IT'S ABOUT TIME, TEACHERS, for PUMPKINS!

 It's pumpkin season! Fill your classroom with pumpkin resources:

PUMPKINOES are domino style math activities perfect for your fall math centers. These pumpkin math games and activities exercise skills ranging from counting to critical thinking; basic operations to HOTS. Pumpkin dominoes are open ended, easily differentiated, and useful for all elementary math classes.

These Latin Squares math puzzles will challenge children's deductive reasoning skills and help them acquire the critical thinking needed to solve Sudoku puzzles.  PUMPKIN SQUARES begin with an easy 3x3 grid appropriate for young learners.  The tasks progress gradually, increasing in difficulty up to a 7x7 grid.  PUMPKIN SQUARES are available in print and digitally on TPT Easel.

HOW MANY WAYS? Fall Edition is an open-ended, math bulletin board that is perfect computation practice for any elementary classroom.  Challenge your students' critical thinking and fluency to determine how many ways they can reach the target number by combining the values on the pumpkins.  The task is similar to Boogle(TM) for numbers.  Post the operation symbols and the target number you choose to easily differentiate the task.

HALLOWEEN SQUARE PUZZLERS are fun, yet challenging brain teaser puzzles for kids. They exercise critical thinking & problem solving, build perseverance & stamina, and stimulate the brain while disguising it all as fun. Similar to Scrambled Squares(TM), these printable, differentiated, logic puzzles must be reconstructed so the images match on every interior side. Use them for centers, stations, rotations, fast finishers, enrichment, GATE, and/or a class reward. Adored by all ages.

While the theme of this product is Halloween, the graphics have been chosen carefully to preclude concerns about frightening and/or evil visuals. The icons used are owls, pumpkins (no Jack-o'-lanterns), candy corn, and bats. All objects are presented in rainbow colors, adding to the light and happy feel of the puzzles.

Teacher Treats

It's About Time for Hallowe'en, Teachers!

And, this weekend, all the treats are for you!

No tricks; these 5 products are FREE this weekend, 10/27 - 10/29.

I hope you will take a moment to leave TPT feedback.  It benefits you and me.

It's Pumpkin Time!

It's the pumpkin time of year!

So I decided to get in on the fun!  This weekend, 9/29 - 10/1/17, I'm offering my pumpkin resources for FREE!

All of these resources include differentiation so that they are appropriate for all elementary grades.  

I hope you enjoy them.  Please take a moment to leave feedback on TpT.  Thank you.

Columbus Day Poem

I have a poem to share with you, as well as some possibilities for teaching with it.

This poem and its possibilities are from my Poetry Possibilities - Fall Edition.  There are 25 more poems and custom designed possibilities for each one in the unit.

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Clip Chart + Brag Tags = Happy Class

Do you use a behavior clip chart in your classroom? I have just personalized my behavior plan with a clip chart and brag tags to compliment my Forest Friends classroom theme. And I just have to share it with you.

All of the students will start each day on the middle sign, "On the right trail." Each one will have a Forest Ranger badge to clip to that sign.   

Then, depending on the choices they make, their badges may move. Those making good choices will move up to "Caught being good." Continuing to make good choices can elevate them to "Flying high" or even "Soaring with the eagles."

Conversely, those who make poor choices may move down to "Taking the wrong path." More poor choices will earn them a spot on "Danger Ahead! Turn Around!"  Finally, they may find themselves "Lost in the woods," and in need of parent contact to find their way back.  

Behavior clip charts are sooooo much better than treasure chests, in my opinion.  Not only does a chart save me from buying all that loot, but it moves the students closer to finding intrinsic motivation.

Couple the behavior chart with brag tags, and you will have a good chance of achieving classroom bliss!

I'll talk about brag tags in my next post. In the meantime, you may want to check out my clip chart for your own classroom.

Other forest friends products you may like:

Poetry for Fall & What to do with It

Poetry is a great tool for teaching more than rhymes, rhythm, and poetic devices. It can be a vehicle for exploring a host of different language arts topics. For example, the following poem is replete with contractions. 

So, after presenting the poem to your class, conduct a lesson on contractions. This could be a whole group lesson or a small group effort, depending on the ages and needs of your students. It could also be a literacy center activity with individual copies for each student and the directive to highlight the contractions. Then the task could require pupils to write the 2 component words for each contraction on the back of the poem or another sheet of paper.

Quotation marks are also prevalent in this poem. Hence, you could use this poem to study quotation marks, speaker tags, and the various rules that quotation marks invoke in reading and writing. This can be especially effective if you engage your students in choral readings of the poem. 

Assign one student to read all of the narration and speaker tags, while the remaining children chime in with the quotations. You will love the focus this generates.  

In my experience, children, especially reluctant readers, find poetry less threatening to read than prose. Perhaps it's due to the expansive white space.  Maybe it's the rhyme and rhythm (when present) that aids predictability and fluency. Whatever the reason, the light that shines in my Title I students' eyes when I bring out a poem is undeniable.  And that is enough to cause me to use poetry everyday.

If you are interested in more ideas for using poetry to teach myriad topics, check out my Poetry Possibilities products. They provide the poetry and possibilities for lessons.

 

 

Autumn Themed Centers

Autumn themed centers for your classroom -- check them out.  

Ghosts Say, "Boo!" is a literacy center for primary classrooms. In this activity students will focus on 2 sounds of /o/:  ō and ōō.

There are 2 ghost work mats: 1 labeled "Ghosts," and the other labeled "Boo!" Students sort the 20 word/picture cards by matching the vowel sounds to the 2 ghosts.  This center includes a recording sheet and labels for your center folder.

Bats & Bridges Literacy Center also challenges students to work with vowel sounds; long and short /a/. Students will sort the bat word cards and fly them to the proper bridge for roosting.  A recording sheet is included, as are labels for your center folder.

This center activity is part of my thematic unit, Hanging Out with Stellaluna.  It is now available as a stand-alone product for the first time.

You get to combine 2 subjects in 1 center when you use Scrattle: Halloween Edition.  This wildly popular activity challenges your students to exercise their verbal fluency by making words out of the letters provided on candy corn pieces. Each letter has a numeric value, as in Scrabble(TM).  As your students record their words, they compute the value of each of them.

Then they challenge a friend at the center to compare their numbers.  In the process, your students will practice using >, <, and =. The winner of this word battle is the 1 with the most >s.  (Scrattle gets its name from Scrabble + battle.)

Not only does Scrattle give your students practice with ELA and math, but it comes with 3 different recording sheets: 1 using addition only, 1 requiring multiplication, and 1 employing mixed operations. Thus, you can readily differentiate your instruction. Moreover, this center is CCSS aligned. And better yet, it's FREE! Even better, there are multiple editions for several holidays and they, too, are FREE!

John Hughes, author of An Educator's Life blogspot, is hosting a Fall-Tastic Activities and Resouces linky party.  You are sure to find some great activities there.

Until next time...