Thank You for Your Generous Donations!

WOW - Thank you to everyone who made such generous donations and spread the word about the Stuffed Puppy Fund for the students at Sandy Hook Elementary. To date, we raised $4,969.00, which covers the cost of the puppies and a little more. The remainder of the donations not used to pay for the puppies will be sent to the school to help meet any additional needs of the students and families that may arise with the transfer to a new location. The letters had been shipped last week, and the puppies were shipped today to arrive via FedEx prior to the students' return to school. Again, thank you so much for helping make this happen for the students, as we could not have done it without you. Additional thanks go to PayPal, who kindly waived all of their fees that would have normally come out of our donation money...and to the Ty corporation for expediting the shipping and upgrading to FedEx shipping at no extra cost to us to ensure delivery on time. Have a wonderful and safe new year, everyone!

Stuffed Puppies for Sandy Hook Students

Please use the link below to donate to our Sandy Hook Stuffed Puppy Fund to help us provide each student with a plush stuffed puppy and accompanying letter to comfort them when they return to school in the aftermath of this tragedy. Each puppy costs approximately $10, depending on whether or not the vendor provides any sort of discount. Any additional money raised will be sent to the school system and used to provide additional counseling services to the students or to address other needs related to the tragedy. (PayPal donation button has been removed to close donation period.) Stuffed puppy, "Nuzzle," from http://world.ty.com/:

Student Letter Accompanying Puppy:

Paint Samples/Swatches (any grade)

I have come across many different educational uses for those FREE, multi-colored paint samples you can take from home improvement stores.  I recently found a square, one-color sample that I used to make dice (see photo above).  The dice could be used in math (ex. put all the dice in a bag and have a student draw 2 out at a time; ask the student to add them or multiply them) or in other subjects for games, etc.  I punched out holes from another colored sample to make the dots, but an easier way would be to use circle/dot stickers.

A cool use for the multi-colored sample gradients that I came across during a reading workshop was to practice vocabulary building/synonyms in a sense.  If you give a child a blank colored sample and an adjective, such as "happy," the student starts at the lighter color and writes a word that means lightly or very mildly happy, such as "glad" or "content"...building as the color gets the darkest to a word like "ecstatic"or "euphoric" - differentiate this activity for various grade levels easily, by providing a word bank for students or using the 4 color sample vs. the 6 color sample.

Sticky Tablecloth Bulletin Board (any grade)

I attended a training last year during which the presenter shared this great idea for extra (and easy) bulletin board space.  I have an ugly old green small chalkboard that is not magnetic and is all marked up.  I covered it with this brightly striped vinyl tablecloth and then sprayed the entire colored surface of the tablecloth with spray adhesive (3M brand, found at Home Depot).  It stayed sticky all year long, and was an easy way to display sentence strips for word work prefixes, suffixes, and roots that we explored weekly.  The adhesive is clear and does not show, but it allows for easy movement of items on and off it throughout the year.  If your stickiness wears out, you can just spray another coat of the adhesive over it.

Voila!...another bulletin board space with no need for stapling or tacking.

Wrinkle in Time - Board Games (5th grade)

As a GT performance assessment tool, I gave my students the option to retell the plot of the A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle in a comic book format or create and design a board game, with certain guidelines given (i.e. must include all major settings from the story, must incorporate vocabulary, etc.).  All groups chose to create the board game, and they generated some very creative final products, such as the one below:

One very ambitious group chose to create theirs on the computer using PowerPoint and astounded me with their interactive design.  Here are some screenshots:

6+1 Trait Writing Posters

When writing with my students, we follow the 6+1 trait writing model.  Recently, I came across these printable posters created by Teaching That Makes Sense, Inc. that are very nicely done to define each trait for the students.  There is also a more primary-geared version as well.  I backed them on fun colored paper and laminated them to post for student reference.  When you visit the website, I found these under the left sidebar entitled "Downloads" and they were under "Posters" at the bottom of the list.  There are a lot of other fabulous resources here too!

Click here to visit the Teaching That Makes Sense website!

Relationships - Working Together (3rd - 5th grade)

One of our 5th grade Houghton Mifflin reading themes is called "Person to Person" where we read texts about people working together, interacting, and helping each other. I got this simple activity out of the Houghton Mifflin teacher's guide, intended to use as you the theme, but I saw a lot of opportunity for other applications of it, even at a primary level. Students fold a piece of paper in half and trace a cutout of a person, leaving one of the arms uncut on the folded side (this will link the 2 person cutouts together as a chain). See the photos for a clear explanation.

The idea is to have the students think of a relationship between 2 people, such as a coach/athlete or friend/friend working together. On the head of the cutout, they write the 2 roles (i.e. "coach" on one, "athlete" on the other). On the belly of each person, they can bullet some ideas of how each person benefits from the working relationship. So on the "coach" belly, a student could write "learns to teach; feels proud; helps the community" and on the "athlete" belly, a student could write "learns new skills; gains confidence; experiences success" or something along those lines.

The same type of cutout could be used for an activity where students analyze and explain the relationship between 2 characters in a novel. At a primary level, the teacher could provide a stencil for students to trace the person cutout. The students could label each one as a different community worker, and they could list ways that those 2 might work together in a community.

Cell Functions Project (5th grade)

A colleague of mine who teaches 5th grade science just completed a unit in which the students investigate plant cells and animal cells. She assigned a really cool project for which the students were asked to create a model of both a plant cell and an animal cell. They also were required to label the parts of each and provide a description of the functions. Some of the kids took a somewhat simple approach by drafting a colorful sketch of each on a large piece of posterboard, then labeling and explaining the functions. Creativity was encouraged, however, and some of the students generated awesome 3-D representations using jello, pound cakes, styrofoam, etc. Check out the photos of 2 different students' projects!

Sandwich Book Report - Teacher Resources (4th - 5th grade)

Here are several helpful items to use when assigning the book report.

Sandwich Book Report (4th - 5th grade)

When you get tired of the same old book report templates and ideas for your students in an intermediate grade level, give this one a try! After reading a novel, students will display detailed information about their book in the format of a sandwich. The options for creativity are endless! Each "piece" of the sandwich contains one important element of the student's book report. For example, the top bread slide contains the title of the book, author's name, and student's name. The lettuce piece is a summary of the book. On the tomato slice, the student identifies the main character of the book, tells several character traits, and provides details from the text to support each trait. On the mayonnaise, the student provides a detailed description of the main setting(s). The student describes the climax of the book in a paragraph on the cheese slice. On the meat slice, the student gives information about the author. Finally, on the bottom bread slice, the student provides a colored sketch of his/her favorite scene from the book with a caption explaining the scene.