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Learning should be fun. Children should come to school each day excited because they know they are going to have fun learning new things.

This blog will be about creating fun and interesting lessons for both teachers and students alike. Just think how great it will be to know your students believe that "School is Cool" and that is a "rule" they can live with.


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English Language Arts 

Books

Types of Books

Circle Books 

Learning Goals:

At the end of this lesson students will have a definite understanding of making predictions and sequencing.

Circular stories follow, as the name implies, a circular or round pattern. Circular books begin in one way and end similarly. In the likeness of a life cycle, circular stories follow series of events, which are fairly predictable and that return back to the starting point. To increase understanding it is best if students have background experience with cycles and plot structure.  this lesson invites students to use a circle plot graphic organizer to explore the structure of this type of story.

Circle or Circular books

Circle Plot Story Rubric

Interactive Circle Plot Diagram

Comprehension

Developing Comprehension

Digging Deeper: Developing Comprehension Using Thank You, Mr. Falker

Materials:
Comprehension Continuum Sample 
Life Lesson Chart

Observational Checklist

• Ensure students have good decoding skills
• Ensure understanding of challenging vocabulary.
• Encourage students to make connections to their own world through the literature they read  
• Teach students utilize comprehension strategies: predicting, image constructing, questioning, clarifying or monitoring, evaluating, summarizing, which will lead to strong analyzing skills
• Putting it all together: encourage students to ensure understanding by noting explicitly whether they are familiar with decoded words and that they make sense to them in context of the text. When misunderstanding occurs, students should be taught to go back and carefully decode/reread and reprocess 

Literature Circles - Book 


Question Sheet

Grammar

Adjectives and Nouns

Lesson Plan Title : Adjective Spherical Miracle

Integrate movement with grammar and you get pure fun

Learning Goals : By the end of the lesson, students will be able to distinguish between a noun and an adjective

Objective: The student will be able to name a noun and an adjective that describes the noun.

Materials:

Source of music 

Activities:

Teach a lesson on nouns one day; follow up with a lesson on adjectives

Next have students create two circles - an inner circle and an outer circle. Explain to students that you will be playing some music, when the music is on the students in the inner circle walk clockwise and the students on the outside circle walk counterclockwise. Explain that when you stop the music the children will face the student whom they are closest with. The child on the inner circle will name a noun. The child on the outer circle will come up with an adjective that describes that noun. After a few rounds, tell the children that now when the music stops the person on the outer circle will name a noun and they must come up with an adjective to describe the noun.

Assessment

Select one or more of the below activities depending upon the need of the students

Alphabet Organizer

• Copy the alphabet organizer in advance (one copy for each student) have students write a noun for each letter of the alphabet; tell students to write this word at the bottom of the letter box; next ask the children to write a descriptive adjective to describe that noun above the noun; walk about the room to ensure understanding for each child 

Adjective Picture Books

Materials: Picture books, highlighters, typed text from picture books, thesaurus (book or computer with online thesaurus)

• Prior to the lesson select picture books for students to work in pairs: assign reading partners and have students read  a picture book to familiarize themselves with the text, type up several pages from each picture book rich with adjectives - ensure exact pages are noted and text size is age appropriate.
• Have students highlight all of the adjectives from the typed text
• Have students write above the highlighted adjectives a synonym adjective
• Presentations: have students project the original text (document camera) have one partner read aloud the original text from the picture book pages and have another partner read the edited text
• The teacher and students will assess to see if the original highlighted words were in fact adjectives, were the revised words both synonyms and adjectives, did the meaning of the passage change - how and why if so?, discuss why the author may have chosen the original meaning (e.g. book intended for a younger audience)

Enrichment

Have higher level children give more than one adjective that they know could flow into a sentence. Give a few examples: the flowery green dress, the huge furry ape.

Support

Provide a completed alphabet organizer for some children, allow students to highlight the adjectives and underline the nouns

 Poetry

Lesson

Dancing Minds and Shouting Smiles: Teaching Personification Through Poetry

Resources

Poetry

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson860/brainstorm.pdf

(brainstorming graphic organizer)

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson860/rubric.pdf (rubric)

http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/dickin01.html#12 (poetry samples)

http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/famous/hughes/4.html   (shadow poetry)

http://library.thinkquest.org/J0112392/personificationclassics.html (personification)

Research

Research Tutorial

Teaching students to be responsible researchers is extremely important. To find a research lesson that is very well done, click on the word research above to take you to the video tutorial. To make research fun for students I offer a final project that is fun and motivating such as creating a photo story. e.g. see Social Studies - Explorer lesson

Run-on Sentences

Learning Goals: At the end of this lesson students will be able to know what connecting words are, analyze run on sentences and omit connecting words to break run on sentences down into smaller sentences.

Materials:

• Examples of run on sentences (2 sets of each sentence): one set should be written on sentence strips and one set each word of the run on sentence should be written on an index card for students to break down. 
• Index cards with various punctuation marks on them
• Poster paper
• Tape

(suggestion: laminate the sentence strips and index cards to use from year to year - this also enables easy editing as necessary)

Lesson

• Discuss what connecting words are. Model examples of run on sentence that use connecting sentences.
• Be dramatic and read the run on sentences demonstrating how it is difficult to breathe when you as the reader are not given a break.
• Have a sample sentence strip available and words on index cards to match as well as punctuation index cards. Model how you can break down run on sentences into smaller sentences by removing connecting words but not changing the order of the words.
• Break students into pairs or groups of three. Give each group a run-on sentence sentence strip with the index card words to match along with some various punctuation cards. Have the students use the index card words to break up the run on sentence with proper punctuation . Explain to students that they may break the sentence up and remove connecting words, but they cannot change the order of the words. After each group is finished, have them share their sentences with the class. (They can use the index card to help them remember the original order of the sentence.)

Encourage the students to choose how they want the sentence to be broken up if there is more than one correct way to do so.

Homonyms 

Learning Goals: By the end of the lesson students will be able to spell many homonyms correctly and distinguish which homonym should be used correctly in a sentence

Create some picture cards for homonyms along with some word cards for the same homonyms

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Writing

Story Plot Rubric

Hitches and Ditches on the Erie Canal by Hannah Stuart is a historical fiction about the construction of the Erie Canal. It is a story about a boy who must pretend to be a man in order to help his family. The suspense and surprising twists will keep the reader  turning page after page while learning the facts.