Central Message - ELA Lesson Plans #15

Are you ready for winter break yet?Holy moly I sure hope I can make it through the week.  This week's lessons are all about good quality literature from one of my favorite children's authors, Jan Brett.  The texts are sure to engage students and if nothing else, they will have students sitting quietly listening to the story for about 30 minutes.  The lesson plans are broken up by two days at a time to allow for a little chaos to ensue.  This keeps me from losing my mind when I don't get to everything.  We have plenty of Jan Brett's winter books to add in if time allows.  We'll end the week with The Mitten because it's an easier text for students to understand when all they have is winter break on their mind.  My present to parents is reading Home For Christmas and exploring the central message. It teaches students that their parents aren't as bad as they think and home is much better than other alternatives.  Writing will follow the same design as last week and students will explore another holiday.

Author's Point of View - ELA Lesson Plans #14

 How many more weeks do you have before winter break? We have two glorious weeks before we get off for the holidays.  Getting through to the end just may be the biggest test of my teaching skills yet.  This week will be all about thematic days.  Tuesday -Friday I will throw in food to help motivate my students to keep on learning .  We'll have a Cookie Day, Hot Cocoa Day, Candy Cane Day and a Gingerbread Day.  Monday is set aside for fruitcake, but we won't have any food because I spent the weekend loving on my family and not shopping for my class.  Each day we will also have a fun holiday read aloud, Grinch Reader's Theatre fluency time and Grinch sing alongs.  We will perform the reader's theatre, song and various poems at our holiday party.  Writing will look the same as last week, but we'll be writing about holidays around the world.  We are keeping the same format because otherwise kid's attention span wanes and we lose learning time.  Using a high interest topic coupled with a familiar format will keep the kids learning to the end or as long as I can possibly get them to.

We'll also be planting our traditional Candy Seeds.  You can find the seed pack and activities in my Peppermint Day unit by clicking on the picture below.

You can find my lesson plan page outlines from A Modern Teacher.

Arctic Animals - ELA Lesson Plans #13

It's that time of year again.  You know the time where you have a ton on your plate, the kid's lose their minds and all your interim assessments come due.  Yet we still want to make everything in class as magical as possible.  It's because of all of those facts that I make my lessons as engaging, simple and short as possible.  My lessons will be 20 minutes to hold student's attention.  My text will be available in my classroom library or print and teach because I need to keep extra work to a minimum.    Below you will find my December calendar.  Can you believe I've planned a month out?

Each day this week we will be learning about a new arctic animal. I'll have differentiated text for the students and a graphic organizer.  You can see them in the picture below. On Friday students will get to chose an animal of their choice to research and make a poster about.  They'll have a graphic organizer to help guide them when creating the poster. Each lesson is short, meaningful and engaging.  Click on the picture below if you want to see the resource that I'm using.

 

Writing is getting serious. Students have come a long way since the beginning of the year.  Now it's time for some of the students to learn how to structure a paragraph.  We will extend our reading into writing where students will write about an arctic animal of their choice.  We'll make book covers to put the writing in.  I'm using a fabulous resource by More Time 2 Teach.

Each day my students who don't lose Dojo points will get to make a page marker like the ones shown below.  Most of the easier ones take under 10 minutes to create. The first couple of days we will start with simple plain ones.  The students will be able to sell their page markers at our classroom market day with classroom currency.  It's a great way to tie in behavior and social studies.  The how to video came from Red Ted Art on Youtube.  You can link to her account by clicking on the link in my Instagram post.

My lesson plan templates can be found at TPT by A Modern Teacher.

Inexpensive Student Ornament Gift

Are you in need of an expensive student gift? This one cost me $3 for 30 ornaments.  You can personalize them with a vinyl cutter or by hand lettering them with a sharpie.

Materials:  Plastic Poster Board (find at your local craft store), Used Crayons, Sharpener, Sharpie or 2 Sheets of Vinyl, Hot Glue Gun

First you'll need to cut the poster board into your desired shape.  You can use a die cut, scissors or a vinyl cutting machine.  I used my Cricut for these.  Next I used my hot glue gun to melt a circle opening at the top of every circle.  You could also use a sturdy hole punch.

