Check out these fun activities from Award Winning Author/Illustrator Jarett Lerner to do at home or in the classsroom. Includes comics, drawing, and more.

Teach your child to recognize and read consonant digraphs /th/, /sh/, and /ch/ with a digraph garden!

On a scale of 1 to 10, how techie would you say you are as a teacher? Personally, I'm pretty tech-savvy. I use Google for a lot more than questions, I handle Adobe like a

Origins of the cup song It’s a craze that has swept over schools everywhere and contrary to popular belief, the […]

Cooperative learning. Find out what it's all about and get some great resources to help you use this strategy well in your classroom.

Do you struggle with finding interesting ways to teach ESL listening skills? Maybe you have an activity or two already but you want to be able to mix it up and keep things interesting. By the end of…

5 key reasons to teach students to analyze differing perspectives

If you struggle with classroom management no matter how many different strategies you try, there's a chance you're doing something to get in your own way.

It's been such a great week in Kindergarten and First Grade Music! We've been experiencing steady beat with steady beat swords. The "swords" are actually swimming noodles that have been cut in half. First we listened to "Imperial March" from Star Wars and found patterns in the music that sounded like we should march, swing our steady beat swords and sneak around. Then we kept the steady beat by clapping one hand with our partner. Next we took that skill and transferred it to our steady beat swords. We clicked our steady beat swords together on the beat with our partner. As we listened to the song the next time we marched, light saber-ed to the beat and snuck around the galaxy in search of a new beat keeping partner. What fun! Read another blog post about steady beat swords HERE. Read another blog post about steady beat swords HERE.

Have a chatty class? Do your talkative students get louder and louder during small groups until it feels like chaos? Do they talk when you'r...

This free printable Do Re Mi staircase is a brilliant visual aid and teaching tool for introducing small children to Do Re Mi and interval recognition.

It's that time of year! Magic e! I love teaching my kids about the magic e because it means they have really grown as readers! I know th...

How to Write Circular Gallifreyan (Doctor Who): Today We are gonna learn how to do the easiest form of Circular Gallifreyan!

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!

This is the first time in over a decade of teaching that I’ve gone through a stack of papers saying, “Yes! Yes! YESSS!!!!” I’m so proud of what’s been accomplished that I’m just dying to share with you how to make this happen in your own classroom. Here's how to write essay prompts, offer a new t

Crossing the midline activities for kids. What on earth are those? Sometimes in the educational world we start speaking a slightly different language than 'normal' people. Not that teachers aren't normal ... though ... you do need to be a little insane to work with small children all day long, don't you? Anyways. I had

Basic vocabulary, like knowing prepositions, is necessary for beginning readers. Teach prepositions with this simple game.

All kids benefit from practicing mindfulness. Who wouldn't love the kids and young adults we work with to become more focused, calm, in control, and self-aware? Mindfulness is a technique that can help teach and strengthen those abilities over time. By practicing mindfulness, people can learn to bec

The best and most fun pen and paper games to cure the boredom blues. Solo, two player and three or more player pencil and paper games for kids and adults!

Read through our favorite classroom management hacks and then hop over and become a Plato Pack member for even more teaching tools, strategies and support.

Echolalia- Learn strategies for your Autism classroom. What echolalia is and how to reduce it with activities to decrease repetitive speech or non-authentic communication.

When it seems like the only word they know is "no."

Hello darlings! Do you teach vocabulary to your students? I think this is one thing we are missing in the upper grades and we are doing a disservice to our students. As they move up levels in reading, the thing that I notice that holds my students back the most is the challenging vocabulary they ... Read More about Adding Vocabulary to your ELA Block

The Montessori method of education teaches reading and writing by isolating each sound/symbol and allowing the child to manipulate them herself through the movable alphabet. So why would we teach …

In an earlier blog post, I wrote about the benefits of assigning a collaborative writing assignment in the high school English and middle school ELA

