October Essay Writing Menu (On Sale)

Well, better late than never. I finally finished my October Essay Menu and Writing practice.  It's 50% off for the next few days since I finally finished it.

There is an essay menu, graphic organizers, checklists, rubrics, scaffolded practice pages, and publishing paper. I am making them to go with each month. I also have September and December made. Hopefully I will finish the November Essay Writing before the end of October.

Don't forget about the October Spelling and Vocabulary menu, too. This freebie has a menu of themed writing ideas that can be used with any list of words.

Christmas in July: Writing Resources Sale

To continue with my Christmas in July, all of my writing resources will be 50% today and tomorrow.

Back to School Essay Writing and December Essay Writing

These are great way to give your kids choice and get them writing essays every month.  It has everything you need to teach, scaffold, and assess your students' essays.  I am currently working on October and November Essay Writing. It has been aligned to the 4th and 5th grade CCSS.

Common Core Paragraphs

I created these graphic organizers because some of my fourth graders still could not write a good paragraph.  This includes graphic organizers, checklists, and rubrics to help your kids master writing great paragraphs.  It has been aligned to the 1st and 2nd grade CCSS.

Back to School Writing Prompts, Halloween Writing Prompts, and Persuasive Writing Prompts

Use these as a center, journal topics, or for the kid who can never think of what to write. 

Autobiography Writing Assignments

This is a great beginning or end of the year activity to get kids thinking about their own lives.  You might even use this as an entrance into a Personal Narrative unit. 

Bats Research and Writing Unit

My students had a lot of fun with this last year in the month of October. 

Right now lots of bloggers have some great blog posts on Bright Ideas for the Classroom at the Bright Ideas Blog Hop.  I am excited to go check them out and pin some great ideas to my Genius Classroom Solutions pin board. 

As we get ready for school to start, I think it is important to not only find bright ideas for the classroom but also consider self-care.  I think as teachers many of us wear a lot of hats and get so used to taking care of other people, we forget to take care of ourselves. At my other blog, Balancing the Backpack I am sharing some ideas about self-care and wellness. I hope you will follow me on my journey toward balance.  Today I blogged about easy snacks to eat on the drive home and yesterday I shared some tips to drink more water. 

Monday Made It: Back to School Essay Writing and Overnight Oats

Today I am going to link with 4th Grade Frolics for "Monday Made It."

I have not linked up in a very long time.  I am not the most crafty person.  I prefer to make things on the computer.

I do like to try new recipes though.  I have a love/hate relationship with food.  I love to eat.  I try to eat healthy. I like variety, but I do not always enjoy cooking.  I do pretty well with dinners and lunches.  For dinner, I usually cook several things on Sunday and we eat leftovers throughout the week.  That is how I manage cooking with my crazy schedule of work and graduate school. Lunches I usually pack bento lunches for myself during the school year.  This helps me get in some variety and makes me be intentional with what I eat. Breakfast I really struggle.  So like any good teacher in the summer I have been looking through Pinterest for breakfast ideas.  I try to avoid gluten and dairy when I can, so I have been looking for some gluten free and dairy free breakfast ideas. I came across several recipes for Overnight Oats.

I tried this recipe first from SugerGlueMom for Strawberries Overnight Oats.  They look great, but personally I found the steelcut oats bitter without being cooked.  (The steel cut oats are delicious if you cook them overnight in the crockpot.)

I found some other recipes with rolled oats, so I decided to try that instead of the steelcut oats.  Here is an example of a recipe I found.

They look pretty in mason jars, so now I want to get some mason jars.  I made my overnight oats with 1/2 cup rolled oats and 1/2 cup almond milk.  In the morning I added some stevia and fresh peaches.  I thought it was good and had a cold cereal taste.  You could add more milk if you wanted it creamier.

I had this idea last year with my students to make sure they wrote at least one essay every month.  I wanted them to have choices.  Within a three month time span, I wanted them to have done at least one narrative essay, one persuasive essay, and one informational essay.  We did this routine in December and January.  The kids really liked the menu I made and having choices.  Like many of my ideas now that I am working and going to grad school both I never finished making all of the months, so that is one of my goals this summer. I finished making a Back to School Essay Writing  this week for the months of August and September. It has an essay menu, graphic organizers, rubrics, scaffolded practice for drafting and revising, and publishing paper.  I am going to be working on finishing the other months.  Now, that I am moving to middle school I need to work on making a middle school version.

