Showing posts with label #Language Arts. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Wednesday Weekly 5 under $5 - 12/7/2022

Every week I put together a list of 5 great products from members of The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative (TBOTEMC) with the requirement that each product must be less than $5. With a variety of subjects and a wide range of grades, there just might be something that you can use, so continue to read below and see!

In addition, if you're a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) who would like to get more information about joining TBOTEMC, contact me via email at ReneeHeiss@gmail.com or by simply leaving a comment on this blog post.

Christmas Multiplication Color by Number - $3.00

by Believe to Achieve by Anne Rozell

2nd - 4th grades

Worksheets, Printables, Centers

Are you looking for a fun way for students to practice the multiplication facts 2's to 12's? This resource will delight your students as they solve the multiplication facts and color the picture based on the code! This resource is great for morning work, homework, tutoring or early finishers!

Christmas and Hanukkah Bingo - $4.00

by Urbino12

PreK - 8th grades
Games, Cultural Activities, Lesson

A holiday themed bingo game your students will be delighted to play!

- directions for playing three different ways (differentiated instruction)

- teacher script with 16 clues and examples for younger and/or lower functioning students

- blank bingo sheet with free space

- colored pictures labeled with vocab word

- Merry Christmas! and Happy Hanukkah ! displays for your classroom

Grammar Review: Holiday Traditions - $4.99

by Reading Spotlight

4th - 8th grades

Worksheets

The holiday season is here! Students in grades 4-8 can enjoy discovering the origins of festive traditions while practicing grammar skills at the same time. This set focuses on most common student grammatical errors, and the Answer Keys include explanations for every correction. Perfect for homework, seatwork, or learning centers at this time of year. Grammar practice can be both effective and interesting!

Christmas Language Sequencing - $4.00

by Mickey's Place

PreK - 1st grades
Assessment, Games, Centers

Christmas Language Sequencing will engage your students in many ways. Critical Thinking Using comparison of sequence and actions in pictures, plus identifying what comes before, next, and last. Writing and Oral Language using the Pictures as starting Points.

Includes: Twenty sets of sorting cards with four cards in each set.

Four Fun Holiday Activities | Print and Easel™ - $4.00

by Charlene Tess

9th - 12th grades
Activities, printables, games

The Christmas Holidays are a great time to offer your students short activities they will enjoy doing while at the same time reviewing writing concepts they have learned.

This resource includes four activities: Christmas Sentence Combining Activity, Christmas Correcting Misplaced Modifiers Activity, Christmas Classifying Activity, and Holiday Fun Word Search.

All the answers are included for your convenience

As always, I encourage comments and any ideas or suggestions by emailing me at reneeheiss@gmail.com

Renee Heiss

All-American Teacher Tools
Check out my Store

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Wednesday Weekly 5 under $5 - 11/30/2022

Perimeter Worksheets and Task Cards - $2.25

by My Creative Maths

4th - 6th grades

Worksheets, Printables, Task Cards

These perimeter worksheets and task cards can be used when teaching perimeter or when doing revision before a test. Great for classwork, early finishers, centers or homework. Worksheets cover counting sides, using the formula for a square and rectangle, finding the unknown side and word problems.

Beginning Blends Activities & Worksheets for 3 - Letter Blends - $4.95

by Primarily Learning

K - 2nd grades
Worksheets, Homeschool Curricula, Activities

Learning 3-Letter Blends can be challenging for young learners. Use these 12 activities to help students at varying ability levels study 3-Letter Beginning Consonant Blends. Units of sound are marked to align with programs like Jolly Phonics. Save time! Use the ready-to-go 3-Letter Blend Word Work Activities to get the extra practice they need!

Common Misspelled Words Crossword Puzzle - $1.49

by Reading Spotlight

7th - 10th grades

Worksheets

Great spelling practice in a different format! This research-based crossword puzzle includes 90 words that are often misspelled, even by adults. Help your students improve both spelling and writing by utilizing these words as spelling words and by using the puzzle anytime. Perfect for homework, seatwork, and learning centers.

