Informational Writing for Big Kids

 I used to think of informational writing as dry and boring. I mean, reading nonfiction can certainly be less exciting than fiction. But I found that letting students choose their topics motivates them to step into their writer personas.

It's also fun to see which topics they choose, and I get to learn about new animals/foods/environments/technologies in the process. If it helps, you can have students work within certain parameters. 

Since my district didn't have writing curriculum when I started as a new teacher (cue the panic), I cobbled together some resources and got by. But as I refined my skills as a teacher and had actual curriculum to work with, I was able to hone down the lessons and resources to make the strongest unit possible.

I broke it down into 5 units

-Research

-Main Ideas & Details

-Elaborating on Details

-Text Structure

-Publishing

If you're interested in trying this out, you can click here for the bundle of all five units which also includes editing and revising resources!

XO Emily

Personal Narrative Writing for Big Kids

 Gosh, I love teaching writing. Especially personal narrative. It's such a fun way to get to know your students. I've heard the funniest stories. Kiddos have shared touchingly tender memories. Personal narratives are inherently personal.

I came into teaching bright eyed and green. Ready to take on the world. And then I realized my district was in the process of writing our Language Arts curriculum and I had... nothing.

I knew from working with our reading specialist that we were transitioning to a writer's workshop model. Every resource in these units was designed with that model in mind, while also syncing with Common Core standards.

I broke it down into five mini lessons, taking students through the full writing process.

brainstorming/planning

crafting leads

writing descriptive details

creating a character's perspective

developing theme

I've listed them separately and as a bundle so you have plenty of options! I'd love to hear from you if you try it out!

XO Emily

Leadership & Citizenship Units

 This unit, that I teach as part of our social studies curriculum, is really close to my heart. Teaching the oldest grade in our elementary school gives me a unique perspective. My students are the big fish in a little pond, about to embark on a new journey to middle school next year. 

There are multiple events and activities we do with younger grades to encourage service and community within our school. A fav is when we build gingerbread houses with kindergarteners during the holidays!

But there are skills that come with community service that need to be explicitly taught. I've broken down the lessons into simple objectives to help students analyze their own role in their communities and plan how to make positive changes. 

Unit One {understanding ourselves & our community} has students analyze themselves & their role in the community, as well as the needs of their fellow classmates.

Unit Two {practicing leadership & communication skills} is full of activities to help students use leadership skills in practical, real world situations.

Unit Three {community service} puts students to work, designing and implementing a community service project.

The community service projects are incredibly rewarding and give students the confidence they need to take on the challenges of middle school.

If you'd like to implement this in your own class, you can click any of the photos above or here to purchase the lessons from my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

XO Emily

Homework Made Easy

 I have a teacher confession: I don't love homework. If it was up to me, I'd never assign homework outside of optional reading every night. Students have a lot on their plate with after school activities and sports, as well as family obligations. However, my district requires we give homework so here we are.

If I need to give homework, I want it to be intentional and serve a specific intended purpose. So with that in mind, I laid out my goals for my students' work at home. I knew I wanted students to

- read read read!

-respond to what they were reading

-learn time management skills

Enter: Homework Choice Menu. Students must read every night and choose a written response question to reflect on and write a paragraph about.

Students have a lot of control here- they choose the book they read. They choose which prompt to respond to. They choose the date they complete the assignments. Soccer practice keeps you busy Monday and Tuesday? Cool, work on it on Wednesday. Family emergency on Wednesday? You've still got one more day to get your work done.

It's flexibility with accountability. And at the end of the week, I have a collection of written responses from my students that show their reflection on their reading. But crucially- it trusts them to manage their time and their work.

Interested in implementing this in your class? I've got a fiction and non fiction bundle available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. You can click that link or any of the pictures in this post to find the product and streamline homework in your classroom!

Spin a Story Narrative Writing Game

In the middle of a writing unit, I like to lighten it up a bit with some fun writing games. They keep my students flexing their writing muscles in ways that feel more fun and low stakes. My favorite (and my students agree!) is Spin a Story.

All you need is a pencil, a paper clip, and these spinners to dream up a new idea for a narrative story. Students spin the spinner to get a main character, a setting, and a problem.  

This game fast tracks students' brainstorming process so they can get to the plotting and writing of a story with much less pressure. It also removes the temptation to make every narrative story into a personal narrative.

As always, these are in my Teachers Pay Teachers store! Click any of the photos or follow this link to be taken to the Spin a Story product!

