Show your students there is more than one way to express their words in poetry! In this packet, you will find eight mini posters each featuring a form of poetry to use when teaching each instructional format. Each poster also has an example of the type of poem explained. Students are sure to love writing these forms of poetry about their favorite topics. As well, this could be converted into a Christmas poetry unit utilizing the awesome Christmas scenes as springboards for brainstorming. Forms of poetry included are: limericks, diamantes, cinquains, haikus, couplets, acrostics, shapes, and free verse.

This resource is a great icebreaker for welcoming each child back to school and it will also help to establish a community of learners in your classroom. Students will enjoy decorating these t-shirts with unique personality characteristics about them, illustrate, color, and then attach them to a clothesline already hung in the classroom. Get some really colorful clothespins to attach them to the cord serving as the clothesline! There are three different types of reproducible t-shirts included for the students to have a choice. One of the t-shirt patterns has established lines for those students who choose to write about themselves instead of draw, color, and illustrate important things about them! Kids will have a blast!

This informational text selection is a must have for your reading and/or language arts classes! This timely and relevant article is about the dangers of energy drinks and is designed to make your students think before they drink. The article has several illustrations complete with captions to aid in rich discussion. It is perfect for sixth through eighth grades depending on varying reading levels. There is a formative quiz attached with DOK 1, 2, and 3 questions. This 1000 word article is sure to be a hit with your classes!

This pennant is sure to get your students back in the groove of school after the Christmas break. On the pennant, students are asked to write a five to seven sentence paragraph about what they did over their Christmas break. Also, they are asked what was their most favorite present and who did they receive it from. Also, they are asked if they traveled anywhere during Christmas break and if so, where did they travel? Finally, on the perimeters of the pennant, students are asked to write an acrostic for winter as well as create a shape poem for a snowman! Students are sure to enjoy this activity as they "get in the groove" of school again in January!

This resource is perfect for the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Enclosed you will find five pages of a short narrative story that has a certain rhyme and rhythm to it that students will enjoy! It is a story told from a young girl’s point of view about how she wishes for a horse for Christmas. She is reminded in the story that she will still have a great Christmas even if she doesn’t get a horse; however, she is convinced that one secretly hides in the barn for her. Her mom reminds her about many other children whose parents might very well be away for Christmas. This is a very old Christmas story and was published through Scholastic in 1968. Again, the students will love many teaching and learning activities associated with the story! This story lends itself to several teaching and learning endeavors such as: (1) the use of personification; (2) great vocabulary instruction; (3) sequencing; (4) point of view; (5) Descriptive Writing; (6) research and investigation of several different states discussed in the story; (7) the use of similes to make comparisons; and (8) making predictions about what will happen next in the story based on the context clues provided!

The RAFT strategy is a great strategy for being able to differentiate instruction in terms of content, process, and product. It is that time of the year again in terms of reading the famous classic ~ A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. During the reading of or after, the students have read this great classic, allow them to utilize the RAFT strategy where they get to make a choice in each column of the activity. They decide from what perspective they will write from, whom they will write to, in what format they will write, and what will be their topic.

Universal Studios is at it again... Your students are going to absolutely love this selection. Use this informational text article to “hook them and hold them” for absolute sure! What a better way to practice metacognitive strategies for close reading. This article can be utilized to practice all of the many close-reading strategies that you have worked all year on with your students, which we all know, are life-long reading skills! The selection includes nonfiction information in regards to the new park opening on April 7, 2016, at Universal Studios, in Hollywood. The selection is approximately 750 words long and proves to provide the rigor needed for the complexity that is required of students’ text! At the conclusion of the article, there is a formative assessment (12 questions) that you might use for a teaching opportunity to go over specific skills and how the answer is derived (implicitly or explicitly stated for example) or of course it might be used independently as a comprehension check. There are many, many ways to utilize this selection to suit the needs of your classroom! I hope your students enjoy!

