IT'S ABOUT TIME, TEACHERS, for ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

Preparing for any holiday always starts with some read-alouds.  These are a few of my favorite books for St. Patrick's Day. 

Then I love to extend the learning with a thematic unit, MAD ABOUT MARCH. Just look at some of the activities it includes:

There is much more to this unit.  Try it!

STEP RIGHT UP to a Great Start to the School Year!

 

It's about time, teachers, to STEP RIGHT UP  to some terrific ideas for the new school year.

This is a thematic unit to immerse your class in a study of feet, socks, & shoes.  It's the perfect next step to extend the learning from SNEAK INTO A NEW SCHOOL YEAR, a sole-full day of sneaker  activities for the beginning of school. (You can read more about sneaker day here.)

Best suited to primary classes, STEP RIGHT UP! combines ELA, math, and Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS).

LANGUAGE ARTS:

• 
  verbal fluency exercise

• 
  vocabulary printables

• Compare Your Pairs partner writing activity
• Tercet poem writing activity

MATH

• Venn diagrams
• pattern task cards 
• sorting activities
• printables
• math journal prompts
• and more!

H.O.T.S.

• 
  word evolution puzzles
  
• algebraic logic puzzles

Step up to some great learning!

You may also like these foot related resources:

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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!

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WRITING CENTER GRAFFITI WALL

It's about time, teachers,... that I admit I am a word collector. I {heart} words. I {heart} interesting phrases. Although I do not feel a need for an intervention, I will (gulp) admit that as a child I used to read the dictionary.  

This love affair with words has continued throughout my adult life and I strive to share my passion with my students. That is what led me to create a graffiti wall in my writing center.  

My graffiti wall is simply a bulletin board dedicated to posts of interesting words and phrases. Both the students and I can write words on strips of paper and post them on the board. At the beginning of the year, I demonstrate this by extracting words and phrases from our read-alouds to post on the board. Before long, my students are pointing out the words they find interesting. I invite them to copy them and post them on our graffiti wall. Students who "catch my fever" even bring phrases in from home.

I've forged an alliance with the computer teacher to further spur our graffiti. When he introduces fonts to my class, he uses some of our graffiti wall words. Using the SmartBoard, he gives our words "life" by applying cool fonts to them. You should hear the oo-s and ah-s! Naturally, there is a marked increase in graffiti after that lesson!  

As a corollary to our graffiti wall, I have a "tired words" board. We put overworked words to bed and list alternatives on the foot board. I use a blackline picture, allowing a student to color and cut it out before adding it to the  board.

This, too, gains momentum over time. Before the year is over, we have a dormitory of beds with tired words!  

Both of these boards have improved my students' writing markedly. They are easy to accomplish and the payoff is huge. Try it. You'll like it.

Sneak into a New School Year -- Pt. 5

It's about time, teachers... to finish up Sneaker Day.

It's never too early to start your class writing stories.  For Sneaker Day, bring in an old, worn out, holey pair of sneakers.  Write a story as a whole class, giving the sneakers a history from the day they were made until today. 

Older and/or more capable students could write a chapter a day, giving you, the teacher, the opportunity to model writing traits and to "think out loud" as you record their ideas. Younger and/or less capable students could write a simple story about who wore the sneakers, where they have traveled, how the sneakers got their holes, etc.  Again, acting as the recorder, the teacher should model her thinking as she write the children's ideas.

Another activity for Sneaker Day is to give each child a blank sneaker outline.

Google doc

Ask them to design a new sneaker that is especially for school children.  What would they include in their special sneaker?  A calculator?  A ruler?  A computer?  A pencil sharpener? . . .  Extend this activity by having the students write about their sneaker's features.

Hopefully, you can use these Sneaker Day ideas to get your new school year off on the right foot!

If you liked these Sneaker Day activities, you may wish to download a copy of the them for FREE on TpT.

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