XO Emily

Teaching Poetry

 Poetry is always one of my favorite lessons of the year. The timing always works out so well with National Poetry Month coming in April. We've gotten through a good chunk of our curriculum at that point in the year. State testing is int he rear view mirror. But most importantly, we've gelled as a community. I know my kids and they know me. We're comfortable with each other. We can be vulnerable to share our ideas.

Which is important because poetry can be intimate. It's emotional and powerful and open to multiple interpretations. I love having these discussions with my students when we aren't afraid of being *cringe* which usually happens after a lot of community building throughout the year.

I like to start our lessons analyzing the structure of poems. How do they work? Why aren't they in paragraph form? Why does it matter how they're written? It opens my kiddos eyes to the world of poetry.

We end the unit by writing our own shape poems which gives students a chance to put into practice everything they've been analyzing the last week. The results always blow me away!

Rhyme comes next which is the most obvious aspect of poetry and often what kids think of first when I bring up poetry. I like subverting that concept and introducing them to nonrhyming poetry before analyzing rhyme as a poetic device.

I've got these two lessons available on Teachers Pay Teachers if you're interested in trying this in your own class! Click here for structure and here for rhyme scheme.

XO Emily

Behavior Management Made Fun

As a first year teacher, I had big ideas for how I wanted to manage behavior in my class. I was going to introduce and review procedures for the first few months of school. I was going to practice procedures over and over. I was going to set high expectations and provide positive reinforcement for positive behavior. And my students were going to behave like little angels and I'd never have to worry about discipline or misbehavior- right?

Suffice to say, my first year of teaching was eye opening in terms of what is required for behavior management! One of my strategies at first was modeled after a management system that our specialists developed. In P.E. it was a baseball bat, in music it was a guitar, in art it was a paintbrush. In my classroom, it was a pencil and it came together quickly with some construction paper!

Each class period is represented by a clothespin and based on their whole group behavior during that period, they would either move up towards valedictorian or down towards failed class. 

Every day they restarted at book worm and they were moved from there. 

I did have to clarify for my students that detention does not literally mean they have to go to detention and if our behavior was very poor and they "failed class" that they didn't actually get failing grades :) If a class got valedictorian 4 times that week, they got a small reward. 

At first it was fun and my students bought into the concept. However over time, some negatives came to light:

- It was a lot to manage how often three separate classes got "valedictorian."

- Students became very focused on where their clothespin was on the chart.

- Because it was on a weekly basis, it became challenging to fit in time for their rewards (which was more experience based rather than a "prize," i.e. extra recess rather than dollar store toys)

- The requirements for what qualified as valedictorian vs. high honors vs. class president behavior were not clearly outlined.

Moving into my second year, I knew I needed something a bit more manageable for me and more specific for my students. How would they know what behaviors I was expecting if I didn't clearly define them within our behavior management system? After some research last summer, I came up with Best Behavior Bingo

I created a giant bingo board with the squares naming positive, specific, desired behaviors. It was easy to put together once I formatted the boxes for the behavior squares and created the labels.

So how does it work? When I "catch" students doing one of the behaviors, I cover that square with a post it. Students work together to cover the bingo squares to get five in a row. You can also hold off a reward until they create an X or picture frame or even black out. My students originally said that they wanted to wait to get their reward until we had the board blacked out or completely covered. Ambitious babes :)

They students LOVED the idea of it being a game and would even say to each other "let's make sure we're really good at recess today so that we get that square covered!"

My management and the kids' behavior were improved in so many ways!

-The bingo squares were covered on a rolling basis, which meant no tallying sessions at the end of each week. If students got 6 bingo squares but they didn't make a pattern for a reward, the squares stayed covered until they got a reward. No "resetting" at the end of each class = less for me to keep track of.

-Because students got rewards on a rolling basis, I didn't have to squeeze in time for a reward on Fridays.
-Students were motivated by the game-like structure.

-The desired behaviors are specific and a visual reminder of what the classroom expectations are. The visual reminder of how many squares were covered also helped me to plan ahead for reward time if I saw that students were getting close to five in a row!

I also adapted this to be an individual behavior program and some of my students had their own individual bingo boards. Their boards had three target behaviors that were repeated throughout the board, so that it was a bit easier to earn a reward. I like that it's discreet, specific, and tailored to that student's behavior goals.

My 6th graders loved this, and I'm sure yours will to! Interested in trying this out in your own classroom? Click here to see this editable product on Teachers Pay Teachers!

I'd love to hear your behavior management tips and tricks! Leave them in the comments below!

XO Emily