2 Minute Pumpkin Craft

Do you need a quick fall craft for the classroom? How about a cute Venn diagram that you can hang up after your students fill it out?  I wanted to compare an informational and fiction pumpkin book with one another and this is what I came up with.

Steps:
1.  Cut three circles per student out or have them cut it out.  I love my circle cutter.  I bought it a while back for volunteer work that I was doing and it was a great $10 investment. I can cut a class set in under 5 minutes.
2.  Have students glue the circles together as seen in the picture.
3.  Students should cut out leaves and a stem and glue onto the pumpkin.

Letter Clip Word Building

Need an easy to make word work station that won't break the bank? Here's an idea for you.

You'll need:

Wooden Letters

Clothes Pins

3 Rulers

Storage Tub

Clipboard

I bought the letters and clothes pins from Walmart for $3.  I already had the rulers, clipboard and storage tub.  If you don't want to use wooden letters you could save a $1 by printing and laminating letters, but they won't last as long.

Step #1 Paint the letters ( I chose to keep my vowels a different color )

Step #2 Hot glue the letters to the clips.

Step #3 Clip the alphabet to the rulers.  For younger grades you may want to write the letter on the ruler so that students know where to put them back.

Quick, simple and cheap!  Check the picture out at the bottom to see how I store them.

Click below for another DIY word work station.

Cause and Effect - ELA Lesson Plans #5

Hi everyone! I'm so sorry for missing the last two weeks.  We had a horrible hurricane and I couldn't post my lesson outlines.  The good news is that I'm back, and I may say this all the time, but next week is going to be so much fun!! I'm a huge proponent of engaging lessons that meet the student's needs while helping them to grow as learners. I'm also a sucker for thematic lesson plans and next week is a must for my students - Apple Week.  Don't you find great joy in teaching fun topics?

Before we start talking shared reading, let me tell you about a couple of activities that we'll be doing. We will be sampling yummy crockpot applesauce.  Of course I don't have the time to make it from scratch so I use jarred applesauce and warm it before the students arrive.  They have never figured it out and I hope you don't tell them!  We'll sample different varieties of apples and graph our favorites. We'll sample some apple candy and for incentives I'll pass out Apple Jacks.  We'll also have a basket full of fun apple books.

The standard that we will be learning is a little more challenging than others, but still very engaging and interesting to students.  We'll be taking a look at how events can connect through history and science.  In order to do this, we'll look at John Chapman's life.  The students will determine what each event causes later in John's lifetime.  For example, it is believed that many apple orchards exist because of John's work.  Without his travels we would not have had so many crabapples.  We'll also be taking a look at how apples can add nutrition to our diets, the pollination process and the apple lifecycle.  Just think of a time line and lifecycle wheel.

Once again writing will be an extension of our shared reading plans.  Each day we'll be writing an informative piece on an apple page.  When the students are done they we have an awesome apple book.  Just look at it below!

I am super excited to give my students independent workstation materials that couple so well with our shared reading and writing.  These centers will center around the five core components of reading:  phonics, phonemes, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.  I've spent a lot of time trying to create materials that work for each student, are engaging, purposeful and self explanatory.    Thank goodness I finally figured it out.  Click on the image below to find the unit.

To find the other materials that I used in these lesson outlines, click on the links below.

Apple Bellwork Freebie

Johnny Appleseed Reading Passages

Informational Apple Reading Passages and Task Cards

Apple Partner Pair Cards With Engagement Questions

To visit the first of my series of lesson outlines click here.

You can find my lesson plan pages at A Modern Teacher.

Super Supplies - Classroom Incentive That Works All Year

Would you like to use an easy incentive in the classroom that lasts for years? If so, super supplies are for you. Super supplies are a collection of special supplies that your students earn to use for the day. 

This caddy has smelly markers, smelly crayons, twist colored pencils, colored pens and mechanical pencils. The caddy itself was a beer caddy that I found on clearance at Target for $1. I painted it, took the bottle opener off and added vinyl with my Cricut. The supplies in my super supply  caddies usually last about three years so they're worth it.

Students in my classroom can purchase the super supply caddy with Dojo points. In the past I've used classroom dollars and tickets. Whatever your behavior incentive plan, set up a way for them to earn a day with the supplies. If you have any questions please leave them below!

Inferring - ELA Lesson Plans #4

Last week's lesson plans were super exciting! The kids worked together in order to learn how to summarize the main topic and key details of a text in writing. They were too busy having fun learning about zoo animals to notice how much learning they were doing.  This week we are moving away from informational text and into fiction.  

The first day of the week will be dedicated to learning to love reading.  Every nine weeks I host a Book Tasting.  I use a unit from Joanne Miller on Teachers Pay Teachers.  Students get to sample a ton of different genres and books with the objective of making a list of books that they would love to read.  Every teachers dream, right?  After the Book Tasting we will move into one of my favorite standards which is inferencing.  Students will use their questioning strategies along with finding key details in order to have fun inferring character traits, settings and other details in a text.

Students always love inferencing work stations.  I like to start with simple work stations where students look at pictures and use their schema to figure out what the pictures have in common.  These are my Inferring Bags.  We then move onto fun clues and animal tracks in order to figure out what tracks belong to which animal.  You can find the animal tracks task cards here.  We end the week with an informal assessment using character trait inferencing cards.  I promise it will be another fun filled week of meaningful learning!

My lesson plan templates can be found at A Modern Teacher Lesson Planners.

This week writer's workshop should move pretty smoothly.  Students will learn to make a writing plan and add descriptive adjectives to their writing.

If you want to see where my lesson plans started, click here.
If you would like to see how I set up my independent work stations for the ELA block, click here.  I would love to have you sign up for my newsletter and receive more ELA information and freebies. If you didn't get a pop up, leave a comment with your email or click on my email button and I'll add you to the list.