The Blog
Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting Texts
We are SO close to being done with our nonfiction unit, and I’m looking forward to jumping back in to novel studies. My students are slowly growing to love (okay, maybe like is still a better word) informational text, and…
Tell Me a Story Tuesday!
It has been a while since I have featured a Tell Me a Story Tuesday post around here! I made a copy for each study and had them glue it in the center of a large piece of construction paper….
Informational Text Structures & Features Cumulative Assignment
Last week, we finished our final project for our nonfiction text features and structures study. Now, we are working on summarizing nonfiction and making inferences from nonfiction. I’m having to get quite creative in order to keep my kids engaged…
Nonfiction Summaries
I’m popping in to share an activity I did to get kids thinking about summarizing nonfiction texts. I got this idea from the fantastic Kristine Nannini at Young Teacher Love. She blogged about their classroom anchor chart where they discussed…
Making Sense of Multiplying and Dividing Fractions Word Problems
If you teach the upper grades, you likely know how maddening it is to try to teach your students the difference between a multiplication word problem and a division word problem when it comes to fractions. Everything we have taught…
How to Increase Critical Thinking and Creativity in your “Spare Time”
We all know that our students need time to cultivate their minds for critical and creative thinking, but knowing how to increase critical thinking can be tricky. I struggle to find time to fit these types of activities in to…
Task Cards | Anchor Charts | Free | Informational Texts | Literacy | Literacy Anchor Charts | Reading Skills
Informational Text Structures
I have spent the past week working on Informational Text Structures with my 5th graders. I was shocked to discover that this was almost an entirely new concept for them, so we did several fun little activities to solidify the…
Fraction Operation Review Project!
I have a list a mile long of projects and activities to blog about, but I’m having such a hard time finding…time! The first one I want to share is the mini-fraction operation review project we did for adding, subtracting,…
Informational Text Newspaper or Magazine “Book” Report
Before break, my students turned in their latest independent book report. This was a different kind of book report, though. They have done plenty of non-fiction book reports, so I wanted to shake things up a bit. I created a…
Converting Fractions, Decimals, and Percents
Before we left for wonderful winter break (and, oh, how wonderful it was), we spent a week focusing on percentages along with converting fractions, decimals, and percents. Percents seems to be one of those things that students have long heard…
Holiday Gifts for Students
I finally finished my little holiday gifts for my students! Occasionally, people will ask why I feel like I should give them something, but the fact of the matter is that these are “my kids!” I am actually going to…
{EASY} Holiday Food for Bigger Kids
I have big ambitions when it comes to Christmas food and baking. I have ideas out the wazoo (well, okay, I have pinned ideas like crazy), and I used to bake dozens upon dozens of treats for my husband’s corporate…
Giggles and Grammar | Upper Elementary Grammar Program