Kagan Cooperative Mats- Standards Based

These mats are standards based, and will excite and engage your students! My students love to see a new mat come out.  These mats not only guide instruction, they assist students in cooperative discussions.  In addition to this mat, I have also uploaded a main idea/summarizing mat, and a RACE mat that will help students respond to short answer questions. 

Grab Your Mat Here!

Lots of Analyzing Photos!

Today's learners are very visual!  With this in mind, most of my "hooks" involve some sort of imagery to begin with.  Within my district, we focus on one standard, in both literary and informational, each week, although inferring and vocabulary (Standards 1 and 4) are taught each week.  With that being said, most of my units start with photographs/illustrations.  Visuals are a great way to draw the kids into the content, spark their natural curiosity, and ignite their inferencing skills!  Most of these photographs were used with Scholastic Scope or Storyworks!

Character Traits and Gobstoppers!

While scrolling through instagram, I found this fabulous idea to demonstrate character change using Gobstoppers!  It was a fabulous idea, and the kids always love any lesson involving food, but who doesn't right??  We used A Bad Case of Stripes as the anchor text for character change, plot, and theme.  The Gobstoppers worked perfectly!  Students will not be forgetting that the characters change just like the candy did! We of course connected the candy/character change to the theme!

Kagan and More!

The Kagan strategies have really been an amazing addition to our classroom climate!  If you haven't been to one of these learning academies, I highly recommend it!  The kids are super engaged and the discussions that are going on are amazing!  

Numbered Heads Together: 

Jot Thoughts: 

Round Robin:

Rally Coach: 

 

Busy, Busy, Busy!!!

As most of you know, the beginning of the school year until about Christmas break is a mad dash!  This year, my 5th/6th graders have been just as busy as I have!  We have almost been through every single ELA standard once so far, I have attended a two-day Kagan learning event, been to an all day training approximately 2 hours away, started to work extensively on my social media presence with insta, and most of all have grown some amazing connections with all of my kiddos!  The Kagan training really was amazing and refreshing!  I also have the opportunity to attend the Kentucky Reading Association this year!  I have oodles and oodles of pics of awesome things that have been going on within my classroom.  I am going to upload several here, but for a more thorough picture of what has been going on in the classroom, head over to instagram by clicking on the insta icon to the right!


First up:  This is an amazing resource to implement cooperative learning and content!  Please head on over to my TPT to snatch this up!

Next Up:  This is an awesome literary inference lesson!  The kids were super engaged.  I did also do, what I call a character case, to get things moving.  Inside the character case, I placed a printout of the following:  soccer ball, the word resistance, soldier, map with Chile circled, faded out "composition," and an illustration of Pedro, the protagonist. We then did a read aloud, followed by the matching evidence to inferences activity, which is also available in my TPT. 

We also worked on Standard 8 with the Fortnite text located in the latest Storyworks!  The kids were beyond excited to have the opportunity to talk Fortnite in class! Grab the positive, negative, neutral statements to go with this activity in my TPT!

ELA Standard Strategy Cards

These cards are awesome and extremely handy to have on a ring when you are lesson planning. Lesson Strategies are broken down by ELA standard to enable you to quickly identify engaging activities that would help your students achieve mastery of that standard! 

Get your copy here! 

Tech is Sweet!

Noisli

Chatterpix

Target, Target, Target.... Oh How I Love You!!

I know, especially after all of my insta scrolling, that I am not alone in my love for visiting the Bullseye Playground.  Each and every time I visit a Target, which by the way is at least an hour from my home, I return with a load of goodies.  This is especially true during July and August.  I bought a frisbee, yes a frisbee, at Target during my last trip that has "This is my Happy Place" printed on it with a beautiful rainbow.  Those words couldn't be more true.  I can't imagine being unhappy while shopping the lovely bins at the Bullseye Playground! 

Oddly enough, when I return with all of my goodies, they inevitably end up hanging around in the corner of my home office for a week or so, then I will finally get them into my classroom.  During the summer months, I am a frequent visitor to my classroom, as I am sure most of you are.  Well, after placing my Target treasures on a group of student desks, I will pull from the pile as I am working to place things and decorate for the upcoming year.  I also frequently end up moving the pile of treasure from desk group to desk group.  Luckily the pile shrinks as I rotate it around the room!  See the evidence below, and yes I even had to take a pic of Target! 

So, the first two pics show all of my goodies before organization, and the last pic shows what is currently awaiting placement on my back table. 

Student Magazine Covers

I have blogged about these before, but I just can't help myself from sharing again.  I sent them to the printer yesterday, and I am never disappointed when I pick them up.  They print out beautifully on 11x17 glossy card stock.  This is what they look like freshly laminated.

Bulletin Boards!

These Bulletin Boards Are On Point!!

The first bulletin board was inspired by one that I saw on instagram.  I can't recall exactly who it belonged to, but it was awesome.  So, I had my daughter recreate this using her graphic design software and then had it printed.  I am uploading to my TPT as a freebie!! Get your copy here!

The second board was also inspired by one that I saw on instagram.  Can you tell I spend a lot of time scrolling through teacher pages on insta?? I purchased the banner letters from Cherry Workshop on TPT.  Oh, and on a side note, that cute little cactus in the middle was a balloon that my husband got me on Valentine's Day last year.  <3

Desk Plates Customized to Kagan Numbering and Target Adhesive Sleeves!

Freebie!!

Please visit my TPT store to download your copy of desk plates.  Use these fun desk plates when working with cooperative groups to sort your students by number, letter, background color, or pineapple!!  These are awesome, and they are already formatted to slide right into Target adhesive sleeves!

Get your copy here!

Update!!  Here are some actual pics of these in the sleeves and placed on my desks!

Student Magazine Pics!

A great way to welcome students back to school is to create magazine covers featuring their pic, favorite college, and career goals!  The students and their parents really love to see these.  I always laminate them and send them home when we change the hallway displays.  They will not break the bank either! After I create them, I create an 11x17 page size in Publisher.  I then place two magazine covers on each 11x17 page and save as a pdf.  I usually create a file holding approximately 10 pictures on 5 pages.  After I have created all of  my files, I then send to our local print shop, and I ask them to print them on 11x17 glossy cardstock.  The cost is usually around $1.25 each sheet, which is roughly 62 cents each!!! Each student cover ends up being an 8x10 pic!!

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