Kids often need reminders to use evidence and support from the text when explaining or writing about a piece of text. Here’s a free printable poster for your classroom (near your guided reading table?) to remind kids to use textual evidence! Click here for the PDF: Show the Evidence Poster
When I first started teaching, I didn’t know what to call each reading group. Although students are grouped by reading level, you can’t name them with numbers or letters (or anything that indicates one’s higher or lower than another, even though students will figure it out eventually). So I chose animals our school had die-cuts for. But I wish I had heard of this idea before I named the groups!
One Arizona teacher names her groups after the various desert cactus plants in her region. She teaches the kids how to pronounce them and has a picture on the wall next to the name, so the kids will become more educated about their region! So smart!! Here are her posters of the cactus reading group pictures. This is a great way to sneak a little extra learning into your classroom.
Anchor charts are a staple in any elementary school classroom. Here are some truly inspired ones:
Group work expectations anchor chart
Ways to compare fractions anchor chart
Owls are pretty trendy these days. So when I saw a cute owl-shaped note pad at the dollar store, I just had to buy it (with plans to work it into my classroom somehow). Here’s the poster I came up with (pretty proud of my DIY project!):
Our classroom rule is “no one has the right to interfere with the learning, safety or well being of others.” Each student will sign the poster and we’ll put it up on the wall so everyone will remember our classroom behavior expectations.
This language arts anchor chart seems so easy, yet so effective in displaying the differences between fiction and nonfiction. The teacher even included a picture of fiction vs. nonfiction to help younger learners the two. It could be a good assignment to have each student create a personal anchor chart like this, especially using pictures from old magazines, etc.
Bio Poems can be written by students to describe the lives of real people as creative writing exercise, or fictional characters to demonstrate reading comprehension. Bio Poems could even be written about inanimate objects. There are a variety of formulas for writing a bio poem. Here are 2 of the most common formulas:
Your name
Child of…
Who loves…
Who hates…
Who wants to go to…
Who wishes he/she could’ve met…
Who is scared of…
Who dreams of…
Who is determined to…
Who values…
Who is proud of…
Who graduated from…
Who lives…
Your name again
First name
Three or four adjectives that describe the person
Important relationship (daughter of . . . , mother of . . . , etc)
Two or three things, people, or ideas that the person loved
Three feelings the person experienced
Three fears the person experienced
Accomplishments (who composed . . . , who discovered . . . , etc.)
Two or three things the person wanted to see happen or wanted to experience
His or her residence
Last name
It’s always fun to share or display the bio poems. One teacher had her students tear pieces of construction paper to create artwork of their face to put up next to the student’s bio poem. You could easily adapt this project to describe historical figures, events, etc. by changing the formula.
I recently saw this in a lower grade classroom. It seemed like a good math poster to have up for use when discussing whether a word problem requires addition or subtraction.
So I decided to make my own free math posters for you to use in your elementary school classroom! Enjoy!
When I saw this idea, I about fell over. It’s such an easy idea, I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before! This teacher used a strip of bulletin board border to cover the frame the window and cover part of the blinds! What a genius idea!
Squarehead Teachers 