It's About Time, Teachers, for PUNS!

 

Have you ever shared David Lubar's book, PUNISHED! with your learners? (You can find a free edition on Kindle Unlimited.)

This delightful book is a great way to start a study of puns. Then, challenge your upper elementary and middle school learners with these pun task cards:

IT'S ABOUT TIME for TRIADS!

 

If you are not familiar with TRIADS, let me introduce you to your newest addiction. LOL TRIADS combine critical thinking with vocabulary development, while building word relationships. Teach your students to use Bloom’s upper level thinking skills –analysis, synthesis, and evaluation – while having fun!

Here's how TRIADS work: Find a word that can be added to each of the words on the TRIAD. The common word comes before or after each of the 3 words to make a familiar phrase or a compound word. 

For example: the common word for the TRIAD of litter, nap, and black is CAT -- CAT litter, CATnap, and black CAT. You will absolutely love watching your students' "light bulb" moments.

Here's a FREEBIE to let you try them:

If you like love them, as I'm sure you will, I have a plethora of TRIAD task cards ready for you and your learners to enjoy.

My GATE/enrichment students can't get enough of these word relationships. They love them so much, they started creating their own to challenge me!

IT'S ABOUT TIME, TEACHERS, for PUNS!

 

A PUN is a delightful literary device that can inject humor into writing. PUNS provide word play with homophones or homonyms.  

Create a research activity with these task cards. Using print or electronic thesauri and dictionaries, students will hone research skills and build vocabulary. All of the following resources are available in print and digitally on TPT Easel.

TRY THEM BEFORE YOU BUY THEM!

The challenge in this FREE activity is to create a word that sounds similar to BUMBLEBEE and fulfills the clue on the task card.

With these 40 task cards, students are asked to find a word that ends with –ANT and fulfills the clue.

This set of 40 task cards requires your learners to find a word that contains the /bē/ sound, or similar, and fulfills the clue.

Inject some fun into your lessons with these PUN TASK CARDS!

IT'S ABOUT TIME, TEACHERS, for PUMPKINS!

 

                     

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

IT'S ABOUT TIME, TEACHERS, for CREATIVE THINKING CHALLENGES

• Are you looking for weekly challenges to your learners' creative thinking? 
• Would you love it to be a home assignment?
• Would you be thrilled to get a full year of challenges that are print and go?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then you should check out Destination: Imagination via Creative Thinking.

This eclectic collection of activities was created for use in my gifted and talented classrooms. The goal is to promote the 4 traits of gifted children: fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality. But really, what child wouldn't benefit from working on those aspects? I have found these projects works very well with heterogeneous groups and have successfully used them with 1st - 5th graders.

These challenges are also a wonderful home-school connection that directs eager parents to work with their children in a constructive manner. Another benefit is that children learn to share their products with purpose and confidence. 

All of the project assignments are ready to print and send home.  Also included are notes to the teacher to help ensure the success of your students.  These notes are based on years of experience with the challenges.

TRY IT BEFORE YOU BUY IT.   You can get a better sense of what this project offers by checking out this FREE activity that is included in Destination: Imagination via Creative Thinking Vol. 2:

 

IT'S ABOUT TIME for END-of-the-YEAR CRAZINESS!

 

Once May begins, some students think learning ends. You can quell that craziness with activities that are so engaging your students will beg to do them. I'm talking about SQUARE PUZZLERS. These brain teasing puzzles exercise critical thinking & problem solving, build perserverance & stamina, and stimulate the mind.  Similar to Scrambled Squares^TM, these differentiated, logic puzzles must be reconstructed so that the images match on every interior side.

You can try SQUARE PUZZLERS for FREE with this product:

My store is stocked with dozens of SQUARE PUZZLERS and they are all on sale this week. Puzzles are reduced 20% and SQUARE PUZZLERS BUNDLES are discounted 30%. Find all of my SQUARE PUZZLERS here. Following are a few to pique your interest:

Watch this video to see how SQUARE PUZZLERS work:

For students learning sight words, I offer SQUARE PUZZLERS featuring Dolch words for pre-K through 3rd grade.