Reading Comprehension Lesson Plans - Try This Nifty Idea When Teaching Comprehension

Make Simple Stick Puppets 

Ask your students to do the following. 

- Draw the main characters from the story you are exploring onto thick paper. 

- To control the size, fold the A4 paper into 8 and draw each character in one of the rectangles. 

 - Also draw any other important elements of the story. If you are doing "The Three Little Pigs", you will need the three houses as well. If you are doing "Cinderella", you will need the pumpkin coach as well. 

- Color your puppets, cut them out and glue them onto sticks. 

- Store the puppets in an envelope or piece of A4 paper folded in half and stapled at the sides. - Decorate the envelope and write the title of the story and the name of the characters on it. Once the puppets are made they can be used in other activities.

Students can use the puppets to retell the story.

A student can retell the story on their own using the puppets as props (great for assessment) or each student can play a character and the group can retell the story. The group version works best if there is an adult leading the story. As the adult reads or retells the story the appropriate student uses the puppet to act out what is happening. Ask the student controlling the puppet to get their puppet to say something at the same time,"Oh no, it's the Big, Bad Wolf again!"

Students can use the puppets to tell a different story with the same characters.

Students can work individually or in pairs to create another story with the puppet characters. Get the students to form small groups of four to six and retell their new stories to each other. If there is time, the students can then write and illustrate their new stories.

Students can use the puppets to create scenes from the story.

If you have younger students (and access to a sand pit) let them use the puppets and sand to create a scene from story. If you can, take photos and display them in the class. The students can then write or type a sentence that describes what is happening in their picture and this can be placed underneath. Once the students have finished their sand scene creation let them play freely with the puppets for awhile. If you don't have a sand pit, the puppets will also stand up in the grass. Grassland scenes can be created from leaves, flowers and sticks. If that is not possible, ask the students to create a back drop to one of the scenes in the story using an A3 piece of art paper.

Students can use the puppets to create a book.

If you have time and your students have the ability, small groups could create all the key scenes from the story, photograph them, and use a computer to add text to the photos. Their work can be shown to the class using power point or printed out to create a simple book.

First Few Days Back - Reviewing Expectations and Re-Building Daily 5 Stamina

Well, I have survived the first two days back after vacation!  They haven't been bad, but I have been exhausted after resting for two weeks straight.  The behavior has been amazing so far (knock on wood) and may be due in part to the fact that I planned to review expectations and re-build Daily 5 stamina this week.  Just like the first week of school we have been reviewing and practicing.  I started with a True/False PowerPoint review of our rules.

You can download this freebie at Teachers Pay Teachers here.

Even if you have already gone back to school you can pin it and save it for next year : D.  It is fully editable.

Then, we practiced building up our Daily 5 stamina.  We reviewed the expectations and wrote them on the board.  Then we practiced just like the beginning of the year with me calling them back to the carpet as soon as one person was off task.

(ignore my messy handwriting!)

I am not going to lie - it was a little ugly the first day - our best time (not shown) was a little over 9 minutes.  Luckily, by day 2 we were back on track.

23 minutes - can I get a woot woot?

Ahhhh!  Daily 5 Bliss - ready for me to work with small groups and meet for individual conferences!  A few days of reinforcing those expectations is so worth it!  What have you done to reinforce expectations since you have gone back to school?

Teaching Subjects and Predicates With Mr. Morton - FREEBIE

‘Mr Morton is the subject of the sentence, and what the predicate says he does.’

 

That song is ingrained in my brain after I used the Grammar Rock anthem to teach some of my kiddos about subjects and predicates.  Several of them were having difficulty with  writing complete sentences, and most of them were thrown into a tizzy when we were working on some of Jivey's amazing grammar lessons when they were asked to identify the subject and predicate in her mentor sentences.

 

So... a mini-lesson was in order.

 

First we watched the video:

 

 

 

 

Then we practiced identifying the subject and the predicate in the sentences from the video. They really got it after I modeled a few of the sentences.

 

 

 

I also found this picture from Doxie House that I will definitely incorporate next year or if I have a few strugglers.

 

I made a free worksheet for you to use with your students if you would like.  You can download it here. 

While you are there, be sure to follow me on Teachers Pay Teachers for the chance to win a $25 TpT gift certificate :D

Failing to Plan is Planning To Fail - Creating Your Long Term Plans for the School Year

 

 

You have probably heard this adage a time or two, but have you ever followed it?  This will be the second year in a row that I am switching grades (last year I switched from 7th grade math to 3rd grade and this year I am moving up to 4th), and I don't want to feel like I don't know where I'm going.  So, I used the curriculum map we have from our school district, and added the things that aren't there (science, social studies, grammar, and writing) to create a set of Long-Term plans for the year.  Even if I don't stick to it 100%, I feel better having a plan to cover everything I need to during the year.

 

 

It didn't print out 100% perfectly, but since I' m the one who is using it, I'm ok with that.  If any of you know how to fix it, I'm all ears :)

 

I have put the plans in the back of my lesson planning notebook for future reference as I start working on individual units.  The front of my lesson plan book is for my weekly plans and monthly calendars where I will list out everything including special events, assemblies, etc.

 

I will be sharing my complete book in a little bit - I bought the Staples Circa I had my eye on and am working on customizing it to fit for me. 

 

I have uploaded the Excel version of this document so that you can edit it and use it if you would like - setting it up took forever, so I thought I would save you some time. It is a freebie, and all you have to do to get it is to like my Facebook page here.  It is in the Facebook Fan Freebie tab.

 

Do you make long term plans?



Why We Shouldn't Waste Water - FREEBIES

We have been working on a unit our unit for Common Core Standard RI.3.3 - Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.
We had previously compared the amount of water and land on the Earth.

Today we learned why we shouldn't waste water even though there is so much of it on the Earth.

I started by asking the kiddos to name all of the ways that they used water.  I had them come up to the SmartBoard to write their answers (for some reason writing on the SmartBoard has been a great motivator).

Here were some of their ideas (please forgive their misspelling - I wanted to get through this part without correcting them).

Then I had them look at the inflatable globe to remind me how much of the Earth was covered with water.  I asked them, "If there is so much water on the Earth, why do we always talk about saving water?" I used the inflatable globe as a discussion monitor.  They couldn't talk unless they were holding the globe which I threw to them if they raised their hand.

 

After we discussed their ideas (which included because water costs so much - in our town it does), I asked them to make a prediction about how much water on the Earth is drinkable. 

 

 

 

They wrote their predictions on index cards.

 



 



Then we talked about how much it really was.  They were surprised to see that we really have a small amount - just a drop really!

 

 

 Then I had them write a paragraph comparing their original prediction to the results from our model.

 

 

 I will be putting this unit together in a complete unit, but, for now, here is the lesson plan from today including how to model the amount of water on the Earth. 



Here is the lesson plan for this activity.