This resource is a must have for giving a solid description of the three tiers of instruction. It is full of infographics that aid in the explanation for a refresher session on each tier. The training slides progress from the programs, methodologies, and strategies that we specifically use at tier one to ensure high quality instruction to the intensiveness of tier III and the possibility of progressing to a child-study through the MET team. Next, an in-depth look is given to tier two and specific strategies that help to intervene in specific deficits. Then, a look at tier III is investigated and discussed. This training is meant to take the participant through each tier looking at strategies, decision-making skills, and timelines for best practice. This training can be used in a focused faculty meeting, a professional development session, or in a smaller professional learning community as a specific focus group strengthens their process in Response to Intervention!

This is the perfect set of instructional materials to work with your students in the last few weeks prior to the Christmas break! Whew! It is a busy time of the year that’s for sure! Now, to let you know a bit more about this product. As most of you are probably aware, Zillow has drawn quite a considerable amount of attention to themselves in the last week or so by creating a listing of Santa’s home at the North Pole! So, I have taken that listing and capitalized on it as a teaching and learning experience! This packet of materials contains the following: (1) 30 comprehension questions that travel and span the different levels of complexity; (2) 10 selected vocabulary words from the listing to complete “word work” with to include fifteen different pages of vocabulary graphic organizers to utilize; (3) A performance based task that can be differentiated just simply by student preference; (4) 3 different performance based tasks which involve “designing and creating” based on written descriptions from the listing that include the topics of: (1) Santa’s garage; (2) state-of-the-art toy making facility; and (3) toy prototypes; (5) 2 argumentative/persuasive writing prompts complete with organizers to frame thinking; (6) An extended activity in terms of investigating the history of Fisher Price Toys and sequencing major events within the article; (7) An extended activity in terms of investigating the proper way to roast chestnuts and sequencing major events within the article; (8) An extended activity in terms of utilizing a cake batter sugar cookie recipe complete with comprehension questions; and (9) An extended activity in terms of using analogies complete with graphic organizers to frame the analogies.

This is a packet of three mini posters. These posters can serve as aids for encouraging students to make connections to the world, to the text itself, and to themselves while reading; henceforth, text-to-world connections, text-to-text connections, and text-to-self connections. These mini-posters are a perfect fit above a whiteboard to make reference too as the class is reading or working on an assignment with literature and informational text!

This packet contains a set of nine mini-posters which display each element of literature. Elements include: plot, setting, theme, characterization, conflict, mood, style, tone, and point of view. The mini-posters are the perfect size to display above a whiteboard in a reading/language arts classroom.

Use these simple mini-posters to teach story retelling in a very simple way! These posters cover key concepts while teaching students a simple way to think about retelling a story with these key words and key questions! Utilize these as a teaching tool all year long to reference to daily and weekly in teaching retelling and how to construct a summary of a story!

Your students will be tickled pink by these humorous posters which feature popular idioms and clues associated with their definitions and implied meanings. Use these posters to explore parts of speech, promote understanding of figurative language, and use as a spring board for further study of figures of speech and writing experiences. This packet contains forty-three popular idioms and matching illustrations. You might focus on an idiom a week or use several to display on a writer’s workshop bulletin board! Your students will love these hilarious posters!

In this packet, you will find seven great at-a glance reading comprehension strategies mini posters that are a perfect fit above your white board in your classroom. They will also work ideal on a bulletin board. The seven strategies include: predicting, visualizing, questioning, connecting, identifying, inferring, and evaluating. They are all designed with colorful animal print borders!

Wow! It is "THAT" time of year! You know... the dreaded state assessments. Take the time to really examine the goals that students can all make for themselves as they investigate their strong points, their areas that need focus, and the steps they need to take to achieve the goals they establish. This is the perfect culminating organizer for student data notebooks. Additionally, there are desk cards (nine to a page) that allow students a constant reminder about the steps they are currently taking to achieve their goal. As well, these cards might also be used to create shorter, incremental goals if need be to meet the larger goal: SUCCESS on the STATE TEST!