Boom Cards™: Action Verbs Sentence Completion - $4.00

by Mickey's Place

K - 2nd grades
Activities, Games

Boom Cards: Action Verbs Sentence Completion is a wonderful way for Kindergarten and First-grade students to practice grammar skills while completing sentences.

Each of the 40 slides has an action verb GIF which illustrates the activity for the sentence completion. Great for distance learning.

December STEM Bingo for Middle School and High School - $2.50

by All-American Teacher Tools

6th - 10th grades
Centers, games

This December Bingo game features a STEM accomplishment for every day of the month. The call list tells what happened and when, plus a link to more information. There are 30 unique sheets for all of your students. The EASEL version has moveable star markers so you don't need to find chips or make pieces of paper to cover the bingo board! When you're done with this, check out my STEM bingo cards for all the other months of the year!

As always, I encourage comments and any ideas or suggestions by emailing me at reneeheiss@gmail.com

Renee Heiss

All-American Teacher Tools
Check out my Store

Friday, February 1, 2019

Love Letters & Brussel Sprouts: Odes, Point-of-View and Visible Thinking

You're my funny valentine, sweet comic valentine

You make me smile with my heart

Your looks are laughable, unphotographable

Yet, you're my favorite work of art.

-Rodgers & Hart

Growing up, I never crushed on the cutie patooties or the hottie patotties. I fell for the guys who could make me laugh hysterically or make me swoon by reciting poetry. So, it's only natural that as a teacher, the valentine books I love the most incorporate poetry and humor. That's what led me to Love Letters by Arnold Adoff. This book is comprised of funny, touching, and yet untraditional love letters written as poems and odes. The letters are addressed to teachers, classmates, family members, or to"fill-in-your-own-name," which is the perfect poem for those people who have a harem of admirers. The poems in this book stand independently and could be shared one at a time over the course of a couple of weeks.

Adoff uses fantastic imagery that any child can relate to, "I love you more than peanut butter cookies crumble. I love you more than yellow bees bumble. I also love you more than dark thunder clouds rumble..." These lines are from the poem entitle "Dear Tall Girl at the Front Table," one of my favorites in the book.

Every year, I share this book with my students. My fourth and fifth graders love it and "get" the humor in it. I use it to introduce odes and anti-odes. We brainstorm a list of ideas for our own odes, for example: A pet dog, cat, guinea pig, etc., pepperoni pizza, mom's lasagna, brussel sprouts, broccoli, piano, hockey stick, soccer ball, x-box, play station, Legos, teddy bear, favorite book, favorite book character, etc.

After we've made our collaborative list, they choose a few of the topics that grab them, and sort them into the categories "things I love," and "things I hate. Once they've done this type of thinking, they zoom in one topic and dig deeper into their feelings about the topic. Here's an example:

Then they explore point-of-view. In Love Letters, the poems are sometimes companion poems that explore different view points. So if I'm writing about brussel sprouts, I write about own point-of-view and how much I loathe them. And then, if the brussel sprouts were to write a letter back to me, what would they say? As a poet, I explore both viewpoints.

Finally, my students begin their rough drafts. We spend about two sessions drafting and revising. I make sure to include a mini-lesson about line breaks, because fourth and fifth grade students still tend to write poetry in paragraph form. We do a lot of reading aloud to ourselves using our whisper phones. By the way, this is AWESOME fluency practice! I teach my kiddos that poetry is actually an art form that is meant to be read aloud. So when they choose to read poetry books or their own poems during independent reading time, I let them go hog wild with whisper phones.

I should add that I model each pre-writing, drafting and revision step for my students. Here are two examples of poems that I wrote with them in order to model the process:

Dear Macaroni and Cheese,

I looooove your cheesy goodness.

I am overwhelmed by your

bubbling orangeiness.

I love you more than a dog

loves its bone,

more than a baby

loves its bottle.

Your crispy cracker crumbs,

golden like the summer sun,

send me over the moon.

I will love you forever.