I have a new freebie set ready this week! This set has three puzzles all about bunnies! Not quite in time for Easter, but it's generic enough for any time of the year. One puzzle is a maze in which solvers have to help the mommy bunny gather up her baby bunnies from around the garden. Another puzzle teaches students about bunny related words while they find them in a word search. And the last puzzle challenges students to help a bunny across a river to find her pile of veggies! This puzzle is a new puzzle for me, and I'm excited about it! The solvers has to follow a pattern of shapes, hopping along each shape 'stepping stone', to get to the other side. My kids and I enjoyed doing these! (You can find more of these puzzles in my All About Shapes puzzle pack too!) All About Shapes is available in my TpT store for $4.00 and contains 20 puzzles for young solvers. These puzzles are geared towards kindergarteners and first graders, but pre-schoolers should be able to handle many of these puzzles with help from their parents. This pack contains 3 dot-to-dots, 3 river crossings, 3 mazes, 3 word searches, 4 coloring pages, 2 counting riddles, a sudoku, and a crossword! It's packed with fun ways to practice shape recognition and even learn some new shapes! You can download the Cub Corner or purchase All About Shapes at my TpT store! UPDATE: I no longer have the Cub Corner sets in my store. Just click on the picture to download. Also, the All About Shapes set has been retired, so you can download a free copy by clicking on that picture. Enjoy!

Can you provide meaningful instruction without a grammar worksheet? You can, and here are ten alternatives to the grammar worksheet.

Take a closer look.

If you are looking for ideas to make your meeting more fun while teaching your girls how to respect authority you have come to the right place. Using some of these activities below to help your girls understand who is authority and learn how to respect them by listening to their parents, teachers, police, and leader who are there to help them follow directions and rules that are made to keep them safe. I recommend the following activities that will reinforce respecting authority: Practice with activities Be creative with a craft Get moving with a game Put into action with a service project or real life experience. Optionally: If I have a song that related, sing that as well. Below are a few ideas to get you started. Respect Authority Activity Booklet Do you want to skip all the planning? If so, use the Respect Authority Activity booklet and take your girls on a garden adventure helping a family of fairies on a mission to teach the world how to live by very important values. Using the leader booklet and the girl’s activity booklet your girls will complete lots of activities to help their fairy friends plant flowers, water gardens, and learn how to put important values to live by into action. With step-by-step activities planned for you all you have to do is gather the supplies listed, you can’t ask for a easier way to run your meeting. Learn more about the activities included and get yours today! Other Fun Activities to Try for Respect Authority Respecting Authority Figures Using some of the scenario’s below have your girls act out different scenes. These scenarios are ways to have girls give their opinion on how they would handle a situation. Scenario ideas: A police officer talking to a student about being out past curfew A principal talks to a student about having a cell phone in school A teacher talks to a student about talking while she is talking A parent talks to daughter about helping clean the house A GS Leader talks to girl about being a sister to every girl Further Authority DiscussionI think its important to talk further about how parents are authority figures. Just like you need to respect authority in public it is important to respect our moms and dads at home. Explain to your girls the importance of family time with your girls and that when spending time with family to respect their parents authority. Pipe Cleaner Glasses Prep: Get pipe cleaners for each girl two 6-inch pipe cleaners and one 12-inch pipe cleaner. What to Make: Make pipe cleaner glasses by twisting the ends of the long pipe cleaner together to create a circle. Twist the circle in the middle to create 2 connected circles for lenses. Attach a 6-inch pipe cleaner to each side and bend at the ends to fit around the the girls ears. Ask the girls if they have heard glasses called spectacles and tell them these are their “respectacles.” Have them put their glasses on and give them a short children’s book about respecting or disrespecting authority to read. Ask the girls to determine if the behavior was proper or if not what should have been done differently. You can get your books from the library or here are a few ideas you can get from amazon. The Berenstain Bears Show Some Respect I Am a Booger… Treat Me With Respect! Respect and Take Care of Things Few Pinterest Finds you will love too… Here is a great idea to get your girls thinking about Respecting authority in different areas of their life. Brainstorm with girls the answers to each category. The best way to teach the girls to respect authority (and everyone else) is to demonstrate respect yourself. I found a great resource that has some ideas for games, crafts and how to demonstrate respect. check it out….Click here Song to Sing with Girls You can get the following song audio by going here: Listen to Those in Authority Listen To Those in Authority Listen to those in authority, always behave. Honesty, sincerity, are traits that you should gain.Caring, sharing, helping out, raise your hand and wait,Till you’re called on for your turn. Study hard, give your best,And you will pass the test! (Chorus)Listen to those in authority, teachers, principals.Listen to those in authority and do just what you should.No words of hate, no lies, be kind and everyday try hard to get along.Respect yourself and others. Choose right over wrong.Respect yourself and others. Choose right over wrong. No words of hate, no lies, be kind and everyday try hard to get along.Respect yourself and others. Choose right over wrong.Respect yourself and others. Choose right over wrong. Listen to those in authority, your heart knows what’s right.Bullying is always wrong, and it’s not good to fight.Appreciate every race, everyone’s unique. Work together as a team.That’s what we need in our school. Be good, obey the rules. (Chorus) What Do You Stand For? Character Building Card Game If you have read some of the other blog post for petal ideas I share this over and over, because its so great. I found this on amazon a while back and let me tell you its a great way to get your girls talking, it has amazing scenarios to work through, there are many cards that will fit into the other petals as well, so make sure to pick out the ones you want for the specific petal you are working on. Get yours here: What Do You Stand For? Character Building Card Game What do we do after your girls complete the activities? Well of course give them the badge to display proudly on their vest, they earned it! Additionally If you are like many leaders we want to award our girls when they complete something even beyond just the patch. One great way to show achievement is with a certificate. Don’t worry you don’t have to make them, I found a resource that has done all the work for you and all you have to do is print them and customize the certificates with each girl’s name, badge or award earned, date, and troop leader. Editable certificates perfect for awarding girls after earning a badge. Garden Fairy Fun Patches You are going to love these cute adorable fun patches to put on the back of your girl’s vest. I partnered with a amazing company Advantage Emblems and they are producing and shipping the patches. You can buy them individually or as a complete set. The Fairy Fun Patch Complete Set Honest and fair Friendly and helpful Considerate and caring Courageous and strong Responsible for what I say and do Respect myself and others Respect authority Use resources wisely Make the world a better place Be a sister to every girl Teach your girls about integrity and values This book was wrote by my sister – Who was a Girl Scout as a girl and a Leader for many years before starting a family of her own. This beautifully illustrated book empowers kids to be nice and kind human beings. ‘The Adventures To Me ’ is an endearing story of a little elephant on a journey to becoming the best version of “me”. Equipped with nothing other than a colorful scooter, a backpack, and a map, the little elephant starts their “Adventures to Me”. Along the way, meets new friends of all different backgrounds as encounters challenges, has to make choices, and learns lessons along the way. The road to discovering the best version of “me” is paved with lessons about confidence, truthfulness, resilience and strength, respect, kindness, responsibility, accepting differences, using what you have, dreaming big, setting goals, and looking ahead towards the future with a positive mindset. For the little elephant, the journey of life is full of a wealth of possibilities –– ready to embark on a beautiful journey alongside our elephant friend? Learn about the choices we all make to be good people and explore the great “Adventures To Me”! View on Amazon Enjoy every minute being a leader and continue to inspire your girls! Purchase this wonderful illustrated book from Amazon.

