September 2015 | Crafting Connections
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Tricks and Treats: FREE downloads!

Monday, September 28, 2015
How is it possible that October is right around the corner?  And October means... Halloween!  At my house, my daughters have already compiled a list of "possible Halloween costumes".  The topic comes up from time to time throughout the year, but the conversation gets serious once October sets in!

Halloween is obviously on the minds of most of our students while they are at school, too.  So... why not channel this excitement into engaging learning opportunities? My fellow collaborators at Upper Elementary Snapshots and I have put together a "Tricks and Treats Ebook for Upper Elementary" where we each share a trick (a helpful teaching tip) and a treat (a FREE printable)!


My free printable is my Halloween Point of View worksheet. It contains four passages. Students read each passage and determine which point of view the author used- first person, second person, third person limited, or third person omniscient. Click on the image to download the ebook and access all eleven tricks and treats!

Ordering Adjectives... Who knew?

Friday, September 25, 2015
Which sentence is ordered correctly?
A.  We climbed into Dad's red, rusty, old pickup truck.
B.  We climbed into Dad's old, red, rusty pickup truck.
C.  We climbed into Dad's rusty, old, red pickup truck.

C is ordered correctly. It's obvious, right? To those of us who are native English speakers, it's the only one that "sounds" right. To my ear, A and B just sound awkward and clunky.

I must confess, that's how I went about figuring out the order of adjectives for the first 30-some years of my life. I went with what sounded right.

Then, I met up with the Common Core State Standards...  CCSS ELA-Literacy.L.4.1.D to be precise. Order adjectives within sentences according to convention patterns (e.g., a small red bag rather than a red small bag). Yep, it turns out that there are "rules" when it comes to ordering adjectives. 




A few weeks ago, a friend emailed me and asked me if I would be willing to create some resources to match this fourth grade standard. I jumped at the opportunity. As an ESL teacher of 14 years, I believe this is an important language standard.  It struck me that I had been able to get along just fine for decades without knowing any specific "rules" regarding the placement of adjectives within sentences by just figuring out which option "sounded right". The ELLs in our classrooms, however, often aren't quite as lucky. Most of them simply do not have the advantage of being able to determine which option sounds "right", and which option sounds "clunky".

I set out to create a handful of engaging, student-friendly materials to address this standard.   As you can see, most of the materials I created are related to the idea of "sliding adjectives into sentences" in the correct order. Just click on the image if you want to take a closer look!

Teach your students how to correctly order multiple adjectives in a sentence with this PowerPoint. Students will learn the rules for ordering adjectives.



Ordering Adjectives Sorting Activity and Reference Guide



Clearly, I have no recollection at all of learning this when I was younger. I'm curious... do you remember learning how to correctly insert adjectives into sentences when you were younger?


~Deb

Putting the "Think" into Think-Pair-Share!

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Do you use the Think-Pair-Share engagement strategy in your classroom?  After posing a question, you tell students to think of an answer, turn to a nearby partner (pair), and students share and compare their responses. For me, the hardest part of this strategy is providing the appropriate amount of think time. In an effort to keep kids on-task and the lesson moving, I know that I often do not provide enough think time, especially for my ELLs.
Recently, I was scanning a book (Amazon affiliate link follows) called Total Participation Techniques: Making Every Student an Active Learner and was reminded of Quick Writes and Quick Draws! It was a light bulb moment for me... if I ask students to quickly write ideas or quickly draw an idea during their "think time", I would be more likely to give students the time they needed to process an answer to the question!  Here's a brief description of how each works along with an example:


Quick Writes
1.  The teacher poses a question or task.  How can weather affect our water and food supply? 

2.  Students are given a certain amount of time to jot down a response.  For the next three minutes, jot down your reflections on how weather can affect our water and food supply.  Most of the time, a list of phrases is fine with me.  In the book, the authors mention the option of writing a word bank of required words on the board (like "drought") so that students are required to interact with key vocabulary.

3.  When the 3 minutes have passed, instruct students to turn to a nearby classmate and share and compare their responses.


Quick Draws
I especially like to do these to review vocabulary words.

1.  The teacher poses a question or writes 1-3 vocabulary words on the board. reservoir, aqueduct, and drought

2.  Students are given a certain amount of time to draw or sketch something in a way that illustrates the meanings of the words.  Write these words in your notebook. For the next four minutes, draw quick sketches that illustrate the meanings of the words.

3.  When the 4 minutes have passed, instruct students to turn to a nearby classmate and share and compare their quick drawings.

Students generally enjoy these engaging activities... especially the Quick Draws.  An added benefit of using these strategies is that they can serve as a type of formative assessment or exit ticket!  You can monitor which students seem to be having difficulty with the task and/or which students show full understanding and which students show partial understanding.

Thanks for stopping by!  If you have time, head over to Upper Elementary Snapshots where I am blogging about a lesson I learned the hard way about teaching author's purpose to upper elementary students.  (It includes a couple freebies!)
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