Easy Parts of Speech Program

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.
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Parts of speech posters.

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Parts of speech posters.

 

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Literacy journal page

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Magnets for diagramming sentences on the board.

Flower Paragraph Planner/Graphic Organizer

Flower Paragraph Planner sticker

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!

How to Have a Fun Vacation

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. How to have a fun vacation

Flipped Classrooms 101

Maybe you’ve heard about “flipped classrooms” on the news… maybe you haven’t. Either way, here’s what you need to know about flipped classrooms:

Infographic from Knewton.com

Keeping Track of Students’ Writing Progress

keep track of student writing

 

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?

ABCs of Problem Solving

I recently saw this in a classroom and I thought it was pretty clever. I’m calling it “the ABCs of problem solving” (because calling it “the ABCDEFs of problem solving” sounds lame).

ABCs of problem solving

 

A- Analyze

B- Brainstorm

C- Consider options

D- Decide what to do

E- Evaluate if itworks

F- Figure out another way

What are some fun Spirit Week Days you’ve seen/heard of?

Many schools have a spirit week with themed days like wacky hair day, PJ day, etc. What are some days your school has done or that you’ve heard of?

 

(thanks in advance for your ideas!) 

Finish the Alien (Writing/Drawing Project)

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