Sunday, January 22, 2012

Shape Madness!

We are in the midst of our measurement unit and I've decided we need some fun measuring activities that involve shapes too! My students are not very familiar with their basic shapes this year and I'm just a bit worried since we are quickly approaching our yearly assessment. I shopped around and found the most adorable clipart involving shapes by KPMDoodles. I love how she gives the shapes personality! My students will love it! I created a unit called Shape Madness which involves identifying attributes of basic shapes including hexagon, octagon, ellipse, and more. I also added in different activities involving problem solving, measuring,and perimeter. In all there are five activities in the unit so that it'll fit nicely into a week long unit. I hope you take a moment to hop over to my TPT store and download it! 
 

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Martin Luther King Jr.

Our students have tomorrow off in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. In the past couple of weeks, we have been studying characters in different genres. Our main focus has been on how and why characters change in the books we read. In honor of Martin Luther King Jr., I created a 'Characters Change' graphic organizer for students to fill out when reading a biography of Martin Luther King Jr.  We will most likely read the following biography on Tuesday:

We will focus on how Martin Luther King Jr. changed throughout his life and what caused him to change. Feel free to download the graphic organizer free on TPT in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day by clicking on the image below.



Monday, January 9, 2012

Making Inferences About Character Traits

I can't believe we are already nine days into January!  It's been a while since my last post and things have been a bit busy around here. I'm hoping to start posting a minimum of once a week. I've been creating some great tools but just haven't had time to post them. I'm sure everyone has the same busy, chaotic lives!

The last couple of week we have been studying characters in fiction genres. We've been exploring character traits and discussing how we can determine character traits through the text and the clues the author gives us.  I saw a few different types of graphic organizers around on different blogs but needed something all in one place for my kids to use. I created this all-in-one chart where students can jot down character traits and the evidence the text provided to help them infer that specific character trait. I included three different columns (dialogue, actions, other clues) so my kids could really think about different ways the author can help us with inferencing about characters. It's available to download for free on my TPT store. Click here to download now. Happy inferring!