Post-it notes and figurative language

Many of my students are English Language learners, so they struggle with the nuisances of English.  Figurative language proves especially difficult at times, so I'm always looking for ways to reinforce these skills. 

I stumbled upon this idea:

I can't wait to try it in my classroom!  I bet my small groups would love the challenge, especially if I turn this into a competition between home rooms or AM and PM.  

By having them find their own examples of figurative language in the text, not only will they "own" the skill but they'll also be actively reading to look for examples. 

Silent Reviews

During the intervention portion of our day, we've been working on math and test review.  I decided to spend ten minutes reviewing idioms and figurative language, since many of my ELL (English Language Learners) students still struggle with these.

I display the question card on the smart board:

I give them think time (very necessary for mental processing of right and wrong answers), then ask for their responses.  Instead of shouting out, they hold up their responder cups!

All of them can respond at once without a word.  Plus it's a great formative assessment because they don't really have time to change their answers.  I then have them defend their answers to a neighbor, thus working in the justification piece where they must provide evidence.

It's a great, fun way to review concepts where they all participate without shouting.

Just a few of my favorite (FREE) things

In the spirit of the holidays, I've decided to compile a list of some of my favorite free things, all from TpT.

I did not make these products but love using them in my classroom!

Item 1: Schedule Cards

These adorable cards were made by  Cara Carroll and available free here!  She's included so many subjects and they're perfect for almost any classroom.  

Here's a snapshot of them in my classroom:

When combined with green marker and a funky polka dot border, our schedule gets a lot more fun in fifth grade!  Since they have different specials each day, I just use a magnetic clip to keep them organized.

Item two: Star Wars fluency posters

I'm a nerd, I'll embrace it.  There are superhero and Star Wars things all over my classroom.  I'm not ashamed of it :)

So when I found these adorable freebies:

I literally squealed in delight!  Then of course, forwarded the link to my grade level because who wouldn't want R2D2 helping out their students?

This gem was made by Jane Loretz and is available here on TpT.  Use the force to go snag yours.

Item 3: Grammar Cheat Sheet

I struggle with teaching grammar, especially to my second language learners and inclusion students.  Maybe that's why I love this cheat sheet:

Created by Jen of Hello Literacy and available here, this cheat sheet is a great reference.  I have students place a copy in their writing binders as a resource.

Item 4: Bookmarks

While Carly Rae's song may be a little dated at this point, I still love these free bookmarks:

Available here and made by Kathryn, my students get a kick out of these.  Anything to encourage reading, right?

Item 5: Author's Craft

Another great freebie from Jen at helloliteracy!  

It goes great in our reader notebooks :)

What freebies would you add to the list?

RACE strategy

During our intervention part of the day, I've been working with students on subtracting decimals to the thousandths, figurative language, theme and poetry.

We moved into working with constructed responses and one of my favorite strategies is RACE:

RACE stands for:

Restate the question.  Students use words from the question to formulate their opening or topic sentence.  This helps them to focus their answer.

Answer the question(s) that are asked.  For our district, constructed responses tend to have several parts and it's important for students to answer all portions.

C: Complete sentences.  Students need to remember the rules of grammar, spelling, etc when writing their responses.  We went over that one sentence does not suffice.

E: Evidence your answer, twice.  This helps them with main idea and key supporting details, as well as quoting accurately or inferring details from the passage.

Casey at the Bat

This week we read Casey at the Bat and after days of reading and re-reading this poem, we are done!  Here is a snapshot of some of my students' work:

We take our learning very seriously and are getting ready for our academic futures with lots of interaction with our text!  It's not enough to read the poem and answer questions, we dug much, much deeper.  We discussed the text structure of poetry, found examples of figurative language and rhyming patterns.  We looked at how the mood changed over time and how Casey was portrayed (as a hero).  

We summarized the stanzas, looked for themes and backed up our themes with quotes and evidence from the poem.

Then today we watched this school tube clip to analyze how the poem is similar and different from its multimedia counterpart.  

Next week as an extension (and because we need a little more practice with poems), we're doing Casey's Revenge.

Happy reading!

New TpT products: figurative language and multiplication

In school, we've been working on figurative language during the intervention portion of the day.

To help my students, I created the following centers:

This one is a sort for similes and metaphors.  Students work together to separate phrases into similes or metaphors.  There are 26 examples and students can check their work with the included answer key!

This one is idioms concentration where students have to match the common idiom with its figurative meaning.  AT 33 pages, it's quite a steal!

This final one is a 33 page math center where students must match the multiplication problem with the strategy they'd use to solve that problem.  The focus is not on the product but rather the strategies to get the answer.  Some problems can be solved mentally, some with landmark or friendly numbers, some with estimation and some with traditional algorithm, lattice or box methods. The problems lend themselves to some great discourse and discussions with students.

I hope your students enjoy as much as mine do!

-Ms. Vice

Don't Take Me Literally

During our intervention portion of the day, our grade level has been working on figurative language and idioms (CCSS RL 5.4 and L 5.5).  

We made a foldable, went over the different types, found examples within text, analyzed examples and finally came to the fun part: showing off our work!

As a formative assessment, we had students work in pairs to analyze a common idiom.  They wrote the literal meaning of the phrase, the figurative meaning and drew pictures for each.

I modeled with "it's raining cats and dogs" and then they had an hour to create a rough draft, edit and make a final draft with their partner.

Here is our bulletin board:

Don't take me literally!

Strange Days

Today was...interesting.

It started with me picking my students up from humanities because well, we added that special this week and my specials schedule changed yesterday.  One of my favorite subs is filling that job and my kids had so much fun. 

They worked on creative movement and when I picked them up, I was treated to a flash mob.  Yes, they busted out their new dance moves just for me :)

(I do love my flash mobs!  At MEMTA, I helped orchestrate and lead one while last summer at DENSI, I participated in one at the Vermont Lake Monsters game.)

We analyzed informational texts for the main idea, practiced decoding words with long vowels (a, e & i), worked on revising our pieces, observed stream tables, analyzed figurative language and then switched for math and small groups.

However, I had to confiscate a yu-gi-oh card and dealt with post-it notes with "kick me" on the back.  It is entirely possible I learned to time travel today and returned to about 10 years ago.

Oh hump day.