It's About Time, Teachers!

Friday, January 28, 2022

February Classroom Decor FREEBIE

The dawn of a new month means it's time for new decor. This product is FREE and it offers lots of fun, February decorations.

Try this bulletin board math center:

The center is open-ended and easily differentiated, making it perfect for any elementary classroom. It is similar to Boogle(TM) for numbers. Using adjacent numbers, students are challenged to reach the target number in as many ways as possible. You post the operation symbols appropriate for your learners and change the target number as often as you choose. Critical thinking and fluency are exercised along with computation skills. And, this display is good for the whole month!

How Many Ways? makes a wonderful anchor activity, math center, fast finishers' challenge, and/or enrichment project.

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

100th Day of School FREEBIE!

It's about time for the 100th day of school and that's cause for celebration! I have a FREEBIE to help you with this special day:

There are 4 poems in Poetry Possibilities -- 100th Day of School Edition. Each poem has a teaching point related to poetry and teaching possibilities from multiple disciplines that are custom designed for it. For example:

Learn more about this unit from this video:

Enjoy the 100th day!

Sunday, January 23, 2022

IT'S ABOUT TIME FOR GROUNDHOG DAY FREEBIES!

Although February is the shortest month, it is surely packed with more holiday and seasonal topics than any other month. It starts off with Groundhog Day.

Bring the celebration to your students with these FREEBIES:

SCRATTLE is fun activity that is packed with learning. Similar to SCRABBLETM, learners will make words from a set of letters. But what makes this more fun, and more importantly, elicits more learning, is that scores are not simply the result of addition. This DIFFERENTIATED center can combine addition, subtraction, and/or multiplication. You choose which recording sheet is most appropriate for your students.

But wait, ...

there's more ...

After making their words, children engage in a BATTLE with a friend (or 2). They will compare their words, determining who has the most high value words. Prepare to be amazed. After the 1st battle, your learners will be clamoring to have a do-over. Suddenly, all of those easy, high frequency words will be eschewed for vocabulary that yields higher scores. It makes my teacher heart swell when I see my kiddos start exercising their vocabularies and begin to strategize how to get ever higher scores.

This video may make this activity easier to understand:

For more Groundhog Day fun, try Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, and Hinkity Pinkities.

These task cards challenge your students to problem solve while applying vocabulary skills, such as synonyms, parts of speech, rhymes, definitions, and syllables. You can almost see the cogs turning in their brains as they determine the 2 word answers to these riddles.

Did I mention this product is FREE???

Here's a video to entice you...

My students literally beg to do Hink Pinks, et al. I'm willing to bet your's will, too.

And now, Hink Pinks, et al. are available digitally on TPT's Easel platform! Woo hoo!

Happy Groundhog Day and hurry up spring!

Wednesday, January 12, 2022

CHINESE NEW YEAR ACTIVITIES and RESOURCES

How do you celebrate the Chinese New Year? In my classroom, I use poetry to introduce the celebration. The following poem introduces some of the holiday traditions:

Chinese children will greet their parents and other adults by saying, "Gung Hay Fat Choy," which means wishing you great happiness and prosperity. Naturally, we greet the adults in our school with this phrase.

The dragon dance is often conducted in the streets during Chinese New Year. My students create a parade of their own using these templates:

We make a dragon for the parade, keeping in mind that the longer the dragon, the greater the luck it bestows. To make the dragon's body, create an accordian fold. Use 2 strips of paper about 1.5" wide. Choose different colors and make the strips as long as you like. Begin by gluing the strips together.

The head in these pictures is a template that can be colored or printed in color.

Of course I have a poem dedicated just to the Dragon Dance.

Along the way, I incorporate other learning. These activities are part of my Winter Poetry Possibilities unit. The possibilities provide a plethora of lessons from various disciplines.

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!

Tuesday, January 4, 2022

It's About Time for M.L. King, Jr. Day!

It's about time, teachers, to get ready for MLK, Jr. Day! You may enjoy this FREE poetry resource. It comes with teaching possibilities and is best suited to intermediate students.

Enjoy!

Monday, December 27, 2021

TEACHING RESOURCES for THE MITTEN

Winter brings mitten weather. So what could be better for your primary classroom than a study of THE MITTEN? I love to immerse my class in all things mitten while we study various versions of this Ukranian folktale.

We begin our week long study by reading all the versions of the folktale I can find. The above 3 are available in my library. Then I provide a plethora of materials with the mitten theme.

One of my favorite winter bulletin board displays is this one:

It is not only a winter display, but provides an awesome math center, anchor activity, sponge activity, enrichment, &/or fast finishers' challenge. Learn more about it from this video:

This thematic unit has literacy centers, math centers and printables. It is available on TPT Easel for digital learning. Explore its offerings by watching this video:

Mitten math centers include:

Practice number sense and numeracy with Mitten Math. It is available on TPT Easel for digital learning.

This video explains its numeracy activities:

Glyphs are always popular with my learners. This activity also provides a fun display. Watch the video to see what it offers:

Although my curriculum map does not include graphing at this time of year, I like to spiral my students' exposure to these skills. This product offers 9 graphing sets with differentiation built in. Video follows:

Latin Squares combine math & critical thinking. They are open ended activities that can challenge even the most gifted of students. This product is available on TPT Easel for digital learning. Learn more here:

Mitten literacy centers include:

Establish a literacy center focused on antonyms and synonyms. It's 2 centers in one and it is available on TPT Easel for digital learning. Here's a video introduction:

Matching Mittens gives practice with onset & rime. This center is differentiated to give more challenge to those who need it. It,too, is available on TPT Easel for digital learning. See it in action here:

Sight word practice is always beneficial. These color-by-word printables with delight your pupils. See more about them with this video:

You can also exercise CRITICAL THINKING while studying The Mitten. Mitten Square Puzzlers are learning disguised as fun. They, too, provide varying levels of challenge for differentiation. To see how they work, watch this:

You can buy a bundled version of all of these products. The bundle saves you 20% over the individual prices, PLUS, the bulletin board math center, How Many Ways?, is included for FREE!

Happy winter teaching!

Sunday, November 21, 2021

IT'S ABOUT TIME FOR HOLIDAY RESOURCES!

Teaching between Thanksgiving and winter break is a unique challenge. The time is short but the days can be long. The key to survival is keeping your students engaged, while managing the excitement. Following are resources that I find useful:

FREEBIES