchor charts we have in our room to help keep our writing organized. This anchor chart reminds us of powerful words to use to spice up 'said'! In reading we have been working hard on purposeful talk.This is so very important to the social construction of knowledge in any classroom! It's essential to teach students purposeful talk behaviors before even considering literature discussion groups (LDGs). The majority of kids talk like...well, KIDS! So, if we expect kids to talk like mature young people about different texts they read, we need to explicitly teach them how! Talking about Text by Maria Nichols is a great place to start if you're interesting in learning more about purposeful talk behaviors. I taught each of the behaviors individually through two separate mini-lessons - one day to explain 'hearing all voices' in a concrete way (without text), and a second day to practice 'hearing all voices' using text. Then I taught 'saying something meaningful' in a concrete way without using text, and the next day we practiced 'saying something meaningful' using text , and so on. Eventually all of the purposeful talk behaviors kind of blended together and kids started to discover that we often need to use all of these things at the same time in order to truly talk purposefully about anything! We did a lot of practicing, and I've been taping students in this process. Here is a clip of students practicing their behaviors while they talk about their families. (We had read a few books about different kinds of families to foster a safe environment to celebrate the fact that we all have different kinds of families!) We also had students practice their purposeful talk behaviors while discussing their best or worst memory in school (which helped warm up their brains for a timed writing activity we did during writer's workshop). Here is a clip! As a class, we watched these video clips to analyze our body language and other purposeful talk behaviors. I think taping and analyzing is a very effective way for students to learn how they should look and sound in an LDG. 'Keeping the lines of thinking alive' is a tough concept for many youngsters. Sometimes what happens is that students take turns talking, but they don't really build on what the person before them said. In other words, they don't really DISCUSS, they just share and listen. We applauded the first group in this clip because they had good body language and were respectful as listeners, but we discovered their conversation needed to be more 'alive' by asking questions and making connections to each other's ideas and thoughts. Mrs. Pierce and I taped ourselves doing a weak LDG and a strong LDG. As we watched each example, we used dots and lines to 'map out' our conversations (see chart below). In the weak LDG, we discovered Mrs. Pierce and I shared a lot of individual thoughts. The thought started, and then it stopped. There was really no discussion about anything we said; and Mrs. Pierce wasn't even looking at me during part of our time together! How rude! ;) In the strong LDG example, we mapped out a lot of dots and lines that were connected because we took each other's ideas and built on them. We truly discussed the text to dig deeper. We introduced several conversational moves for students to use to help get their voice heard in a conversation. Students also have these conversational moves on a bookmark that they keep in their LDG books. After we learned the respectful ways to speak and act when discussing with others, it was time to teach our kids how to flag their thinking. This is a crucial step to holding a successful literature discussion group because it allows the kids to track their important thoughts while reading so they have ideas for discussion the next day. Here are the 'codes' we use to track our thinking on post-its. We encourage students to use one of our codes to categorize the kind of thought they have and then write a few words to trigger their thought. This helps them when they get into a discussion group; they'll actually have pinpointed ideas to discuss! Students kept a chart in their Thoughtful Logs with all of our codes on it for easy reference. Here's a clip of our students as they practice flagging their thinking for the first time. The next day, students put all their new learning to the test. We put them in small groups to discuss the text "Slower Than the Rest" which is a short realistic fiction story out of Cynthia Rylant's book Every Living Thing. On another day, we used a high-interest two-page non-fiction text about leeches to continue practicing flagging our thoughts. Here's a clip of our kids flagging their thinking just after we modeled it during our mini-lesson. Below are some pictures of the kids' flagged thoughts. In addition to purposeful talk, we've also been studying the historical fiction genre. We've read several mentor texts, including Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner and Dandelions by Eve Bunting. Our first round of literature discussion books are all within the historical fiction genre. Here are a few of our historical fiction LDGs hard at work: Dear Levi: Letters from the Overland Trail Scraps of Time: Abby Takes a Stand The River and the Trace (I think I put my finger over the microphone at minute 2:00!) Oftentimes, historical fiction books will have a flashback in them. One group's book, called A Scrap of Time: Abby Takes a Stand by Patricia McKissick, has a flashback that occurs towards the beginning of the story. I photocopied some of the pages to try to explain this technique during a whole class mini-lesson. In the first section of the book, three grandkids are spending time with their grandma in her attic. They find an old menu and ask their grandma why she saved it. Chapters 1 through 12 flash back to 1960, where 'grandma' is just 10-years-old, living in Nashville, Tennessee at the time of a lot of civil rights protests. The menu is from a restaurant where a lot of sit-ins took place. Through the flashback a reader learns all about life during the 1960s. In the final section of the book, a reader finds him/herself back in the present - in grandma's attic, where the three grandkids ask their grandma some questions about her life during the sixties. There was also another flashback in the story Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner. We also read The Wreck of the Zephyr by Chris VanAllsburg as an example of a flashback in a fantasy book! In other reading news, here is a picture of the anchor chart that stored all the non-fiction text features we've learned. In social studies, we've been studying the economy of the five U.S. regions. Students have been reading small sections of non-fiction leveled readers to summarize a product or industry that is important to each region's economy. Students are typing up their summaries and we're calling those summaries 'articles' as they each create a magazine of our economy. Through this project, students have learned to: * Summarize main ideas * Center and left-justify their cursor * Use the tab key to indent * Change font size, color, and style * Bold, underline, and italicize * Safe image searches * Copy and paste * Cite their picture resources Here is the inside of one student's magazine. Next week we will be using this site to create magazine covers! Lastly, we had a chance to meet with our second-grade buddies earlier this month. We split the buddies up into two groups and one group stayed with Mrs. Adams to play holiday bingo. The other group was with me in the computer lab. Buddies used this site to play a variety of math and English games. One of the most popular games to play was called 'Story Plant' where students could click on different leaves to create the beginning to a unique story. Depending on what leaves were clicked, you would get a different combination of characters, settings, problems, etc. The computer generates a beginning to a story that the kids can print off and finish during writer's workshop! Have a wonderful weekend!

