Hands On Graphic Organizers for Writing

I love to use Graphic Organizers with all the writing we do!  Recently, I have been trying to incorporate using graphic organizers with even my youngest Kinder ELL students to support their writing.  One great way I found to do this was doing more hands-on organizers with which the students can practice organizing the information on a larger scale together. We recently did a mini-unit on the different animal groups.  We created this graphic organizer after reading our Animal Groups Emergent Reader and watching this excellent BrainPop Jr. video about animal classification.
Last, students wrote their own animal facts about their chosen group using these  awesome writing sheets from www.firstgradewindows.blogspot.com .The students were able to gain a lot of content vocabulary and loved the hands-on approach!   Please add comments on how you use graphic organizers with young students. 



 

BrainPop Video

 

Click here for the Book





 



"Having A Ball" with Idioms

"You Let the Cat out of the Bag!"   What in the world is this teacher talking about ?!?!? Idioms can be very confusing for ELL students and younger students.  This week we had a blast studying, reading, writing, and illustrating idioms.  Before introducing Idioms, I had students guess the meaning of some different idioms, the guesses they come up with are hilarious!  After completing and sharing our guesses, we write the "real meaning"  in colored pen.  Grab this free worksheet HERE.

 

 

Next, we read a few great texts about idioms, You Let the Cat Out of the Bag, by Cynthia Klingel, Birds of a Feather by Vanita Oelschlager, and There's a Frog in my Throat by Loreen Leedy and Pat Street. 

    

 

Last, after discussing "literal" and "figurative" , the students made these awesome illustrated examples of Idioms.  Grab this free printable HERE. 

 

 

 

Please feel free to add in the comments, other fun ways you study idioms!  Thanks for reading! 



One Fish, Two Fish and Differentiation

Wow, did we have a lot of fun with Dr. Seuss last week!   This year I have 4K and Kinder ELL students, so I have been changing a lot of my Kinder lessons to meet the needs and the abilities of the 4K students.  All week, we have been working hard  on rhyming words and reading a variety of Dr. Seuss books.  My students' favorite project this week was the One Fish, Two Fish hand project.  This was pretty messy, but super fun!  You can see below the variety of ways to do this project depending on your students' abilities.  For the students who can write, they picked two rhyming pairs and included those on their projects.  For the students who are not at the writing stage yet, we found rhyming pairs from pictures.  Using picture cards or typed word labels instead of asking a student to write about a topic  is a great way to differentiate if you have an ELL student who not quite at the writing stage in English.  Please feel free to comment with some strategies you use for differentiation for ELLs or Special Education students! 

Getting Ready for Dr. Seuss Week!

This is one of my favorite times of the year, Dr. Seuss and Read Across America Day! Or week if if celebrate it like me! To get ready for the week I have created some new products and updated some old ones. Most are centered around rhyming, for my kinder and 4K ELL students. Check out these resources and please feel free to share some projects or activities you uses for Dr. Seuss Day and Read Across America.

Reading Day Bingo                                                           Rhyming Cut and Paste with the Cat

Rhyme Time with Cats and Hats

 

Rhyming Word Cards or Center

Oobleck! Solid or Liquid?

Powerful Language -Strong Verbs

One of my favorite Language topics to teach each year is my Strong Verbs Unit!  I love teaching it and the students love the hands-on way to study Strong Verbs and Synonyms!  I love that by the end of the unit, you can really see the difference in the students' personal narratives, especially when it comes to using a variety of words in their writing and using a variety of tools to find new words.  It's great to see the students taking their own initiative to go get  thesaurus, use MS word to find new words, or a variety of online tools to get rid of those BORING VERBS!  Here are some of the students' favorites activities that we do in the unit:

Strong Verb Synonym Sort:

Strong Verb Word Clouds-These are a blast!  I always get lots of comments from staff, students, and parents on how cool these look in the hallway.

These activities and more can all be found in my Strong Verbs Unit. 

 

New President's Day Unit

I just completed this President's Day and U.S. Symbols Activity Pack!  I can't wait to use it later this month!  It includes vocabulary cards to use as a word wall or in a writing center, fact cards and fill  in the blank activities for Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and many U.S. symbols, these will be great for centers!  It also includes printable books All About Abraham Lincoln, All About George Washington, and U.S. Symbols.  For writing activities, it has bubble maps for Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, A President Report Sheet, and If I Were President Sheet.  I can't wait to see my kiddos responses on the If I Were President...!   I would love to hear what others do to Celebrate President's Day, please comment below with your favorite President's Day Activity. 

Click here to check out this packet: 

Solids, Liquids, and Gases, Oh My!

One of my favorite units of the year is Solids, Liquids and Gases.  It is a blast to teach and see my ELL students talk like little scientists, using predict, observe, evaporate, etc... First we start off with a mystery box activity in which we need to use our descriptive words to guess what mystery objects are.  Then we read books and watch an awesome BrainPop video about SLG.  Finally, to close up our mini unit we do a a fun experiment with chocolate covered Oreos, YUM!  We turn solid chocolate chips into liquid, then dip the cookies, and wait for the temperature to cool down and turn back into a solid.  We even add sprinkles to talk about how some solids can be mixed with different materials.  Here is a picture of the final writing (one that wasn't covered in chocolate!)

 

You can Download these Free Solids, Liquids and Gases KWL Charts here.

 

You can download this entire unit with posters, SLG picture sort, mystery box activity, SLG KWL charts, Oobleck Experiment, Oreos Experiment, recording sheets, and much more!  Click Here

 

Plural Nouns-They Finally Got It!

Click here to Check out the Activity Pack
All week long, our word work topic before our writing lessons was plural nouns.  We had created anchor charts, made lists, practiced on the white board, and a few other "paper" activities, but I just felt like my students were not getting it! 

Since I work with ELL students, I definitely needed a more hands-on approach, so I created this lesson, and VIOLA!  They finally got it!  It was a simple lesson, but  adding the more creative, hands-on approach worked wonders! 

Here is what we did: 

1. Have students choose a singular noun card.  ( I used the cute chevron ones available in the pack above)
2. Students write their singular noun on the word strip ( I found these cute word strips at Dollar tree!)
3. Have students fold over the strip to the letter before you add the s or es, or to the letter that changes for the y words or rulebreakers

Easy Peasy, and each student created five in about 10 minutes! 

 

 

You can download the cute cards and directions by clicking here.

 

Technology in the Classroom

Last year I received a new AVER document camera (similar to an ELMO) and a new projector.  I work with all ELL students, where visuals are a must, so the document camera and the projector have been a  life saver!  I feel like I am able to make my lessons much more interactive, which really gets my non-speakers involved. 

 This new technology has been wonderful, but sometimes I felt I was stuck behind the computer, or constantly going back and forth from the computer to the screen.  So I recently purchased a wireless mouse, which I highly suggest to everyone with a projector. Now, with the wireless mouse, I am able to control whatever I have on the screen from anywhere in the room!  It has been great for students; engaging in online games or practice quizzes online, I no longer have to call them up to the computer, we just pass around the mouse.  After showing one young student our new wireless mouse technology, he told me I was magic!

 Please comment and share what technology you couldn't live without in your classroom and how you use it, I would love to hear about different ways to use the projector and document camera! 

Free Reading Strategies Posters

Many of my students struggle with reading comprehension.  Since the beginning of the year, I have been using the following strategies to help them understand what they read and make meaningful responses.  They have been really useful and our discussions have been a lot more engaging and their reading reponses have gone from copying facts to writing about visualization and text features.  Hope you find them useful! 

Find them here:  Reading Strategies Posters