Famous Americans: Writing Page Download

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Squarehead Teachers

I recently saw this cute worksheet for a unit on Famous Americans. I thought it was very easy and would be great for teaching about main ideas (only including important details from the person’s life) and for reinforcing correct paragraph structure.

Click Famous_American_page PDF for the download.

Compare/Contrast Essay Organizer

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Squarehead Teachers

Compare and contrast essays are one of the most common writing assignments on standardized tests. I found it helpful to have an organizer for my students. Having specific questions that prompt students about what to write in each part was especially helpful for my ESL kids. Here’s the one I used for our social studies unit on world religions (research and compare/contrast 2 world religions):

Click here for the organizer.

Story Maps

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Squarehead Teachers

Story maps help kids learn summarizing, sequencing, and gobs of other reading skills. I used the fabulous old kids’ book, How Fletcher Was Watched, to teach my kids to use story maps.

You could teach sequencing by giving students cards with story events and asking them to put them in the correct order.

You could teach both skills together by having students create the event cards and then give the cards to a partner to put in the correct order.

It would be really easy to do this activity with events in history as a social studies activity also.

Here’s an example…

Lesson Plan: Inventions (& Airplanes)

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Squarehead Teachers

I took a phenomenal class about drama in the classroom. Here’s my lesson plan from the class. It’s about inventions and it’s geared towards upper grades. Enjoy!