Steal these for your writing unit!

I realize anyone reading this is just getting to know me. But! If you knew me, you would know I love anchor charts. In fact, I have an entire Pinterest board devoted to anchor charts. Definitely check it out if you're an anchor chart enthusiast like myself. I have never considered myself to be a particularly talented artist (putting it nicely). However, I can look at an picture and draw based on looking at it. We started working on Author's Purpose today. Our lesson only allowed for one day of this but I felt my kiddos needed more topic on this important topic. I decided to take 3 days and focus on different purposes authors can have (to inform, to entertain and to persuade). I was inspired by Amy Lemons' gorgeous charts. Here are hers: Here are my recreations: I'll admit my kiddo drawings are a little on the hefty side. How do you think I did? Shelby

Adverbs Free ESL Printable Grammar Worksheets, Eal Exercises, Efl Questions, Tefl Handouts, Esol Quizzes, Multiple Choice Tests, Elt Activities, English Teaching and Learning English Resources, Information and Rules for kids

This is a fun multi-purpose worksheet to practice writing and speaking skills.

This month, the Reading Crew is celebrating spring! It's a fun link-up featuring a variety of mentor texts related to spring and a gr...

Learners will practice identifying the author's purpose in eight sample paragraphs, using text evidence to support their choice.

This is a fun multi-purpose worksheet to practice writing and speaking skills in the third person.

Answers: 1b 2c 3a 4c 5d 6d 7b 8a (cause and effect) linking_words_phrases (linking words) (linking words)

I was talking about this book with a colleague the other day. More like singing its praises. It was then that I thought I needed to share this resource with my blog friends. If you teach intermediate grade writers, YOU WANT THIS BOOK! The title of this gem is Razzle Dazzle Writing: Achieving Excellence Through 50 Target Skills by Melissa Forney. I love this book! It is so on-target with the skills it covers and so appropriate for intermediate grade writers. This book is perfect for 3rd grade through middle school. If I don't tell you another thing about it, you should just go buy the book because it is selling on Amazon.com for a very cheap $13.57! Honestly, I would quickly pay at least twice that for this book without blinking. Ms. Forney also has a sister book for the K-2 set called Primary Pizzazz Writing. I haven't seen it in person, but it looks like a winner. The pages of Razzle Dazzle Writing are meant to be copied for your friends and used as a teaching and reference tool. Here is a checklist from the book that notes the 50 skills covered: As you can see, the topic lend themselves to your everyday teaching throughout the year. However, this book is also great for test prep. Ugghhhh! I hate to even utter those words, but they are a fact of life for us these days. Let me be clear though that Ms. Forney is very clear in the book that it's not all about the writing prompt. She does state that our friends need to know the difference between prompted writing and free writing. I also believe this. As much as we would like our friends to embrace writing and freely write as they are inspired, the reality is when the state test comes they are going to be directed via a prompt to do a very specific type of writing. I used the mini lessons in this book to create an anchor chart on understanding the different types of prompts: And, here is another chart I created using one of Melissa Forney's lessons on using a "writing glove" to help your friends properly address narrative prompts. Sigh! Just noticed that I spelled dilemma incorrectly on the chart. Will be fixing that in class ASAP. Sorry about that! Ms. Forney has great ideas for this mini lesson. The book even includes reproducible gloves for your friends to cut out and put on a stick. The creation of these two anchor charts is directly inspired, if not copied, right from Razzle Dazzle Writing. I tweaked a bit for my friends, but the book is so well put together you can essentially photocopy what you need and do your lesson with minimal prep. Razzle Dazzle Writing includes tons of pages you can copy for your friends to keep as reference, there are also poems and reader's theater scripts that are included to reinforce many of the lessons. The poems are fun and easily understandable for your friends. The reader's theater scripts get right to the point in a fun way , yet they are short enough to be done as part of a mini lesson. I have yet to find anything in this book that isn't a perfect fit for my friends. Melissa Forney has an incredible web site where you can learn more about her books and philosophy. Click HERE to be taken to Forney Educational, Inc. There are also free downloads available on the site. THIS PDF DOWNLOAD is for a booklet titled Young Writer's Survival Guide. It is an excellent resource for your friends. Many of the topics in this guide are topics covered in more depth as different mini lessons in Razzle Dazzle Writing. That PDF alone should convince you to buy the book! So, have I gushed enough? I hope so! This is not a paid endorsement. This is a post on a book that I find myself going back to again and again and think you will, too. If you know this book, please share your thoughts. If you end up getting this book, let us know how you like it. On a totally different topic, every time I think of the name of this book, it makes me think of this scene from the movie Stripes with Bill Murray. I know, totally dating myself yet again! Also, don't forget to enter my giveaway to win a copy of Testing Miss Malarkey and assorted other goodies!