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...
Hello Everyone! I love helping first graders express themselves through writing. For me, the first semester of first grade is all about cre...
Are you looking for a concrete way you can map out your reading/writing/language mini-lessons so that your students can be successful during their independent time? WATCH MY LIVE VIDEO AND DISCOVER HOW I SCAFFOLD LEARNING DURING A 10-15 MINUTE MINI-LESSON. How to Scaffold Learning in a Mini Lesson Check out all my reading and writing
In this blog post, read about my best teaching strategies to teach writing narrative endings. Grab all the freebies to help you teach.
Sample a day of Rooted in Reading with these lesson plans and activities for Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, and Grammar!
How do you teach literary analysis to kids? Helping students study and analyze literature on a deeper level In our new Writing Workshop Unit this January we are going to go look at books more analytically. Some of our mini-lessons have included story structure (building to a climax, etc); finding topics to write about; looking at the opening of books (hooking the reader); using different techniques such as similes, metaphors,...
I chanced upon this technique two years ago when I was surfing on the Internet to look for an effective way to help my students describe better. It has proven to be very useful and successful. One important reminder, though is that vocabulary-building lessons should be carried out prior to a Show, not Tell lesson, especially so with average and below average second language learners. Things to prepare: LCD projector; Jumbled up strips of paper describing feelings; colour paper; colour pencils; glue; marker pens / magic pens; dictionary & thesaurus How do I use this technique in my lesson? 1. Introduce the concept Four Essential Elements in Show, not Tell technique 2. Show examples An example Alister and I came up with 3. Practice I use cooperative learning approach to get students to read some useful phrases/ sentences / expressions describing feelings. Each group is given 2 words. e.g. happy and sad; angry and bored; shy and amused; etc. Students, in groups of 3 - 4, are assigned to 2 - 3 phrases on strips of paper. They are to read and understand the expressions and categorize them under the appropriate circle maps. It would help tremendously if the teacher has a list of useful expressions to describe various kinds of emotions. Expressions to use in class Cooperative learning and circle maps in action 4. Presentation Each group to share their product by reading and acting out the expressions assigned to them. Read and Act Check these websites out to get more examples of Show, Not Tell technique: Write Design Online: Show, Not TellThis Craft Called Writing: A How to Guide on Show Not Tell Mrs Swanda's Writing Resources The Open Door Classroom Jennifer's Teaching Tool Foremost Press: Show, Not Tell
Use the train analogy to teach students about subjects and predicates! This blog post contains an anchor chart and several matching activities.
Each school year a unique mix of middle school students enter the doors of my classroom. Each with a story, each with different strengths...
Here are some developmental writing rubrics and standards or expectations-based rubrics for kindergarten teachers.
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!
The activities below are available for free download, and are to be used in educational and/or private settings. They may not be used elsewhere or for other purposes (such as for profit) unless exp…
If you’ve set up your daily writing prompts so that everyone writes on the same topic, then take a tip from Lakeshore Learning and put your prompts on a monthly calendar. Hang this calendar w…
Are you a homeschooling mom? Tricia Goyer shares 6 activities you can do with your writers' club
Creative Writing Worksheet – Politics (PDF) No subject could be less dear to my heart than politics, and in consequence I find myself immensely impressed by writers who create intricate political intrigue in their stories. On one end of the spectrum are science-fiction authors like Lois McMaster Bujold and Anne McCaffrey who invent the political systems of different planets, and on…
How do you have your students soak in the information that you teach in a whole group lesson and practice it in school and at home? I...
Your students are bright, but they don't always sound like it. Help improve student vocabulary with these 600 ways to say common things.
