Cause and Effect - ELA Lesson Plans #16

 Hi everyone! I hope that your new year is off to a great start! This week is all about penguins and informational text.  I love this time of the year because we can tackle several standards in one week and the students are well on their way to working effectively and independently.  Their third grade teachers will be pleased.  We start the week off by bribing a staff member to deliver a frozen or very cold package that is marked "URGENT".  Inside is a letter and penguin articles.  The letter is from my "good friend" Dr. Hanson who is noticing effects from climate change and wants our class to investigate whether or not penguins could move to a warmer climate.  The students are so excited to not only receive the package, but also to help solve the cute little penguin's problem.  We'll be exploring key details, compare/contrast, connecting events and response to text.  The students will carry their learning over into writing where they research and choose a topic about penguins to write about.  Students who finish their work on time will get to make a penguin cover for their writing.  They love that part.  I'll post pictures below that show some of the activities will have during our independent time.

For the materials that I used this week, click on the picture below.

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.

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