Next I cut the names out of vinyl.  If you don't have a cutter you could hand write them with a sharpie marker.

 Then I sharpened crayons to sprinkle on the back of every circle.  Less is definitely more when it comes to placing the wax on the circle.

 After you place the wax on the circle you'll have to melt them at 120 degrees in the oven for about 2 minutes.  If your circle starts to roll at the edges, place it in your freezer and gently press the center down until it cools flat.

This is the final product. You could tie a ribbon on it or give it with a suction cup.  They make great sun catchers.

I'm giving my students the ornament with this tag.  You can find it for free by selecting the photograph below.

It Will Never Be Enough - My Best Advice For Fellow Teachers

Have you stopped to look around at all the amazing teachers lately? These teachers are killing it. They have kids engaged in learning that's mind-blowing.

If you aren't a teacher let me give you a quick glimpse into our lives to help you understand this post's central message. We have 20+ (give or take a few) kids in our classes.  Each one of these beautiful children comes with their own special set of care instructions.  Each child comes with 0-4 parents and 0-8 grandparents who sometimes want to communicate their thoughts with the teacher about how they could be doing it better.  Some children have a varied set of abilities like throwing desks as far as a discus thrower or throwing themselves on the floor for a marathon tantrum, all while these teachers keep teaching, solve the child's problem and never stop loving that kid who just spit all over them.  Teachers understand that behind every behavior lies a broken child who needs help.  They stay up late at night coming up with the perfect lesson that will support Johnny while helping Jane to flourish.  That amazing teacher will stop by the store at 6:00 a.m. and spend their own money to get the needed materials for today's lesson.  They know what it means to differentiate and move every child in the room through at least a year's growth.  Only to have their district personnel come in the next day for a walk through and rip them apart.  Meanwhile the district isn't upholding their contracts and providing compensation so that the teacher can eat and pay their electric bill.  While they're standing in line the person next to them decides to tell them that they should be thankful because they get summer's off.  Any teacher will tell you that this scenario is common place and not an exaggeration.

As a mentor teacher one of the most frequently asked questions that I get is "What would you like all new teachers to know?"  To that I answer this, "It will never be enough".  You can stay up all night and it will not be recognized.  You can teach your heart out and it will be expected and not appreciated.  You can spend every last dime to provide for your students and you'll be thanked by having your tax credit taken away.  For my fellow teachers, just know that I'm with you.  I've shed the same tears over the same sorrow as you.  I suggest you do what you can in the classroom while living in a way that provides a happy life for you and your family.  In the end it will never be enough in the classroom, but it will be in your home so choose wisely friends.

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Cultures From Around The World - ELA Lesson Plans #12

Here we are in week two of one of the best units EVER! The students are having a great time learning about cultures from around the world, how those cultures affect us, all while incorporating reading, writing and social studies standards together.  This week will not disappoint! All teachers know that learning just before a break can leave students a little less motivated, distracted and it may feel a bit like herding cats.  This is why I up the engagement of my lessons so that students keep on going until the minute they leave on Friday.

We will be diving into comparing and contrasting again on Monday.  The students will have a host of H.O.T questions to guide their thinking.  On Wednesday we will take a break a break during shared reading from cultures and dive into Thanksgiving.  We do not learn about a sugar coated Thanksgiving, rather we learn an age appropriate approximation of the events.  Students will look at the cause/effect relationships between these events in order to connect each event through a timeline.  Students have been discussing and learning about an author's point for weeks now, Thursday will have them reading three passages, determining the purpose and finding evidence to support the different points.

So much going on this week that every minute counts.  Our shared reading lessons will run between 20-30 minutes.  We will have fun read alouds ever day.  (I'll list some of them below for you.). We will also be incorporating fall fun into our guided reading.  Students will continue to write their Sweden pieces to display for their culture fair.  If you are interested in details to any of the extra events that I have listed, please look for links below.  You can find my lesson plan outlines from A Modern Teacher here.

Click below to see what a culture fair is and how to run one.

Here are my read alouds for the week.

Need a freebie for bellwork? Click on the picture below.  Check out last week's lessons for a couple other freebies for a culture fair.

Click below for some of the materials that I'm using this week.