Love,

Your Hungry Fan

(By Ms. Willis)

My students identify comparative statements (simile-like), personification, alliteration, and descriptive language as I write and we discuss. Then, I model an anti-ode. You can also see it below:

Dear Brussel Sprouts,

I loathe your army-green leafy heads

wrapped tightly on my dinner plate.

No bacon or butter

can disguise your nastiness,

your cruciferous metallic taste.

You look like mutant baby heads.

And on dark and lonely nights,

you hold me hostage

at the supper table,

long after the dishes have been done,

and the kitchen

has been cleaned.

Signed with disgust,

I'll-eat-any-other-vegetable-other-than-you Girl

After students have published their poems on the special valentine stationery I provide for them, we use an envelope template and make envelopes for our poems. They address the envelopes. They put their published poems in their envelopes, and we display them for everyone to read.

Valentine's Day can be a tricky holiday in upper elementary. Hormones have begun to rage, friendships are precariously navigated, and feeling are easily hurt. This project is one of my students' favorites, year after year. It's funny, creative, and non-threatening (and Common Core aligned)!

To learn more about using it in your own classroom, simply click on the picture.

If you're looking for more upper elementary valentine resources, you might also check these out. Two of them are free!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Wild-Child-Designs

Friday, January 4, 2019

Zooming In to Read With Wonder

Criss-cross applesauce. That's how I was sitting on the floor of the kindergarten classroom. I had scrunched my 40-something year old self into a pretzel so I could watch kindergartners with chocolate milk mustaches and grass-stained knees eyeball goldfish in science class aquariums. The excitement was palpable.

"Whooaaaaa! Look at that one!"
"He's fast!"
"Can I name mine Stella?"
"I'm gonna name mine Batman!"

Then the scientists got down to business. They whipped out pencils and orange, yellow, black and white crayons. They drew what they saw. They drew arrows to label fins, eyes, gills and tails. Riveted, their kindergarten eyes were glued to every movement in their aquariums.

The room was filled with wonder, and for a brief moment, I thought about moving from fifth grade to kindergarten.

I quickly got over my lapse of reason. Teaching upper elementary is my happy place, but the seductive glory of kindergarten wonder and astonishment turned my head. I ambled back to my own classroom thinking about the importance of wonder in learning and teaching.

As a dinosaur in the teaching world (I prefer to think of myself as an armored triceratops), I've noticed a trend in my readers. My students gravitate toward what I call "hot fudge sundae books." They read the trifecta: Wimpy kids, underpants, the Disney-endorsed fiction. Don't get me wrong. I love the fact that they are reading, but my heart longs for them to independently experience books on a deeper level...books that stay with them like a fabulous meal at a five-star restaurant...books that make them wonder about the world.

That's how I talk to them about reading. They need a balanced diet. I go into the whole nutritional reading metaphor and talk about how dessert books only fill your mind up to a certain point, and then you're hungry again. That approach works, but only on a short-term basis. So I decided I had to do some marketing.

First Chapter Fridays & Visible Thinking

Taking a page from Ron Ritchart's Making Thinking Visible, I massaged the Zoom In thinking routine, and added a dash of the See-Think-Wonder routine.

Every Friday, I bring three chapter books from my classroom library to our meeting area. I facilitate a see-think-wonder about the covers of each book.

What do you see? What do you notice on the cover?

What do you think about what you notice?

What are you wondering about?

Then I read the first chapter of the first book. I stop about 3 to 4 times as I read through the chapter so students can zoom in. The zoom-in thinking routine is usually used with visuals. It allows students to view an image in small chunks. I modified this routine and used it with text. Students were allowed to see/hear small sections of the first chapter, until the whole chapter was revealed. At each stopping point, I ask students to stop and jot their noticings, thoughts, and questions. At the end of the first chapter, they stand up and walk and talk with a thinking partner about the chapter they just heard.

Then I do it again with the second and third books I choose. By the end of the session, they are jockeying in line to get those books, so much so, that we have created wait lists for our First Chapter Friday books.

