Glow Day Reading Reward

We are big fans of flashlight Friday!  Typically speaking if my students stay engaged in their reading work and work silently during silent reading time, we get to switch things up by reading with flashlight on Fridays.  We get the flashlights from our science kits.  Students who don't meet the criteria go to a neighboring classroom to read while we use the flashlights.  I love Flashlight Friday because it's engaging, it's free and students get excited about reading! What's not to love?

Even better than Flashlight Reading is Glow Day Reading! A few times a year we set reading goals.  If students make those goals we have an extra special Friday with glow sticks.  For Glow Day I bring in a couple of my camping lanterns too.  We also use our flashlights.  Students can use the sticks as fluency trackers, light sources or just for fun while they read!  This takes place during our normal reading block so no extra time is used.  Students work so hard to earn this day.  It's engaging and the best part is students are so excited to read! I buy the glow sticks at the dollar store.  It usually costs me just over $3.  If you haven't figured out by now, my plan is usually to engage students, help them learn to their full potential and save as much money as possible.  Feel free to email me at amylabrasciano@yahoo.com if you have any questions!

How To Save Money On Your Classroom Library or Mentor Texts

Who doesn't like saving money? Every summer I sit down with my wishlist at the computer and add a few titles to my mentor text collection. I do this by searching for used books on Amazon.  Watch the video below to see my process.

ELA Lesson Plans #1

Hi everyone! I've decided to share my lesson plan outlines with everyone each week or at least as often as I can.  If you aren't signed up for my newsletter, please sign up now.  I'll send the lesson plans and free resources out each month for you to have.  If my newsletter opt-in doesn't pop up for you, just email me and I'll add you to the list.  My hope is that we can collaborate and make the best learning experience possible for students.  You will definitely find lesson ideas and outlines in these series of posts.  You will not find detailed plans in these posts, but you will find links to my detailed units in my TPT store.  The following lesson plan templates are from A Modern Teacher.

Just like every teacher at back to school time I'm spinning my wheels and working through my exhaustion to get my plans up, going and best suited for students.  Please be patient with me.  Below you will find a very rough draft of my yearly plans.  As the next month goes by I will be updating these outlines and replacing them.

The first two weeks of my lesson plans are short.  My main focus is building a classroom culture with students and going over procedures with students that will set them up for success.  In my lesson outlines you will see T for teacher and Ss for students.

 

Grizzly Bear Unit

Superhero vs. Villain Character Education

Print and Teach Phonics Games

Mini ELA Anchor Charts for students

Asking and Answering Questions: Differentiated Panda Passages

The first week of writing is most successful when procedures are created to set students up for success.  My main focus is on teaching students proper penmanship and a love for writing.  Youtube has a ton of videos that you can use to walk students through handwriting instruction.

Free Handwriting YouTube Tutorial

All About Dinosaurs In The Classroom

If you want to have the happiest students ever, teach them all about dinosaurs! They absolutely love it.  When I first started teaching I was very much by the books and did exactly what the district told me to do.  As I became better at my craft I realized that I could teach the standards that the district wanted more thoroughly with engaged students if I used topics that the students wanted. The big bonus is that student behavior is much better when they love what they are learning.  Every year I give an interest survey and every year dinosaurs are on the top for students. In this post I will walk you through a week of learning about dinosaurs.

The very first part of every lesson for me is the engagement piece.  I want to hook the students in so that they are invested in what they learn.  For Dinosaur week I created a control panel and taped it outside of our classroom.  As students walk in I had them press their lunch number in, scan their finger and get their security badge.  They were so excited and this was very little effort for me.

The first lesson's objective was to learn how figure out unknown vocabulary that the students would encounter through independent reading.  We read a dinosaur passage together whole group and circled unknown words.  We walked through the word "fossil" together on a 4-square vocabulary organizer which you can see below.  Before we filled the organizer out, I gave the students salt dough and had them make a fossil.  This hands-on activity allowed them to see first hand what the vocabulary word was.  This helped the students to master the skill of learning unknown words.  Now they're ready to tackle those words on their own.  If you click on the photo above it will take you to another post where you'll learn how to make this salt dough.  As a side note, it takes at least a week to dry the fossils so starting on day one helps.

 On day two we moved into reading about dinosaurs with partners.  Each group was assigned a station with books.  The partner's had to find an unknown word and fill out a 4-square.  At the end of the lesson the partners shared their 4-squares with the class.