This last one is more of a tried it than a made it.  For the last couple months, I have been getting familiar with essential oils.  I am trying to learn as much as I can about their uses.  Well, being that it is summer and Texas I managed last week to get sunburned and eaten alive by bugs.  I have about 17 bug bites between both of my legs.  Bites swell up to about the size of a quarter on me.   I put Lavender Oil on my bug bites and within 30 minutes they had gone back down to just little red dots.  The Lavender helped with the itching, too.  I also used the Lavender Oil on my sunburn.

I had one stubborn bug bite behind my knee that was completely red and inflamed because of its location.  I tried the Purify oil blend on it as well.  It helped some.  I finally had to give in and use Hydrocortisone once just to get the inflammation down. Since then though if any of the bites itch, I just put a little Lavender oil and they are good. 

Have you made or tried anything new this week?

Fun Resources for Teaching a Biography Unit

This week and next we are finishing up our biography unit.  All of my students finished reading their biographies by today.  This week they are working on the performance tasks from their biography study guide.  You can get a copy of the biography study guide here, if interested.  They have to create a product to represent the person's accomplishments and what they can learn from the person.  They also had to answer some essential questions.

I was researching for resources on teaching biographies and made a live binder of the links I found.  There are links to book lists, graphic organizer freebies from TpT, lessons from Readwritethink.org, and activities from TpT. You can view the love binder below.

Teaching Biographies

I love using the ReadWriteThink Interactive Tools as a great way to use the computer to fill out graphic organizers. We are going to be doing some comparing and contrasting using the ReadWriteThink Venn Diagram.

We are going to use the biographies we read to write a biography essay.  I decided to start using Lovin Lit's Interactive Writing Notebook and her Interactive Research Papers.

We covered Expository paragraphs today, and later in the week we are going to start the mini-biography.  After we do the mini-biography, we will do the biography essay.  I am excited to share pictures when we get done.

Christmas Writing Ideas and Figurative Language

So we started our December essays today.  I printed the December Essay Menu on cardstock and taped it to the board. I explained that we are going to start doing one essay per month, but they would have choices. I went over the 20 choices on the menu.  They were pretty excited.  Many asked if they could do more than one essay.  My student who was my most reluctant writer last year asked if he could finish his essay tonight at home. It really is amazing to see what choice can do!

Today they picked a topic and started planning their essays with graphic organizers.  A few started writing. I explained we were going to go through the whole writing process.  The pack on TpT includes lots of handouts for rough drafts and publishing. Most of my students wanted to type their essays, so we are going to type ours. I was excited to see my students excited about essay writing.  Who gets excited about five paragraph essays, right?  I think the choice menu each month is going to work really well. We will spend about an hour on Wednesdays working on it.  The rest of the week they can fit it in as they have time. We actually may even turn our essays and stories into a multimedia presentation when we finish just for some fun.

This month we also are going to talk about figurative language.  We will do some figurative language lessons from Lovin Lit's Reading Notebook and Figurative Language Close Reading Stories.  We will use the close reading stories in reading groups. Of course, we have to do Jen Runde's craftivity for Figurative Language.

Now, this last resource I am super excited about. We will analyze Christmas Carols for Figurative Language.  

A few years ago, I had my students get in groups and rewrite the words to Christmas carols to be about themselves.  They came out so cute! We will type up the new lyrics and frame them in an inexpensive frame as our parent gift this year.

Weekly Writing Inspiration and December Essay Writing

I hope you are getting some great shopping in at the TpT Cyber Monday sale. I spent my fair share today, but I got so many great things!

I wanted to share some writing resources I am really excited about right now.  When I first start blogging almost two years ago, I did a weekly series called "Weekly Writing Inspiration." This is something I started in my classroom several years ago. Each week for our journal writing we used inspiration instead of prompts. We had a quote of the week, a poem of the week, and a picture of the week.  We discussed what we observed, the meanings, and how they could inspire our writing.  It really got the kids to think critically and creatively. As creativity and critical thinking are two of the four 21st century skills, they are something I want to continue to emphasize.

Weekly writing inspiration is something I have done in my class every year, but it usually falls off somewhere during the year because I start running out of time to find a quote, poem, and picture each week.  I have always meant to sit down and compile 40 poems, 40 quotes, and 40 pictures. It never happened as many great teaching ideas find themselves.