We talk a lot about using picture books in our teaching. I am wondering though if you are using wordless picture books in your lessons. If not, you are missing out on a great teaching resource. I try to incorporate wordless picture book in my lessons for a variety of lessons. picture source Well, besides the fact that a picture is worth a thousand words, there are plenty of other great reasons to incorporate wordless picture books in your teaching: -They lend themselves to any lesson you could think to teach. -They level the playing field in the class. Without text to contend with, you can still teach reading and writing skills/strategies to the whole class or mixed ability groups without needing to level. This is great for your lower performing students and your ELL friends. In fact, I find that my high ability students are often the ones that don't so as well with wordless book activities. They often like to stick to the text and want it to be "right." With wordless picture books, you have a lot of wiggle room which can make them uncomfortable. My lower performing students are often able to take the lead in these types of activities. -It sparks your friends imagination. Without text, you will be amazed at what they read into what they see. -You can use the same books across many grade levels depending on what you ask your friends to do with them. They aren't just for little kids! -A lot of the ways I use these books require my kids to be up and moving or working on the floor in small, cooperative groups. Anything different from seat work is always welcome! -These lessons also often require collaboration, conversation, and decision making as a class. I thought I would share with you some of the ways in which I have used wordless picture books in my classroom. Now, for each of the skills/strategies I list below, I have given an example of how you can teach it. However, there are a bazillion other ways you could teach these lessons. These are just some examples. You could expand the lesson or simplify it as you see fit or maybe you have your own idea on how to do it. Do what works for you! Sequencing -Copy all the pages of your book. Divide the pages into three parts; beginning, middle, and end. Give it to three groups. Each group sequences their pages. Then, bring the three groups together to decide the sequence of the three sections. Once they have decided, I tape the pages in order up around the room and we view the story from beginning to end. As a groups, they can make any last minute changes at this point. We then read the actual book and see if we sequenced the same way the author did. This is where the real lesson comes in. If there were no changes, you can discuss how they determined sequence. It's important for them to verbally justify their reasoning. If their sequence doesn't agree with the book, they have to defend their reasoning. I find that there are times when the sequencing my friends do really does make more sense than what is done in the actual book. It is in the discussions where I hear how my friends are applying sequencing skills. This is great for your ELL friends as it puts them on an equal playing field to the rest of the class as there is no text to struggle with, and still teaches them the skill. Many of the lessons that follow are great for your ELL friends for the same reason. This is also great for the lower grades if you use a simple book. They can organize simply for beginning, middle, and end. Inferencing & Predictions Without words, you must really analyze the story story through the illustrations. When reading the book with your friends, have them make predictions before the next page. Without text to cite, they really must apply some good inference reasoning. When you do this as you read the book, they are always in anticipation of turning the page to see if they were correct. Dialog & Mood Select a page or two that has two characters. What would those characters be saying in this situation? How do I write that dialog? Using just one page for this makes it a good quick hit for a mini-lesson. You can then give your friends another page to write the dialog in independent practice. This is a great way to have them practice crafting power sentences as it forces them to incorporate mood, which they must determine from what is happening in the illustration. You can also just use the illustrations to determine mood without having to write the sentences. In this case, the dconversation you have with your friends is critical. They need to explain how they determined mood. What in the picture gave you that idea? What are the characters doing? What is the setting? Did the illustrator use darker, moodier colors or brighter, happier colors? I find this same technique an excellent way to teach internal monologue. After reading the book with the class, I focus on a page that comes later in the story. At this point, there is something going on in the story, some conflict, so my friends have something to work with. We then focus on one character in the illustration. I ask my friends what this character might be thinking. What would his thought bubble say? We go on to discuss how internal monologue gives us insight to the characters, their feelings, motivations, etc. and how it can give us additonal information that we may not otherwise know. My friends then work in pairs to come up with internal monologue for different characters in the book or for the same character in different parts of the book. Without fail, I find after I do this lesson, my friends begin to incorporate internal monologue in their own writing. Character Analysis After reading the book, what do you know about the main character/protagonist? This really focuses your friends on a characters actions. Create a list of character traits with your friends. The lesson comes, again, in having your friends justify their choices. What makes them say the character is kind or frustrated or loving? You get the idea! Narrative Writing Obviously, there is no text in a wordless picture book. Have your friends write the story guided by the illustrations. This is a good way to teach or review narrative writing. You can write the story on chart paper as a shared writing activity. This way you can be sure to guide them in incorporating the required narrative elements. Or, you can always do this as a small group or independent writing assignment. I like doing it in small groups at the end of the narrative writing unit. I can see my friends applying what we have learned. Also, it is really a lot of fun when we read the stories from the different groups. While we all had the same illustrations to follow, the stories are always different. The plots vary, some go for humor while other groups are more serious. Some groups embellish beyond the pictures, while others pretty much stick to the pictures. Identify Plot Structure, Story Climax For this, I usually have my friends sequence the story first. Then, we discuss the story plot. Once we know what is happening in the story, my friends identify the story page that shows the climax of the story. We can then look at the pages before and after. If you have taped your story along the wall as we do, you can then move the pictures to show the plot mountain. picture source When you tape the pictures in a visual display on the wall, they can then use sentence strips to label the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. It is a very concrete, visual way to teach these elements. Main Idea & Supporting Detail If you've done either the sequencing or plot structure lessons above where you ordered the pages on the wall, you should try this lesson. Have your friends identify the page that essentially shows the maid idea. Once you are all in agreement, have them take down any pictures that don't support that main idea. You will be left with only pages that show events which support the main idea. Again, a very visual and concrete way to teach this skill. I would chart this with words. Write the main idea and then, looking at the pages, come up with a sentence for each supporting detail. I would also just suggest being particular about what book you use. Some wordless picture books tend to be very fanciful and imaginative. This works best with a book that follows a less imaginative, "real" story. Those are just some ideas for lessons you can teach with wordless picture books. Depending on your learning goal and what you require of your friends, I find them to be excellent books to use across all grade levels. In particular, your older students will really get a kick out of using them because it is so different from their norm. So, let's talk books. Wordless picture books can be hard to find if you don't know what you are looking for. In my public library, the wordless picture books are mixed in with all the other picture books. You could spend forever looking for one without words. With a simple Google search, I was able to find a few different lists. Below are two links I think might be helpful in getting you started. I selected these list because they both have books I have used with great success. I'll tell you a little more about two of my favorites that are on the lists. The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has a nice selection of books listed online. One of my favorite books on this is list: The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney. It is a wordless retelling of the Aesop fable and won the Caldecott in 2010. It's perfect for so many different lessons. This one book can easily be used for all the lessons I listed above. The Louisville Free Public Library also has an online list. A few of the books on their list are the same as on the Carnegie list, but there are some different ones. One I like and have used is You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum by Jacqueline Weitzman. Being just a quick train ride away from New York City, my friends can always make connections to this book as many have been to large museums in the city. What I really like about this book is that there are multiple illustrations on each page. There is usually a larger, main illustration with smaller ones around it. It is like having supporting details on the page for the main picture and is very helpful for your students that need more information or visual clues. Between these lists, you should have a good starting point. There are a lot of great wordless books out there, and these are just a small sample. There are so many others I could go on about. Talk to your school media specialist, and see what they recommend. It would be nice if they had a special section just for these types of books. However, don't be discouraged if you can't get your hands on any wordless picture books or don't have the time to go looking. It is easily solved. Grab your favorite picture book and some Post-It notes. Simply cut the Post-Its to cover up the text. Voila! You can turn any picture book into a wordless picture book. So, is any of this helpful or have I just rambled on? :-) How are you using wordless picture books? Do you have a favorite to share?
