After learning what it means to make inferences, students will be surprised at how much they can infer with very little information. This lesson is easy to adjust depending on time and background knowledge and is a great lesson to springboard into other activities.

I used this in my classroom to make the rules more memorable and fun for my students. The file is in word so feel free to edit as needed. My philosophy was simple, easy to remember, positively stated rules.

Fun pictures to help get kids writing. My students in the past responded well to these pictures (i.e. giraffes waterskiing, iceclimbers, etc). They can be used in a variety of assignments and are in an easy to edit PowerPoint format.

These are free for downloading for your convenience if you purchased the Native American Unit or the Native American Unit: Resources Proposal Project. I did not spend a lot of time making these especially attractive, but I did focus my energy on making them useful. I have taken information from the websites listed on the Resources Proposal Project and narrowed it WAY down to be far more manageable for your students. Each packet has a "Stuck?" page at the end to guide their thinking. When printing, I advise you to hold on to the "Stuck?" page and hand out if groups are struggling. These pages guide their thinking and highlight quotes from the different articles that are particularly important. Please let me know if you have any questions. You can find the entire Native American Unit in my store or you can simply search for the Native American Unit: Resources Proposal Project, if that interests you.

Students will work in teams to search around the room, in magazines, newspapers, and textbooks to find examples of external text features. A fun and easy activity to quickly test if students understand and can identify these features that are important for navigating informational texts.

Includes 3 different quizzes and a key. Quizzes are formatted to fit multiple on a page for easy printing.

This is the free version for the Presidential Birthday party - a fun and educational activity where students prepare place cards and toasts to various U.S. Presidents. Please see the paid version for $5 for access to the "invitation" to the party with detailed instructions, pages to help you as the teacher make it a success, and study aids for the test.

9 page packet for supplemental use when teaching the short story “To Build a Fire.” I used this with my students when I taught 8th grade. We read this story at the beginning of the year. Page 1 & 2: Comparing “To Build a Fire” with the short story “The Law of Life.” Page 3: Pre-reading activity Pages 4-8: During the story activities including vocabulary, reading strategies, and foreshadowing lesson and practice page. Page 9: During/after reading characterization analysis I have included both a PDF version and a word doc version for editing.

Students will create a menu complete with appetizers, main course items, and desserts. Each menu item should reflect your students' understanding of how the Columbian Exchange changed the world, specifically the world of food. Includes a handout and a rubric. This resource will be a part of "Age of Exploration Part 3."

This engaging presentation will teach your students what an inference is, how to make them first using pictures and then using simple poems, and teach them how to back up their inferences with evidence. Includes a fun activity where students will solve poetic riddles and then create one of their own. Neat and clear presentation. Easy to adapt to your needs.

I have included both a teacher version and a student version for this project. There is also a presentation to help you teach the students about artifacts, how to analyze them, and introduces the final project. For this project students will create an artifact that should reveal something about themselves as well as their community. This project allows for a lot of freedom and is a great beginning of the year project, which conveniently is when Native American units are usually taught. It will allow you as a teacher to get to know who your students are personally as well as what their strengths are as a student. The PDF is for you, the teacher, and gives you some tips and ideas for how to introduce this project as well as an easy way to keep tabs on their progress and, finally, fun ideas for presenting the artifacts at the end of the unit. This is part of a larger unit which can be purchased in whole for $15 from my store. It is called "Native American Unit." Please let me know if you have any questions!

As a teacher I believe in an occasional party with a purpose. After all, they exist in the workforce, why not in the classroom? This is a fun, but educational "birthday party”, to be held near President's day. A Presidential Birthday Party typically lasts 20-30 minutes. Students complete the test while the room is set up. The resources for the party include: an “invitation" that has clear instructions, a sample assignment, and list to be cut into strips for assigning presidents. Resources for the test include: a study guide, lyrics to the song "The Presidents" by Warner Bros Animaniacs, and the quiz over the first 17 presidents. For the actual "birthday party”, we would have cake and icecream, but drinks and cups would be sufficient. Students get really into this activity and it's a fun and easy way to introduce them to some of the presidents that may or may not be covered in your curriculum

The prereading activity includes four very short primary source documents about slavery in order to give students the background knowledge they will need for the text. It would be a good idea to have the prereading activity completed in groups and discussed as a class. The questions to the text include 13 different questions, some comprehensive (ex: How did Douglass learn to read?), some text-to-self comparisons (ex: If you were in Douglass’s position, what do you think would be the most difficult part of life as a slave for you?), and some analytical (ex: Why do you think Frederick Douglass called this story about him learning to read, “A Spirit Unshackled?” ). I'm including it as a docx to simplify editing for you. You may add or delete questions as needed for your student's ability and time.

This is a fun and engaging final activity that the students work towards throughout a literary unit on Agatha Christie's novel, "And Then There Were None." This set includes a handout for the students, a rubric, and an explanation page for the teacher. Get ready for an exciting day filled with classroom discussion and accusations as students literally get in character and try to figure out "who done it!"

An engaging presentation where students learn about context clues through inquiry and then identify types at the end of the lesson instead of the beginning. Students will discover they can define words such as "bellwether" and "saxicolous" through careful reading and context clues. The PowerPoint presentation includes an attention grabber, an activity, and notes. Can be completed in as short as 15 minutes or longer depending on your students' background knowledge and how in depth you decide to take the discussion. Includes a fun worksheet that uses Lewis Carroll famous poem, "The Jabberwocky" to put context clues into action. Great way to assess what the student's have learned.

In this activity, students will learn how Christopher Columbus's discovery of America led to a global chain of events that changed and shaped the world. This activity is easily adaptable. You could simply use this as a boring notes page if you are short on time. It could be completed individually or with partners as a research assignment. Or you could turn it into a fun game where students race each other in teams, using their background knowledge and textbooks to try and place the cards in the correct box. Any way you do it, at the end the students are provided with a visual understanding of how this event changed the world. There are two versions of the actual worksheet, a word version for editing and a PDF file for simplicity. I have also included a key. The final two files are "cards." The cards are supposed to be cut out so students can move them around and experiment. It makes it easier for the teacher to come and check and tell them yes or no and have them experiment again without continually erasing. The complete set does not have pictures. The other set is not complete, but has pictures if you are interested.

Students will practice their knowledge of context clues and connotation by studying Lewis Carroll's famous poem "The Jabberwocky." There are two activities in this worksheet which both lend themselves to great discussions. Students enjoy this poem and it is a great way to explain how connotation and context clues work together (the way the words make us feel help us understand what they mean). It is also great for teaching how certain SOUNDS can even make us feel a certain way. This is important in any poetry unit. Basically there are a lot of fun things to do with this poem and a lot of different directions to take it.

A creative idea for an open project that gets kids thinking and giving back. Great to use during a unit on civics and government. I had great success with this project in my classroom. It is best to not use it at the beginning of the year. This is a handout that includes a description of the project, ideas, a simple rubric, and a place for students to write their proposals and for you, the teacher, to approve of before they begin.

This is designed to be used near the beginning of a poetry unit for middle school. It could be used as an introduction to figurative language, specifically similes and metaphors. Students define simile and metaphor, example famous examples, and then create their own, modeling after the professional. They then examine two short poems by Langston Hughes, putting what they learned into practice. They will identify and examine, analyzing why mostly similes are used in one poem while Hughes relies heavily on metaphors in the other. In the lesson, the teacher should work with the student to understand the purpose of similes and metaphors in general and how they relate to these poems. I have included both a PDF and a word document version for editing.

I’m a big believer in doing geography along with each unit as it is applicable. The alternative (an entire geography unit at the beginning of the year) I’ve found to be torture for many of my students and they do not remember the important things for each unit by the time we get around to discussing them (i.e. where is Washington D.C. now that it’s been over 3 months since we memorized that capital…). This worksheet and map will have your students drawing on physical features that were important for Native Americans and continue to be critical for us today. It also has your students shade in areas where Native American groups lived that will be studied throughout the Native American Unit (Inuit, Cliff Dwellers/Anasazi, Iroquois/Haudenosaunee, Mound Builders/Cahokia, Aztec, and Mayans). This activity is included in the unit packet that can be purchased in my store: "Native American Unit." Please message me if you have any questions.