Well, the other day I found some resources on TpT that helped me fulfill my weekly writing inspiration goal.

Panicked Teacher's Quote of the Week

Panicked Teacher's Idiom of the Week

Picture of the Day (We just may not do it every day).

We started doing one of these each day before Thanksgiving. We discuss the meanings and use the handouts from the packs. Then, each day we use the quote, idiom, or picture to inspire our journal writing. I just will have to pick out a poem then each week. My goal is to get a monthly poetry pack made with poems to analyze. I made one for March last year. Hopefully, I can get one made for December in next couple days. :)

To help my kids get better at multi-paragraph essays, I want to make sure we do at least one essay per month for the rest of the year.  I decided to start making a monthly essay menu with four choices for each of the writing types: informational, opinion, narrative, and research. They will be able to choose, but in 3 essays they need to do an opinion, a narrative, and an informative.  I am excited to share my essay menu for December with my students on Wednesday. 

What are your favorite resources for writing and the Common Core?

Common Core Language Arts Resources on Teachers Pay Teachers and a Sale

Well, I was really excited to have this whole week off, so I could get lots of stuff done along with the resting and being Thankful. I started off my break with a cold, and essentially worked hard this week at taking naps. I am thankful for the rest.

One of my goals this week was to really re-evaluate my Language Arts block. I have found a lot of great resources lately, and I have been struggling to figure out how to fit it all in. It just all seems important! I definitely still need to rework my scope and sequence for the year to really plan out week by week the Grammar lessons and reading skills for read alouds. One of the hardest parts to me of planning for the Language Arts block is planning the schedule and how much time to allocate to different tasks. On Tuesday, I am going to share with you how I decided to re-allocate time in my Language Arts block to better allow for student engagement and ownership. Over the next couple days, I am going to share some of my favorite Language Arts resources I have found for Common Core.

As you probably know by now, Monday and Tuesday are the big Teachers Pay Teachers Cyber Monday and Tuesday Sale. You can save up to 28%. I think I have over $100 of items in my cart right now.  A good sale is the perfect opportunity to stock up on all those items you have been wanting. My store will be 20% off.  You use the code CYBER to save more at checkout.

Here are some of my favorite resources for the Common Core Language Arts Standards:

Resources I have Made:

First of all, I organize all of my Language Arts resources for Common Core by standard. I put all the resources I have made or purchased behind each standard.  It makes it so much easier when planning to have everything in one place. These are my Grade 5 Binder covers and dividers.

I use my Grade 5 Common Core Reading Literature graphic organizers for whole-group lessons and also independent activities.  They also work well for Guided Reading.

These are my Writing Graphic organizers, checklists, and rubrics for multi-paragraph writing:

These are my Writing Graphic Organizers, checklists, and rubrics for writing one paragraph:

These are my 25 posters for Theme. We use the list of themes and messages as reference when discussing stories. It helps to scaffold instruction as students work to identify theme.

This 2014 Writing Calendar makes a great monthly writing practice for the year, but it also can be turned into a calendar as a gift for parents.  We made these last year, and they came out super cute. I just updated the file to include the calendars for 2014.

Resources I have Purchased and Use Often:

Lately, I have really been convicted of how much kids need spiral review in Language Arts as much as Math. They need to continually practice reading skills, writing skills, grammar skills, Figurative Language, typing, cursive, etc. Thus, I am trying to build time in my Language Arts blocks to weekly review all of these skills.

• Panicked Teachers' Language Weekly Skills Challenge:  We will use these on Fridays.  These will be a great way to review figurative language. We are going to be working on Figurative Language in December, so these will be a great way to review the rest of the year.

• Panicked Teachers' Simple, Compound, and Complex Sentences: Sentence Stretching Unit:  I have decided to just start purchasing some of the great independent units sellers have created for teaching different concepts.  Sometimes you just don't have time to create everything yourself.  I love the posters in this set!

• Lovin' Lit's Reading Notebook: I am excited to start using these in whole-group and small-group lessons.

 

 



• Ashleigh's Spiral Language Review: For now, we are focusing on the 4th grade skills before covering the 5th grade Language skills.

• Mandy Neal's Common Core ELA Assessments: I have grades 4 and 5.  These are so handy!

What are your favorite Common Core TpT Language Arts resources?