Cultivate lifelong reading skills.

It seems like every day there is an endless stream of students reporting behaviors or incidents that happen in the classroom. On one hand, we want to help our students feel heard and validated so they know we are a safe person for them to talk to. On the other hand, we certainly don't want to feed into the tattle machine. It's a fine line to walk. So how do we handle tattling in our classrooms?

Every English language arts teacher needs a variety of successful, student led discussion strategies that will provide opportunities for student learning.

Update, January 1, 2019: Hi! I have posted each resource as a free download in my new Teachers Pay Teachers store. I just uploaded the files, so they may not all be visible for a couple of hours, …

Getting kids excited about annotating text is a challenge. Using SNOTS not only helps students annotate text, it's engaging and fun.

If you have ever struggled knowing the best way to teach grammar to your students, you are not only one! Whether you infuse your grammar instruction into your reading and writing units or whether you teach from a more traditional curriculum, I think it is safe to say that none of our students have mastered […]

People often find the distinction between metaphors and similes a difficult concept to master. Teaching these subjects using fun activities makes the challenging topic easier to learn. These activities do not take much preparation, but get your whole class or group involved. Be sure to provide your students with lots ...

Help kindergarteners compare length & use appropriate vocabulary with this FREE "Shorter and Longer" activity. Great hands on practice for comparing length.

Bruce Lee was an expert martial artist, but he was also a very wise man. Here's how one of his quotes influences my coaching style.

Some days you just need a break from the monotony! Preparing for exams, transitioning to a new unit, days when half your students are gone for a basketball tour