Playdough Word Workstation

Looking for an inexpensive word workstation that's ready to go? I found these letters and play dough in a set at Walmart for $6.  The play dough fits perfectly in a pencil box.  The letters also fit perfectly in a pencil box.  This center pairs perfectly with my DIY sound boxes.  Click on the picture below to find the directions for them.

Key Details - ELA Lesson Plans #11

The next two week's of lessons are going to be two of the BEST WEEKS EVER!  The students absolutely love learning about different countries and essentially getting to travel around the world. We will start the unit off during bellwork on the first day by making a suitcase to store our papers in.  You can see an example of the suitcase in the picture below titled "Travel The World".  Each day we will focus on a new standard and a new country in reading.  Students have already encountered each of these standards and will lead their learning in small groups.  Centers will be set up for them that include differentiated text, hands-on images of items from the country, flags, maps and a sight seeing guide.  You'll see examples of these in pictures below.  The unit that I made for these standards contains all print and go materials so there's not a ton of prep.  There will be a written assessment each day in the form of a graphic organizer that students will store in their suitcases.  Each day we will play a folk tale from the country that we get off of youtube for a read aloud.  It's another great way to incorporate more standards while the students stay engaged.  When time permits, students will get to make a craft during bell work from the country of the day.

During writing we will write an informational piece on our country of choice.  Each student will be assigned a different topic to write about.  The topic may include:  food, art, music, practice, clothing and/or beliefs.  We will use this writing during our culminating experience which is a Grade Level Culture Fair.  If you want to see how we run our Culture Fair, click on the second picture of this post.

Click on the picture below for a Sweden freebie.

Click below for a free passage on the U.S.A.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-United-States-Reading-Passages-2166287

Click on the pictures below to find the materials used this week.

You can find my lesson templates over at A Modern Teacher by clicking here.

DIY Sound Boxes

Need a word work center that will last forever for under $5? One of my favorite new DIY crafts for word work is wooden letters.  Walmart has a ton of different ones for $2.50/pack.  They also have the rectangles for about $2.50.  I painted the letters and wooden rectangles in under 15 minutes.  Then I cut out circles on my Cricut to represent sound boxes.  You could draw boxes or write CVC, CVCE, etc.  The letters and sound boxes fit perfectly in a pencil box.  I also store them in a large paper tray from The Container Store when I want to add word lists.  See below for a twist on the idea and a link to another workstation that costs under $5.

If you want to spice up your centers you can find play dough sets with letter stamps for about $6.  The set below came from Walmart and it fits perfectly with my sound boxes.

For you higher students use the blank back of the rectangles.  They can build longer words without boxes.

Click below for another DIY word building workstation.

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.

DIY Classroom Mailbox

Need a mailbox for your students to turn in sweet letters, suggestions or private concerns? I recycled this mailbox which my daughter had for Valentines.  I wish I would have taken a before picture, but it was in a blue and purple Frozen theme.  I used a cheap $1 can of spray paint to paint it black.  The flag was red and I painted it with acrylic paint.  The letters were cut on a Cricut and voila, now students have a place to turn in their thoughts and I stay organized (hopefully).

Social Studies: Native American Projects in the Classroom

If you're like me, teaching social studies is near and dear to your heart.  In this post you will find a few ideas about creating meaningful projects in the classroom to help your students understand some Native American history.  When creating the projects I've kept in mind time, money and skill level.  

Native Americans created pictures on rocks to record their tribal history.  These pictures could be done by drawing, painting or carving into the rock.  The southwestern United States contains the largest concentration of rocks used by Native Americans to record their tribal history.  You might see pictures like buffalo, horses, deer or hunting on these rocks.  


When teaching students about this tradition you could do a couple of projects that are quick and meaningful.  Consider giving your students rocks with a flat surface and asking them to record part of their history on the rock.  That may contain a car for transportation, food or something important to their everyday life.  You could also have them research cave drawing and recreate a picture on the rock and explain it in writing.  The rocks above were drawn on with sharpie marker and it took about 2 minutes.

Animal hides have been used by Native Americans for several purposeful reasons.  They were used for practical reasons like clothing, travel and shelter.   Hides were also used for spiritual reasons like healing the sick and promoting healthy moms.  Some tribes recorded their history on the hides with paintings.

When teaching students about this tradition you could give them brown paper bags, construction paper or dye paper a brown hue.  Have students research the history behind hides and recreate something using the paper as a hide.  The paper above was stained with water and a bit of brown paint in the water. It took 2 minutes to paint it.  You could allow it to dry over night. It took 5 minutes to create the drawings.

The popular dreamcatcher was originally created by the Ojibwe.  It was created to catch everything bad or evil and protect infants.  The dreamcatcher was hung on the infant's cradle or carrier.  Spiritual or sacred items could be used when weaving the web in the dreamcatcher.  Such items might be feathers, beads, bones and hide.

Consider having students research dream catchers and creating one of their own with paper plates, string and other items that you have in the classroom.  The design intricacy could be chosen based on the age of your students.  I numbered the holes for students which allowed them to string it in about 10 minutes.  Click here to find a pattern for the holes and numbers.

Native American jewelry has long been admired for it's beauty and meaning.  This jewelry can be include necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings, pins, belts, etc.  While jewelry is different and specific to each region and tribe, many times designs are borrowed and used across areas.

Some materials used to create necklaces were bone and stone.  Have your students research the significance behind this jewelry and create a necklace of their own.  Consider having your students paint pasta like bones/stones and creating a necklace of their own.  We dropped a little bit of paint in a paper Dixie cup and had students swish the pasta around.  After the paint we laid the pasta out to dry.

If you are in need of reading passages, lessons and materials to teach your students about the different Native American Regions check out the unit below by clicking on the picture.

Find another detailed post about teaching Native American History 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.