Quick Christmas Ornaments

'Tis the season for winter parties and Christmas decorations!  This came from an old Mailbox magazine, and it's super quick and easy to do.

Just take three popsicle sticks, have the students color their three sticks with a green crayon or magic marker.  Glue the sides together to make a triangle.  Use a foam star glitter sticker at the top of the tree.  Glue on the 'jewels' and let it dry.  Once it's all dried and set, tie on a string so that it can hang from the tree.

I got all of my supplies from the craft section of Walmart.  You can also use glitter instead of 'jewels'. 

Small Group Dice Helper

I was cleaning out my cabinets and came across these blank dice from our old math manipulative kits.  They came with little round stickers, so I tried to come up with a way to use them.  With the brainstorming help of our fabulous reading coach, we came up with these small reading group dice helpers.

Each child gets 5 dice after they read a leveled reader in small group.  Each of the five dice have a different skill set on them.

Die #1 (types of sentences) question, statement, command, exclamation, interjection, dialogue

Die #2 (syllables) 1 syllable, 2 syllables, 3 syllables, 4 syllables, 1 syllable, 2 syllables

Die #3 (story elements) plot, problem, solution, characters, setting, genre

Die #4 (character traits) funny, caring, greedy, unfriendly,trusting, giving

Die #5 (parts of speech) singular noun, plural noun, proper noun, adjective, helping verb, action verb

After reading the story, have each student roll their dice.  Whatever the five dice land on is what the students will need to answer or look for.  For example, for chapter one, they would need to look for any commands, any words with 2 syllables, and any adjectives, given that is what their dice lands on.  They would also need to tell what the problem in the story is and which character/s have giving traits, if their dice lands on those. 

You will need to teach the students how to properly roll the dice.  Otherwise, you will have dice going everywhere. 

Of course, you can always put whatever you want on the dice and make them work for you.  :)

Cultures Around the World

This social studies unit on culture is perfect for the teaching time between November and December, before the winter break because it's so festive.  Although it is a social studies unit, all of the other subject areas are incorporated to help build across content area.

The countries I cover are England (along with a brief explanation of the other countries belonging to the UK), Germany, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kenya, India, Australia, Japan, Mexico, and the United States.  Of course you can chose your own countries to include.  I chose these because I had things from each country that the students could look at, read, and listen to.

The thing which are done for each country are as follows:

• Locate the country on a world map in relation to our location in the US.
• Color each country's map and go over what the colors and symbols mean.
• List the major landforms of each country.
• List the major plant and animal life forms in each country.
• Discuss any major winter celebrations (i.e., Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Diwali, etc.)
• Fill in a population chart, comparing the populations of each country.
• Read a folktale or story from each country.
• Listen to music selections from each country.
• Go over some basic words and phrases from each country's major language.
• Look at things from each country (money, cookbooks, menorah, rugby ball, etc.)
• Eat foods from each country (seaweed, Turkish delight, chutney, Vegemite, etc.)

The students have a book with three pages for each country.  One page is the world map and places to fill out plants, animals, landforms, and celebrations.  Another page has words and phrases from each country.  The last page is the map for each country for the children to color.  I include a population chart in the back of the book, as well, so they can keep an on-going record of the populations as we cover each country. 

Brochure for Leveled Readers

I am always trying to come up with new things to do in small reading groups.  The brochure idea is an oldie but a goody.  If you have never had your students do one before or if it's been a while since you've done one, maybe you'll find this helpful.  Of course you can tweak this or level it to suit your students' needs.

This is an example of the brochure,  laid out and open so that you can see the entire front and back.  There just happened to be 5 chapters in this book, so there were just enough panels for each chapter, including a title page.

 I decided what from each chapter was going into the brochure and guided my top reading group through the process.  This activity is teaching the students strategies to build reading comprehension, to create and interpret diagrams, and to fill in graphic organizers with related information.  

Cause and Effect

Cause and effect can be very tricky when being tested, so my fellow teachers and I are always trying to come up with new and/or better ways to teach the skill.

I came across an old LIFE compilation book with loads of old, funny photographs in it.  As I was flipping through, I started wondering what caused some of these peculiar situations.  And then....ding, ding, ding!  My teacher bell went off!

I copied several of the pictures from the book, numbered, mounted, and laminated them, then put them out as a rotation activity.  I paired up the students and had them rotate through each picture.  During each stop, the peer pair would have to decide (A) if the picture was a cause or an effect and (B) what the effect will be if it's a "cause" picture or what the cause probably was if it's an "effect" picture.

This activity lets the students practice with real world situation, as well as allows them to get up and move and discuss and analyze the picture and their answers with a peer.

Vocabulary Visors

Need a new way to reinforce vocabulary knowledge?  Try this cool game.  It was actually an old party game, and they've even made it into a board game now, but this one is simple.

Make visors of stapled sentence strips, write a vocabulary word on each crown.  Place the visors on everyone's heads so they can't see their own word, then have them all go around the room asking for clues for their words.  Afterward, you can switch the visors around as many times as you wish.  You can do this with ANY set of vocabulary; reading, language arts, science, social studies, math, music, foreign language, etc. It is also great for the differentiated instruction because different students can have different words suited to their skill level.  I like to do this before a big test or at the each of each reading unit.  Another good vocabulary game is vocabulary BINGO.  :)

Moon Munch

Phases of the Moon Activity
This is a foldable graphic organizer used as a non-linguistic representation piece for the four basic phases of the moon (I've also done 8 phases with this).

What You'll Need

• Pre-made baggies of 5 low-fat vanilla wafers (I give out one extra in case of cookie disaster)
• pre-cut, taped and folded foldable (one piece of printer paper for each child, hamburger folded, cut, and taped in the center to hold the two pieces together)
• crayons
• writing paper
• rulers

Directions

• Have the students draw a line that leaves a 1 inch space at the bottom of the foldable.  This is to label each drawing.
• Have the students use the vanilla wafers as template to draw out the New Moon, First Quarter Moon, Full Moon, and Last Quarter Moon.  They will have to nibble out sections for the quarter moon.
• Have the students color in each section with a black/and or yellow crayon.
• Once finished, the students can write a paragraph, which can be stapled to the moon phases foldable, explaining what the phases are, naming the phases, and telling why the the moon appears to change shape as it goes through its 29-day cycle.

The kids make the comment every time I do this that their outlines are a bit lumpy.  This a great opportunity to talk about craters on the moon and why the moon isn't smooth.

The students love this activity because they get to eat cookies, and I love this activity because it's a fun way to learn the phases of the moon in two different ways; linguistic and non-linguistic.  Enjoy!