It's funny how simple some solutions can be, isn't it? As a result of our see-think-wonder, zoom-in routines and First Chapter Fridays, my students are branching out as a readers and thinkers. They're discovering new worlds, and I couldn't be happier.

There are worlds within worlds...Everything in our world is connected by the delicate strands of the web of life..."

-"Ferngully"

Want to explore some visible thinking routines in your classroom? Do your students read a balanced diet? Check out these resources! They could make a difference for your kiddos, as they did mine!

I'm so lucky and privileged to be part of a phenomenal group of upper elementary bloggers. You won't want to miss out on their posts about wonder and curiosity this month! Visit them below!

"Writing Riddles" for Mini-Research in Science | Tarheelstate Teacher

3 Ways to Strengthen Student Questioning During Reading | Think Grow Giggle

Modifying Math Word Problems to Encourage Curiosity | Mix and Math

Wonder Walls & STEM Challenges | Kerry Tracy

Word Wonders: Collecting Multisyllabic Words | Reading by Heart

Using Visible Thinking to Read With Wonder | Wild Child's Mossy Oak Musings

Stimulating Curiosity through Questioning | The Owl Teacher

Inspiring Curiosity through Technology | Love Learning

Mathematicians Inspire Wonder & Curiosity | Tried and True Teaching Tools

Taking KWL Charts Up a Notch | Elementary Inquiry

Curiosity in the Classroom: Five Steps to Engagement and Creativity | Mikey D Teach

Saturday, April 7, 2018

Grammar Rocks! Vocals - 31 mp3’s

By: Laurie Fyke @ Primarily Learning

Kindergarten – Grade 2

Grammar Rocks! Vocals - 31 mp3’s

mp3's /Vocals

GRAMMAR ROCKS! – 31mp3's

This zipped file contains:

· Grammar Rocks! (31 mp3’s)

You and your students will be tapping your toes and singing along to the garage-band beat of the music with John Navarroli! You may want to add the Grammar Songs! - Classroom Charts.

What a great way for children to learn about our language, improve sentence structure, story-telling and writing skills. They are an amazing addition to any grammar program and work well with Jolly Grammar! Pick the songs you want to use from Kindergarten to Grade 3!

As the students are learning to sing these snappy tunes you may find yourself repeating them several times. Before you know it, the children will be singing them as they line up, or during play... learning effortlessly!

A fantastic resource for: Students, Reading Specialists, ESL, Special Education Classes, Resource Staff, Classroom Teachers, Homeschoolers, and Parents.

…if you are anything like me, you will be singing these songs over and over… even in the car!

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The 31 areas of Grammar that are explored include:

· Sentence Song

· Proper Nouns Song

· Common Nouns Song

· Alphabetical Order Song

· “a” or “an” Song

· Plurals Song

· Pronouns Song

· Verbs Song

· Regular Past Tense Song – Verbs

· Conjugated Verbs: Present Tense Song

· Conjugated Verbs: Past Tense Song

· Conjugated Verbs: Future Tense Song

· Conjugated Verbs: Irregular Verb “to be” / Simple Present Tense Song

· Conjugated Verbs: Irregular Verb “to be” / Simple Past Tense Song

· Conjugated Verbs: Past Tense / “Tricky Past” Song

· Adjectives Song

· Compound Words Song

· Speech Marks Song

· Synonyms that Rock!

· Possessive Adjectives Song

· Adverbs Song

· Antonym Song

· Question Rap

· Commas in a List Song

· Commas in Speech Song

· Exclamation Mark Song

· Homonym Song

· Conjunctions Song

· Prefix, Suffix, Comparative, Superlative Song

· Contractions Song

· Prepositions Song

That’s 31 Mini-lessons in Grammar!

Thank you for visiting my store!

Have a great day!

Laurie @

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You might like:

Grammar Rocks! Classroom Charts	SASSOON Font
Grammar Rocks! Teacher’s Handbook	SASSOON Font
Grammar Rocks! – Mega- BUNDLE	SASSOON Font

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