Help your children to discover this fascinating period of History with our Victorians Pack! It includes a HUGE eBook that can be used for shared reading and independent research, along with a bumper collection of teaching, activity and classroom display resources.
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!
Writing and reading anchor chart ideas for the classroom.
CCRA.L.2 states: "Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing." How will you address this with your fourth grade class? The first step I take is direct instruction and daily practice of parts of speech, capitalization, and punctuation. I present three connected rules per week (for example, identifying adjectives, capitalizing proper adjectives, and commas in series of adjectives). Students practice with three sentences each day, spiraling their knowledge and understanding of mechanics. This has worked wonders in my own classroom. Mechanics: Your Daily Tune-Up is focused, gives plenty of practice, and takes only a few minutes a day. Let's take a closer look at the parts of this standard. L.4.2a simply says, "Use correct capitalization." No standards after fourth grade discuss capitalization. When I first saw this, I thought, "Wow, that means my students need to know all capitalization rules." As I came to realize that there are many rules for capitalization, the rules are quite detailed, and the resources available to teach them are few, I really said, "Wow!" In addition to the mechanics program, I created interactive PowerPoint presentations, related worksheets, and extension activities for each rule. Then I wrote review sheets and tests. It was a big undertaking, but the end result was worth it! Each presentation got my kids involved with thumbs-up/thumbs-down and/or display of fingers for practice and effortless formative assessment. This short video will give you a little taste of how the unit works. All nine PowerPoint/Lesson Plan sets are now available individually or as a bundle in my Teachers pay Teachers store: Capitalizing Dates and Names Capitalizing Holidays and Products Capitalizing Geographic Names Capitalizing Titles Capitalizing Celestial Objects Capitalizing Groups, Languages, and Religions Capitalizing Rooms, Course Titles, and Awards What Not to Capitalize Comprehensive Capitalization Unit (includes all PowerPoints, lesson plans, and extension activities; a quick reference guide and review; pretest and cumulative test) Once students have learned all of the comma rules, I like to sprinkle in some review with free worksheets offered at Worksheetplace.com. L.4.2b states: "Use commas and quotation marks to mark direct speech and quotations from a text." This extends the third grade standard by asking students to quote from a text. Although the CCSS does not officially ask fourth graders to quote from text when answering questions, it's a great way to practice (and gear up for Grade 5). After reviewing placement of commas and quotation marks in text, I work with students to generate a list of tags to use when integrating quotes into writing, like this: Opportunities for practice are easy to find. For example, after reading this brief excerpt from Aesop, I'd simply ask students to quote the author five different ways. They can experiment by using different parts of the text and a variety of tags to answer. L.4.2c is simple and straightforward: "Use a comma before a coordinating conjunction in a compound sentence." Once your students can identify complete sentences (AKA independent clauses) and coordinating conjunctions, you're set. This lesson and video on the Scholastic website may help. The author, Mary Blow, uses the acronym FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) to help students identify coordinating conjunctions then shows how to insert a comma when these are used to combine two sentences, or independent clauses. To reinforce this concept, try this Compound Sentence Practice from Joshua Durham (free on TpT). You can liven up your lesson with this Comma Before Conjunction Lesson, which was created by two students and posted on YouTube. Even better, your students could create their own skits, jingles, or videos to teach the skill. L.4.2d asks students to "spell grade-appropriate words correctly, consulting references as necessary." I hate to say it, but dictionaries in book form seem to be going the way of the dodo bird. I think it's time to teach kids how to use digital spell check options. Kids (and adults) can use tools found in word processing software or online spell check sites, such as SpellCheck.net. That's it for fourth grade mechanics! If you need assessment for these (or all 20) language skills covered in the Common Core, Teaching and Tapas has published a complete 4th Grade Common Core Language Assessment. Check it out!
