Easy Parts of Speech Program

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Squarehead Teachers

Parts of speech can be pretty lame to teach (and hard to teach) if you don’t have a good, painless way to do it a little at a time. Here’s what one school does:

Each part of speech is assigned a color (adjectives are brown, nouns are blue, etc.)
Each classroom has the same posters up (so there’s consistency as the kids move through the grades).
Teachers use sticky tabs to add examples of the part of speech to the poster.
The class diagrams a sentence on the board by moving magnets (foam squares with a magnet on the back) above the words to identify them.
Kids record these sentences and identify parts of speech in their literacy notebooks.

Parts of speech posters.

Parts of speech posters.

Literacy journal page

Magnets for diagramming sentences on the board.

Flower Paragraph Planner/Graphic Organizer

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Squarehead Teachers

Here’s a paragraph writing planner that will help your students understand the parts of a paragraph. After they fill in the flower side, have them write their rough draft paragraph using the provided lines. Often I find lots of cute graphic organizers for kids, but kids don’t quite understand how to go from the cute picture to a paragraph of sentences. So this one’s very simple: plan and then write downs the ideas on the flower (from the top to the bottom) and they’ll have a complete paragraph. Click here for the PDF: Flower Paragraph Planner Enjoy!

Rotating Literacy Centers

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Squarehead Teachers

With an increase in class sizes, it’s getting harder and harder for teachers to have extra space for group work during centers. One teacher has the desks grouped in clusters of 4 and rotates the center each day. Each center is in a plastic shoe box and the kids take a different shoe box depending on the day of the week.

She places the the entire class set of copies, materials, etc. in the box at the beginning of the week (which saves lots of time). The directions for the center are on colored paper in a plastic page protector (this gives her the opportunity to switch out the activity as needed without the hassle of laminating). She also puts a sample of the worksheet/activity for her very lowest learners to copy if they need to. I agree with her that copying the spelling words a few times a week is much better than sitting doing nothing. The kids know which box to grab, because it’s posted on the wall. The TA (Teacher’s Assistant) is the student who is in charge of getting the box from the counter and returning it with all the materials in it at the end of centers time. Each day, she switches which person gets to be the TA.

Since there are only 5 centers, tables 4 and 5 share the box.

How to Have a Fun Vacation

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Squarehead Teachers

Whenever one of my kids gets back from a vacation, they always want to talk about it. The other day, I used this opportunity to write about what makes a fun vacation. This free writing project worked out well since it allowed everyone to be creative and share vacation stories through their writing. Some kids took this further and made entire essays about a specific vacation and dedicated a whole paragraph to each idea if what made the vacation fun.

Keeping Track of Students’ Writing Progress

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Squarehead Teachers

One of the most important parts of school is teaching kids to monitor their own progress. Here’s one way to help kids keep track of their own writing progress. We made a giant pencil with different sections (one for each step of the writing process) and laminated it. Then we added velcro strips down the side and to little tags that had each student’s classroom number on it. When kids finish one step of the process, they move their number tag down to the next step. This also helps kids know when they can get up from their seats… I’ve also seen charts where kids move a numbered popsicle stick from pocket to pocket to indicate progress through the writing steps. How have you helped your students keep track of their writing progress?

Finish the Alien (Writing/Drawing Project)

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Squarehead Teachers

Kids love aliens. I catch kids drawing them all the time when they’re supposed to be doing something else. So why not turn the idea around and make it an assignment to doodle an alien… and write about it! This writing project could turn into a story, a persuasive essay (convince your parents to let an alien stay at your house, etc…), a poem, etc. Do this activity as a fast finisher, as a seat work assignment (10 times!), or give different versions to different kids in your class so there’s even more variety!

Click here to download the PDF set: Finish the Alien pages – complete set

Finish the alien 2 Finish the Alien 3 Finish the Alien 4 Finish the Alien 6 Finish the Alien 7

Click here to download the PDF set: Finish the Alien pages – complete set

Finish the Alien 8 Finish the Alien 9 Finish the Alien 10 Finish the Alien 11

Finish the Alien 1 Click here to download the PDF set: Finish the Alien pages – complete set

Musicians To Know (upper grade grammar practice series)

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Squarehead Teachers

Teachers today are expected to teach EVERYTHING!

But there’s just not enough time! As money for fine arts dwindles, kids are getting less and less music in school. I could quote any of a million studies that show music helps with academics and character development, but I won’t. Instead, I present my “Musicians To Know” series. It’s 10 single-page grammar practice activities that teach kids about the most influential musicians of all time. The activities involve identifying parts of speech, prepositional phrases, dependent clauses, using a dictionary and thesaurus, etc. There’s even a little simple math thrown in. Appropriate for 5th grade and up is my guess, but I don’t know your class, so you be the judge.

Musicians to Know grammar series PDF

Information from classicsforkids.com, makingmusicfun.net, and KA Piano Studios.

Halloween Writing Activity: How To Get Lots of Halloween Candy

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Squarehead Teachers

The point of Halloween is to get tons of candy… or at least that’s what my kids think. So here’s a writing project (that you could use to practice sequencing, transitions, or standard paragraph structure) to tie in kids plans for scoring loads of candy! Some of my kids have it figured out! They say to bring a little kid with you, preferably one who’s really adorable. They also told me to smile really big, so people want to give you more. Anyway, see what your kids come up with! Fun free Halloween writing project: How to get lots of Halloween Candy PDF Enjoy!