Everyone likes to make timelines, right?  I mean they are super useful for any number of activities and when studying the American Revolution, well, they fit in quite nicely.  So, I asked my students to make a timeline with several of the most important events that took place during this time. I didn't want a straight line timeline though, so we did something a bit different.  I had them make hidden door timelines! Here is how we did it. The kids created a line space in the middle of a piece of construction paper.  Then, I had them measure out the "doors" and then cut three of the four edges on the doors.  Honestly....this was hard.  So I have made a little preprinted template for you (that you can use for ANY period of time, not just the Revolution)  Click here to get it .  I would recommend copying it on cardstock or construction paper.  The thick paper will just work best for this.  Have the kids cut along the dotted line and......

One thing I really like to do (though I suspect we all do ;) ) is connect the language arts skills we are learning about to the reading we are actually doing.  If the kids see what it is that I am telling them good writers do while they are reading a book that is considered good writing, I feel like there is more buy-in.  So while teaching about appositives, I took the opportunity to have the students dig into our novel, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH , to find the skill in action. This lesson came AFTER we had taken notes in our grammar journal, done a few workbook pages, and even had some small group lessons on it....so it wasn't an introduction.  The kids already had some working knowledge of what appositives were.  However, that didn't make this any easier ;)  It is one thing looking in a workbook and figuring out what the appositive is.  It is quite another finding it in actual text...where you aren't even sure there are any to begin with! So, a......

Here we are again, talking about our book study (can you tell I am LOVING the Core Lit route???)  So today I wanted to share what we did with character traits. In our book, Bridge to Terabithia (Movie Tie-in) , there are two main characters that we follow throughout:  Jess and Leslie.  The first few chapters do a great job of describing them, so I asked the kids to create a foldable with a picture of Jess and Leslie on the front.  They were to take evidence from the story (you know, reading closely and all) and create their character sketches. Then, on the inside, I asked the kids to make a double bubble map about these two. They were to find character traits and then list the evidence underneath the bubble.  I asked for direct quotes, but if you remember this post from a few days ago...we are still working on that. Anyway, what is AWESOME about this is that as the characters change, and we learn more about them and their personalities, we just go ba......

Answering the questions in the back of the book is rarely a fun endeavor for the students, but today that wasn't the case in class!  Just adding a little twist really made it exciting for the kids.  Let me explain. You see, we are just starting our unit on Circulation and Respiration and the students really did need to read the science text and answer the questions about their reading (as that information is what they will be tested on when taking our major TEST)  So, after a discussion about how the circulatory system is the transportation system for our body, I gave the students a foldable that I had pre-printed the questions from the end of the article on.  Instantly, their interest was peaked (what is it about foldables that makes things so much better???!!)  For 20 minutes, they were to silently read the article and find the answer to the questions, recording them on the foldable. Then, I asked them to work for about 10 minutes as a group.......

This week we took a small departure from our main basal story to focus on something I haven't done in YEARS....Core Lit.  The look on the students' faces, the twinkle in their eyes, when I handed them an actual book and told them we were going to read it in class was priceless.  This, I think, is going to be a great adventure for us. So, with that, I wanted to share with you what we have done so far.  First off, I chose to use Bridge to Terabithia for our first novel.  Partially because that is what we have available and partially because I know it centers around a 5th grade boy, friendships, and feelings of being on the outs....all things I would like us to explore in class.   I found this AWESOME and super teacher friendly unit from Scholastic free online here.   I am using it as a springboard for my discussion of the book (as well as my basal, overlapping skills so that I can be sure to cover everything.)  Since this was the beginning o......

Right before Winter Break, we began to touch upon our study of the elements and the Periodic Table.  Now, in 5th grade we deal mostly with chemical equations and how reactions produce products made from the same materials that they started with.  So my students are spending a great deal of time looking at chemical reactions, writing equations, and moving molecules around. But mixed in there, the students ALSO need to learn about the elements themselves.  So, I wanted to take a little time and show you some of the stuff we have been doing in our room. First, my teammate Susie ( The Panicked Teacher. ...you must visit her site!  She has some great things there)  got me this AWESOME book for the holidays.  The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe It really is fantastic.  It shows all of the elements and the various materials that they make up.  The photos are breathtaking and it is PERFECT for a study on the eleme......

I really like using foldables in my class.  They are just easy little information organizers that really grab my students' attention.  I use them in every subject, for everything we are doing.  Here are a few that we have used these past few weeks. Math -- The Process of Division We are learning about dividing larger numbers this week.  So I printed out this math problem for the students.  They folded the paper in half, cut along the numbers, and inside the flaps, the students wrote the steps for that particular part of the process.  This is just a review foldable, where they are keeping the pattern of the division process.  It goes in their math journals as a handy little reference tool for them. Science -- The Water Cycle The students created this little 4 part foldable detailing the four main parts of the water cycle -- evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection.  On the outside, they drew a picture of that part of the ......

The last few weeks of school I found myself wrapping up our new reading series with the students, and applying all of the skills we had learned throughout the year.  Our last unit was heavy on non-fiction text, so I was combing through my brain thinking of new and different ways to respond....when on my doorstep appeared Laura Candler's new book, Laura Candler's Graphic Organizers for Reading: Teaching Tools Aligned with the Common Core.   It showed up just in time to save the day!  Let me preface this by saying that Laura did send the book to me, but my review is in no way clouded by that.  The opinions stated here are my own. As I browsed through the book, there were quite a few of these organizers that caught my eye...mostly because they DIDN'T NEED COPIES to use!  You see, this isn't a worksheet book, so much as a book with things that can be reused or created into foldables using plain paper.  Case in point, this one. This is an Informationa......

I love foldables.  They can take the most mundane of material and liven it up so that the kids are meaningfully engaged and learning.  As the year has progressed, I find myself using more and more of these little pieces of paper in my classroom.  My latest craze has been to use them in science.  I find that when I am using them to sum up all of our learning, it helps to create a "one stop shop" for the students to use.  They are able to easily access the information they need, and serves to help them remember just a bit better. We are studying about Living Systems and how the human body and plants have similar traits.  To begin, we started with the various cells and their functions.  Here was the foldable we used to really sum it all up.  ( read all about it here ) To wrap up our journey through the organs of the human body, I had the students create a foldable that included all of the different body systems we have learned about......