Super Cyber Sitewide Sale

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Check out these other great resources from my Lesson Deli friends...

An InLinkz Link-up

Celebrating Veteran's Day-Upper Elementary to Middle School

It is Monday and the perfect day to find an ideal mentor text to share with your students.  This week's focus is Veteran's Day.  Whether you have a special veteran in your life or not, this is one of those holidays that is essential to share with our students.  We must help them understand all that our veterans have sacrificed for our country and continue to do so in order to maintain our freedoms.  So here is my idea for you...

While there are a number of great reads and read alouds, this is one that is most meaningful to my upper elementary students because it involves a dog.  I am not sure about you, but the majority of my students are pet owners and animal lovers.  This text is engaging because it is about a feral dog who forms a bond with Major Brian Dennis, a Marine fighting in Iraq.  When Dennis' troop is relocated, Nubs travels over 70 miles to find his special human friend.  It is a story about the kindness of a soldier and the strong-will of a dog who is seeking the perfect owner.

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Harvest of FREEBIES Blog Hop

Thanks for hopping over...

Fall is absolutely my favorite time of year!  I love the cool, crisp mornings that heat up in the afternoons, the fun of all of the Halloween festivities, the anticipation of my children's costume choices, and everything PUMPKIN!  I know many others who share this same sentiment about fall as well.  With this love of fall, the harvest season, we have decided to create a blog hop to share a "Harvest of Freebies" for you to take back to your classroom.  I have created TWO freebies for you to utilize with your upper elementary to middle school students...

The first, Pumpkin Harvesting, is an informational close reading text with word work and reader response questions.  I utilize close reading passages with my students that are struggling with comprehension and having challenges going back into a reading selection to cite evidence to determine correct responses.  While we work on these skills throughout the year, I am always in need of high-interest passages that I can use for whole class, small group, or independent practice.

This Pumpkin Harvesting Close Reading FREEBIE will help your students:

1. better understand/reinforce CLOSE READING strategies
2. identify how to harvest pumpkins
3. determine the meaning of unknown words using context clues
4. cite evidence from the one-page text to support responses. 

 Click the image to grab FREEBIE #1:

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Reader's Theater in your Upper Elementary to Middle School Classroom For Any Day and All Seasons

Reader's Theater is an AMAZING tool to utilize with students at so many levels.  My daughter's teacher, Mrs. Bell from A Place Called Kindergarten seems to be a guru of primary reader's theater.  She does Theater Thursday with her kindergartners using resources that she has created based on various books, and my daughter couldn't love it more.  Would you believe that older kiddos LOVE it just as much?

A few years ago when we began utilizing Reading Street, I was lucky enough to land the Reader's Theater Anthology.  I don't know about the other grade levels, but 6th grade has some great scripts.  The idea is that each unit has it's own script, so they range from historical fiction, fantasy, realistic fiction, poetry, etc.  At first, I had no idea how to implement it into my week with all of the other instructional components of my day, but I knew fluency was something that we needed to enhance. Our DIBELs scores were not where they needed to be, and in addition to more read to someone time, I needed to make fluency work fun, so on an inconsistent basis, we tackled some if the different scripts.

While it helps to have a group that is willing to perform, what I found was that the enthusiasm of the students when performing is contagious.  Students that might be more reserved as you tackle the first few scripts with your crew, will become more comfortable and engaged the more you incorporate them into your instruction.  While they may have been reluctant, it will soon pass and students will be crossing fingers for the characters with the most lines.

By having this additional fluency practice, I began to see that students were much more animated readers.  No longer were they just racing the clock and reading words as quickly as possible during 6-minute solutions or with weekly progress monitoring, instead they were much more expressive.  I have been truly impressed with how beneficial reader's theater has been for my BIG kiddos.

I soon realized that sharing the same scripts year after year was BORING for me, so I began turning some of the happenings at school into scripts of my own.  I also found that I could include other components that I knew my students needed additional work on...extended response questions, context clue word work, and prompt writing.  My students LOVE these even more, and anytime I have a sub, I leave a script and fun pack for my students to perform and the day is usually issue-free.

If you have an anthology you love, but are looking for some additional high-interest scripts and fun packs that go along with the different seasons, here are a few of my favorites:

For FALL and Halloween

For EVERYDAY fun!

To enhance a study on FABLES

More EVERYDAY fun!

To teach about our American History

I have included a FREEBIE!  With St. Nicholas Night arriving in a few days, this is the perfect reader's theater to share with your students.  It is only 6-characters, so you can have multiple groups working and performing.  Click here to snag it up, and be sure to let me know what you think with some feedback...

I would love to hear about some of the awesome reader's theater resources you have utilized!

How do you teach FABLES?

My students LOVE fables!  They are clever little stories that involve talking animals, and convey a lesson!  What is more fun than that?

The other day my neighbor stopped me.  She is a mom of three teenagers-a college freshman, a high school junior, and an eighth grader...YIKES!  She asked if I wanted to come over to check out some books she was planning to get rid of? "Of course!" I said .

Side note-I am not a pack rat-I am a pitcher-trasher!

1. I hate clutter!  
2. I have a hard time watching Hoarders!
3. When things are left around the house by my children, I contemplate whether they will miss them if I throw them away!

So off I go to my neighbor's!  To my dismay, but my daughter's pure joy, she has a GIANT bag of crap stuff that she is wanting to send my way! Everything from craft supplies, broken trinkets, stickers-you name it-it was in the bag.  My daughter wanted EVERYTHING, darn her!  She then went through a stack of books! Among them a version of Aesop's Fables I had not seen...inspiration for my latest reader's theaters.

After reading through this version, I found some fables I have never read with my students and created four, one-page, three-character scripts with corresponding reader response questions to give students the chance to: work on fluency, enhance comprehension, and learn about the fable genre in a FUN way!

Fable scripts included in the BUNDLE:
The Fox and the Crane
The Fox and the Cat
The Wolf and the Crane
The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse

Moral of my story: my neighbor's trash turned into my latest treasure!

Click the image to check out my latest FABLE creation.

More Reader's Theater for the Middle Grades-The Cafeteria Catastrophe

As I continue on with my teaching hiatus/maternity leave, I find that teaching is constantly still on my brain.  Upon my return to teaching next school year, I will be tackling the common core standards.  While I know it has been a gradual transition, I need to have my act together and be prepared to jump in head first.

In preparation, I continue to spend some time each week writing, working on lessons, and following favorite blogs in order to keep my mind from turning to "mommy mush!" My latest writing is another Reader's Theater that I know all middle grade students will love!

As teachers, we are often inspired by our students.  This piece was definitely inspired by a scenario that took place last school year.  I learn a tremendous amount from my students...mostly good, but sometimes my findings can be frustrating.  All names have been changed, but milk was stolen from our cafeteria and students were faced with varying consequences.

If you are looking for a piece that has your students working on fluency, engaged,  and making TONS of inferences, make sure you check out The Cafeteria Catastrophe Reader's Theater on my Teachers Pay Teachers site http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/More-Readers-Theater-for-the-Middle-Grades-881050.  This 15-page resource comes with 5-reader response questions, a summary organizer, and summary answer guide.  Here is a sneak peek: