Spring Fluency Practice

Nothing makes us happier then spring! It's time to brush up on our fluency. In order to do this we make fluency tappers out of spoons. It's quick, easy and my personal favorite, cheap! We use the tapper to tap out poems whole group to different rhythms.  We do repeated readings of the poems throughout the month in order to increase our fluency.  Students use the tappers individually to point to words while they do independent timed readings of poetry.  This keeps the classroom quiet during guided reading.  There are two different insects that we have made.  For one spoon we make a bee.  You can see it on our Poet Tree up top. 

You'll need: paper plates, spoons, yellow paint, black sharpie, glue and wax paper.

1.  For bell work students paint the spoon yellow on the paper plate.  When they are done they paint the whole plate yellow.  We let the spoon dry on top of the plate over night.

2.  The next morning students use black sharpie to draw lines, eyes and a stinger on the bee.

3.  The students cut wings out of wax paper and glue them to the top of the spoon.

4.  Students then cut the plate into a flower shape and add pollen to the middle.

5.  The teacher cuts a small slit in the plate so that the spoon can be stored on the flower.

When we are finished practicing with the tapper, it is put on display in the shape of a Poet Tree.  We place our poems from writing around the tree.  You can see my poetry unit down below.

Ladybug tappers are a personal favorite! They are used the same way as the bees above.

You'll need:  clear spoons, red sharpies, black sharpies

1.  Students color the spoon with the red sharpie during bell work.  I use bell work for a lot of our creative projects that might not please everyone during instructional time.  We allow the spoon to dry over night.

2.  The next morning students use the black sharpie to add the wings, dots and face to their ladybug.  Once it dries they are ready to start having fun while they read!

While we are practicing our fluency in reading, we practice our poetry writing during our writing block.  You can see the unit that I developed by tapping on the picture below.

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.

Halloween - ELA Lesson Plans #10

Every teacher knows that this week has the kids acting a little bonkers.  You'll notice that while my lessons all have a Halloween theme, they would work for classrooms that don't address Halloween with the exception of Big Pumpkin and Happy Haunting.  You could just switch out the titles if you prefer.  I'm super excited that I spent the beginning of the year building up student's reading foundations because we are starting Monday with the entire plot of the story.  Students will get into coding the text with the different parts and even have conversations about the author's point including the lesson/central message.  The fact that they can do this efficiently in a 20-30 period of time is awesome! Tuesday's lessons is all about Mary Shelley who had a rough childhood which she overcame to become an infamous author.  Students will connect events in her life to choices and other events.  In case you don't know, I'm a HUGE Pumpkin Jack fan.  It is a realistic fiction book that follows a boy and his pumpkin through the pumpkin's entire life cycle.  We will put a pumpkin outside the following day and watch it decompose and sprout a pumpkin patch.  If you want to see detailed lessons on Pumpkin Jack visit here.  Thursday and Friday focus on fun, engaging simple text.  Students are not going to be at their finest and I would rather see them accomplish something rather than nothing.

Just like reading, I feel like we've turned a big corner in writing.  We are taking our first standardizes writing assessment and really editing it.  We'll only be focusing on contrasting to start. Once they have mastered certain crafts and structure we will add to the standard with comparing too.

If you are interested in the Frankenstein and Mary Shelley text that I'm using, you can click below to see it in my store.

My lesson plan templates come from A Modern Teacher.  If you want to find the first in my lesson outlines click here.

Author's Purpose - ELA Lesson Plans #9

 Boy is this week going to be fun!!! We are going to take some very difficult standards or level 3 cognitive difficulty standards to be exact  and turn them into a week of hands on engagement.  This week will also kick off a week and a half of monsters, bats and spiders!!!!  Our ultimate goal is to have students understand strategies that will help them to identify the main purpose of a text, including what the author wants to explain.  In order to do this, we will start the week off with a quick fact and opinion lesson.  The students will work as a whole class to sort fact and opinion about a lovable green monster named Harry.  Once they have the hang of it they will work in small groups to synthesize the information and write their own facts and opinions about another lovable monster named Sally (Harry and Sally! lol) The class will come together to wrap up the lesson with a little information about how author's use information and their opinions to write pieces.  The next day will be a tiny detour from monster fun to read a piece on dental health.  While it doesn't stick with the theme, it does a great job of guiding students through the whole standard with a purposeful text and aligned questions.  Don't worry, you'll read below that students will spend time in writing doing awesome monster activities!  We'll finish off the week with bats and spiders.  The students will have to independently show that they understand the standard by writing and opinion piece and explaining it's purpose.

Just for reference, if you don't know I use the letter t for teacher and ss for students in my outlines.  Also, you can get the lesson plan templates that I use from A Modern Teacher.

We are going to read the mentor text How To Catch A Monster on youtube this week.  The students will be working on the writing crafts of vivid verbs and adjectives while writing a narrative.  We'll kick the week off by having the students write a very detailed description of their monster with adjectives.  Each student will then get a neighbor's description where they will have to draw the monster to an exact specification.  The author will use the drawing to make revisions to their piece the next day and the drawing will happen a second time.  Once all of the students have their monster descriptions written, they will write a narrative on how to catch the monster using vivid verbs.  The students will have to have their pieces written and edited by Thursday.  Everyone will take part in an author's share where they will present their piece to their friends.  The best part is that they will have a drawing and a writing piece to hang up for all to see!

 Students who get finished early will be allowed to make a 2 minute bat or spider craft to put on their opinion writing.  Click below to see how easy it is.

If you would go to the first of the lesson outline series click here.

To find this week's resources click below.

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