This is an awesome packet to utilize to teach opinion writing in grades, three, four, and five. This packet contains seven different sources which all have critical information in trying to formulate an opinion in whether one should buy an artificial tree or a real tree during this Christmas season. Five of the sources are articles from the web and include the following titles: (1) Real of Plastic: Many Consumers Will Be Asking Themselves That Question This Season; (2) It’s Environmentally and Traditionally Wrong to Buy and Use Plastic Products to Celebrate Christmas… Here’s Why?; (3) Dear Earth Talk: What’s Better for the Environment, a Fake or Real Christmas Tree?; (4) Buy a Real Christmas Tree and Support Our Economy?; and (5) Real vs. Fake Christmas Trees: Which is Better for the Environment? Next, there are two other sources which are graphs/charts and include: (1) China Tops in Fake Christmas Trees and (2) Tree Purchases (in millions). Students can critically read each of these sources to help them formulate an opinion. Upon much discussion and examination of each of the seven sources, students then can complete one of the two graphic organizers provided to frame their opinion writing. Both organizers allow the students to provide an opinion based on what they have read. Additionally, they are asked to give reasons and evidence for their opinion. These organizers pave the way for the writing of the opinion piece asked for in CCSS: (W.3.a,b,c,d) (W.4.a,b,c,d) and (W.5.a,b,c,d).

You surely do not want to miss this resource! This packet is 32 pages long and focuses on argumentative/persuasive writing. The students conduct research on the different types of Christmas lights and how to “elegantly” decorate their tree using the appropriate lights. After conducting research and reading articles which are provided including the source, the students develop a “hook” statement that will allow the readers to want to read more to determine the best decision to make in terms of buying and decorating with the proper Christmas lights. Next, after developing the “hook” statement, students utilize a graphic organizer that is provided, and develop their claim and actually state it. The next part of the graphic organizer allows the students to state three reasons why their claims is the best decision to make. As well, after stating and writing each particular reason, there is also a space on the graphic organizer for students to write their evidence in the form of a sentence that supports their specific reason for the claim. Finally, at the end of the graphic organizer, the students are to provide a concluding sentence for their claim. Students will enjoy this particular activity so much during the holiday season; you can’t go wrong with this teaching and learning activity!

Show your students there is more than one way to express their words in poetry! In this packet, you will find eight mini posters each featuring a form of poetry to use when teaching each instructional format. Each poster also has an example of the type of poem explained. Students are sure to love writing these forms of poetry about their favorite topics. As well, this could be converted into a fall poetry unit utilizing the awesome fall scenes as springboards for brainstorming. Forms of poetry included are: limericks, diamantes, cinquains, haikus, couplets, acrostics, shapes, and free verse.

The RAFT strategy is a great strategy for being able to differentiate instruction in terms of content, process, and product. It is that time of the year again in terms of viewing the infamous lighting of the Rockefeller Christmas Tree in New York City. But, have your students ever investigated the process of how that huge tree actually gets to its final destination? Have your students traced the history of how this celebration and tradition originated in the first place? Have your students investigated the history of the ornaments on the tree? What about the history of the lights on the tree? Have they determined how November 30th is celebrated in terms of “lighting” the tree? This is an awesome opportunity to explore all of the answers to these questions through using such strategies as jigsaw, discussion, inquiry, and discovery. Then, after this portion of the teaching and learning sequence has taken place, students can take part in the RAFT activity where they get to make a choice in each column of the activity. For example, students might choose to write from the perspective of the Christmas tree itself and write to the farm from which the tree has been growing all of these years prior to it being cut. The writing might be in the form of a narrative piece of writing where the tree tells the story of growing up on the farm all of those years and how he/she might have longed to become the famous tree in Rockefeller Center one day. The tree might narrate his/her journey all the way to the final destination and the lighting on November 30th. This is only one example. Of course, there are many, many other options, and many other opportunities for mini-lessons along the way!

Perhaps most importantly in today's information age, thinking skills are viewed as crucial for educated persons to cope with a rapidly changing world. Many educators believe that specific knowledge will not be as important to tomorrow's workers and citizens as the ability to learn and make sense of new information. —D. Gough, 1991 With that being said, it is critical for students to learn strategies to employ when thinking through a scenario, a problem, a situation, a research project, etc. This set of mini-posters can be used as a year long resource in any classroom to equip students with eight strategies that students should learn to use each and every day as they strive to be successful in school. With a relatively small size, the mini-posters will fit perfect above a white board or on a bulletin board as a constant reminder for students to persevere and solve problems when working.