Days 3-5 were spent studying different dinosaurs independently.  Each person received a leveled passage about a specific dinosaur, a 4-square and dinosaur writing paper.  The first day they figured out any unknown words and shared them with the class.  Then they moved on to finding important details and writing about their dinosaur in an informational piece.  At the end of the week they shared their writing with the class.  Through this week's lessons they were able to learn a variety of informational standards which included:  main topic, vocabulary, key details and informational writing.  It was a fabulous week.

If you are too busy to create all of the materials including differentiated reading passages that your students need, click below to find my Dinosaur Unit.  Included are 6 different passages on:  dinosaurs, paleontologists, T-Rex, Stegosaurus, Velociraptor, Triceratops and a ton of other resources!!

You may also like partner pairing cards.  These cards get your students up, moving and thinking about the days lessons before they start!

Integrating Social Studies and Bibliotherapy (Character Education) into ELA

Recently I was blessed to present a PD with two wonderful women. One of which is a school counselor and the other is a general education teacher like myself.  We collaborated together to bring our expertise in curriculum to one place so that teachers can integrate their curriculum through a meaningful yet simple way.  I'm including some of the slides from the presentation here along with our explanations so that teachers all over can benefit from our work.

The following slide was written to fit in with our district's guidelines.  If it doesn't work for yours, feel free to disregard.

The above professional development book is awesome for integrating bibliotherapy into the classroom.  Mrs. Gruener has a ton of examples and suggestions for books and lessons in the classroom.

The slides below are different books that we discussed integrating into shared reading for bibliotherapy.

Social Studies is near and dear to my heart.  We didn't include book slides because we had numerous examples in the room.  Below are some of the suggestions that we gave.

Citizenship

ELECTRONICS:  But It’s Just A Game, By Julia Cook

WORRYING AND ANXIETY:  Wilma Jean The Worry Machine, By Julia Cook, Wendell the Worrier, by Jill Donahue

MAKING MISTAKES: The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes, by Mark Pett, Oops! My Bad…A Kids Guide to Making Mistakes, by Tracy Bryan, Beautiful Oops!, Barney Saltzberg

ATTITUDE:  Battitude by Julia Cook

LYING:  Lying Up A Storm by Julia Cook, Superman: Fighting for the Truth, by Donald Lemke and Ethen Beavers

CONFLICT RESOLUTION:  The Recess Queen by Alexis O’Neill

SERVICE: Crash! By Mayra Calvani, Loving Marley by Donald and Sara Hassler and Good News Nelson by Jodi Moore

Clara Barton

Native Americans and their love for the Earth

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

Colonial America

PERSERVANCE: Henry Ford, Thomas Edison

Immigration

EMPATHY:Harvesting Hope: The story of Cesar Chavez by Kathleen Krull, The Whispering Town by Jennifer Elvgren

John Howard Griffin, Patricia Moore, Jane Adams

DIVERSITY, CULTURE AND DIFFERENCES:  Spaghetti In A Hot Dog Bun, by Kimberly Shaw-Peterson, Don’t Laugh At Me, by Steve Sesking, Chocolate Milk Por Favor by Maria Desmandy

Citizenship, American Symbols

RESPECT: Hey Little Ant by Phillip and Hannah Hoose, One by Kathryn Otoshi and Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun: Having the Courage to Be Who You Are by Maria Dismondy

Jane Goodall, Rosa Parks

HONESTY: Sarah’s Little Ghosts by Thiery Robberecht, Ruthie and the (Not So) Teeny, Tiny Lie by Laura Rankin,

Abraham Lincoln

ENTHUSIASM: Incredible You! and Unstoppable Me! By Dr. Wayne Dryer

Bessie Coleman, Mae Jemison

Economics

RESPONSIBILITY: Squawking Matilda by Lisa Horstman

Community Helpers

Government

OBEDIENCE: What if Everybody Did That? By Ellen Javernick

Service Dogs

ENCOURAGEMENT: Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes and Go Away Worries! by Michelle White.

Nelson Mandela

SELF-DISCIPLINE: Verdi by Janell Cannon, Big Anthony and the Magic Ring by Tomie dePaola, The Stonecutter by Gerald McDermott, Yertle the Turtle, Bartholomew and the Oobleck and Gertrude McFuzz by Dr. Seuss

Frederick Douglas, Helen Keller, Temple Grandin