IT'S ABOUT TIME for BTS POETRY!

 

As you plan for the new school year, consider incorporating poetry into your daily lessons.  The potential for skills learned through poetry is nearly limitless.

Capitalize on the excitement of new school supplies to introduce this poem.  Then select from the Poetry Possibilities (lesson suggestions) the activities to employ.  This poem, for example, could be used to introduce/review adjectives and adverbs.  Challenge your learners to write an acrostic poem about their new pencils.  This poem is also great for studying punctuation.  Lots of possibilities here!

One of my favorite BTS activities is creating concrete poems about our new supplies.  These poems can quickly fill a blank bulletin board while celebrating your poets' efforts.

Use this poem to introduce similies.  Students can then write an acrostic poem about themselves that incorporates similies.  You'll learn a lot about your pupils.

Back to School Poetry Possibilities offers a variety of poems and a plethora of lessons.  Each poem has a custom designed teaching point about poetic elements and forms.  The Possibilities are tailor-made skills lessons, activities, and poetry writing prompts.  The range of reading levels makes this unit appropriate to both primary and intermediate level classes.  It also offers differentiated instruction to accommodate students reading above or below grade level.  AND, this week this poetry unit is discounted 20%.

COMPUTATION RIDDLES

 

The first quarter of the school year invokes review as students and teachers dust away the cobwebs. Make review more fun with COMPUTATION RIDDLES.   

Start the year off with SCHOOL RIDDLES. 

These math computation task cards give your 2nd and 3rd grade students addition within 100 practice while solving riddles about school.

To begin, they solve a set of addition problems.  Then use those sums to decode the answers to the riddles.

Stock your math center with the 20 task cards.  Also available for digital learning on TPT Easel.

Post them around the classroom for RIDDLES AROUND THE ROOM. Travelling around the room allows movement that reduces restlessness and improves learning.

Use them for math journal prompts. Just print the cards in grayscale.

Provide more review fun with:

There are holiday riddles as well, allowing you to provide continuous practice throughout the academic year.

If your learners love COMPUTATION RIDDLES, as I'm sure they will, check out the bundle.  Varied grade levels and operations are included.  And, the bundle is 1/2 price through Sat., 9/10/22.

Start the School Year on the Right Foot

 

Start the new school year off on the right foot with one sole-full day of activities.

This thematic unit is the perfect way to introduce your learners to each other, classroom  procedures, expectations, as well as multiple curricular disciplines.

Kick off  the new school year by having a SNEAKER DAY!  Invite your students to wear sneakers to school, then fill the day with math, writing, art, and get acquainted activities.

Send a note home to alert parents to their child's need to wear sneakers.

Then use those sneakers for math:

• collect data and create graphs

• measurement

• Venn diagrams

• estimation 

• counting and computation

• and much more!

Sneak in some ELA:

• descriptive words

• writing center with prompts

• and more!

Step up to some arts and crafts:

• sole-full rubbings

• shoestring painting

• and more!

You will love sneaking into a new year!

You may also like:

POETRY - MY PASSION!

POETRY - MY PASSION!  

If you follow my blog, you know that I'm passionate about poetry.  I love writing instructional poetry and I love teaching WITH poetry.  Teaching WITH poetry does not mean specifically teaching "poetry," as in figurative language, iambic pentameter, sonnets, etc.  While I do teach those things when appropriate, I use poetry to teach reading skills, science, math, social studies, and a whole lot more.  To that end, I have a line of products called POETRY POSSIBILITIES.

I find it rewarding to take a poem and parse it for all the lessons hiding inside it.  Here's a sample to illustrate what POETRY POSSIBILITIES are all about --

This poem is from Poetry Possibilities for Animal Poems.

Are you skeptical about teaching math with poems?  Check out this poem from Back to School Poetry Possibilities and its potential math lessons:

Many of the possibilities are completely adaptable to distance learning.

POETRY POSSIBILITIES are well received by teachers.  

I'm confident you'll like them, too!

BACK TO SCHOOL POETRY UNIT

Start the new school year with these fun poems and the many POSSIBILITIES for using them in your classroom. From allaying 1st day jitters to establishing rules & procedures for the year, these poems will get your students off to a great start!

Included are 12 poems.  Each poem has a page of possibilities for using it in classroom instruction.  This unit is NOT just about poetry!  It includes suggestions for reading, writing, & math.  The reading range is broad, making it appropriate to primary and intermediate grades, and differentiation is a snap.  It is also CCSS aligned.

You may also like these back to school resources:

It's about time, teachers, ... 

As a new school year dawns, young children, parents, and teachers are faced with a dilemma: saying goodbye.  Every parent has encountered the tears and heart-wrenching pleas.  Every teacher of young children has ached for the children and parents.  (Separation anxiety works both ways; parents cry, too.)  And, as a teacher with many years of experience in early childhood education, I would like to offer a suggestion for easing this transition...

...establish a transition tradition.

Young children thrive on routine.  They find comfort in being able to predict the events of the day.  They find reassurance in repetitive, positive procedures.  Thus, teachers can help ease these transitions by encouraging parents and children to establish a parting protocol. One transition tool is teaching children and care-givers to give a quick, fun, light-hearted good-bye.

Most people are familiar with these:

In my quest to establish a forest friends' classroom, I challenged myself to create such sayings using forest animals.  Here's a sampling:

At our parent information meeting before school starts, I plan to have this set of posters displayed near the door.  Drawing the parents' attention to them, I will encourage them, along with their children, to select a pair of favorite phrases for their farewells. In my experience, the tearful transitions will quickly give way to smiling sendoffs.

If you are creating a forest friends' classroom, you may like these products: