Valentine's Day Writing Idea

Before you know it, February 14th will be around the corner.  Here's a fun way to capture feelings with a "Hands to Hold, Hearts to Love" Craftivity.

Students will learn to use their senses while creating a booklet held in two hand tracings.  This is a fun way to acknowledge a family member or friend.

Just click on the heart below for your free template:

Literary Devices Posters

Hi everyone,

As winter makes its way through, I thought of this fun way to celebrate it.  I created these literary devices posters for winter with the hopes that students would incorporate the devices into their winter poetry writing unit.  They are a great way to springboard creative writing but also a media idea for students to create literary devices posters of their own.  Just click on the picture below to receive your free copies for inspiration.

 

Math Read Alouds

I often use picture books to support my math lessons.  When I introduce new concepts, I try to find the perfect read aloud to assist students in making connections.  When ending the read aloud, I often offer a next step such as a problem solving task or a writing task.  Here are some of my favourite picks:

This is a fun way to work with both shapes and numbers.  Students recreate the shape shifting that triangle goes through often with toothpicks.  We then begin developing a word bank to assist with geometric representation.  As well, properties are discussed such as vertices, edges and number of sides.  I often assign a fun task called guess my shape.  Students write about their shape without giving a word to it.  For example, a triangle becomes a 2-dimensional shape with the following properties:  3 edges, 3 vertices, no parallel sides, 3 angles that are less than 90 degrees.  For older students, a variety of triangles can be discussed with different degrees.  For example, a right-angled triangle can become a 2-dimensional shape with 3 edges, 3 vertices and one 90 degree angle.

This is a fun read aloud for students in older grades who are developing their multiplication and division strategies.  One of the ants recommends traveling to the picnic in rows instead of single file.  The division begins with two rows of 50, and so on.  This is a great way to look at multiplication and division as two similar entities and not something taught in isolation.

This book teaches children that sharing is the way to go when the doorbell rings.  The more children come in, the more the cookies need to be divided equally.  This is a fun way to introduce division for older students as well as learning about equal groupings for younger ones.