Sunday, February 28, 2016

Visual Lesson Plans Freebie!

Below, I posted pictures of my visual lesson plans from last week.  I got the idea to make visual lesson plans from the Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits blog.  I absolutely LOVE her blog.  You can go to her post on visual lesson plans by clicking this link.  Some perks about visual lesson plans are that, for one, they're cute and two, you can click on links that you embed into your plans.  I'm a very visual person, so I love using these clipart embellished plans.  Click on the plans to take a closer look!

If you would like to download these visual plans to edit, click on this link that will take you to the SlideShare website where you can download them.

Valentine's Day Bulletin Boards

Since I just did a post on this year's Valentine's Day project, I wanted to add to that with a similar project I had students complete a few years ago.  During my practicum in a Title I classroom, I had the students write a book report and then make owls to clutch their reports.

 I basically re-used this idea for the project that we did this year.  I used a different owl template here.  Personally, I like this heart owl template better than the heart owl template from this year.  These ones look more owl-like.

For this project, I pre-cut all of the pieces and the students glued the parts together after they watched me glue together an example owl.  If you want to incorporate fine motor practice, you can trace the shapes onto construction paper and have the kids cut out their pieces.  The book reports here are written in paragraph form.  I like the book reviews that we did this year better than these book reports.  You can find the link to the book review worksheet freebie in my previous post.



This is the second Valentine's Day reading-themed bulletin board that I put together during my practicum in Title I.  I got the idea to do a 3D book chocolate box from the Crafty Morning blog.  Click on this link to see the original version of this bulletin board.  

For my bulletin board, I did it a little differently.  I wrapped milk cartons (that the kids saved from lunch) in brown bulletin board paper.  I used bulletin board paper because it is easy to wrap with like wrapping paper.   Then, I printed out pictures of book covers.  After that, I glued the pictures onto the wrapped milk cartons.  I used coffee filters instead of cupcake liners because I needed bigger liners.  

For the heart box, I first cut out a giant red heart from bulletin board paper and then stapled it to the bulletin board.  Then, I cut sturdier white construction paper strips that I taped upright a few inches in from the red heart.  Another option for the upright edges of the heart box would be to use bulletin board border.  
 

Friday, February 26, 2016

Book Review Owls: WHOOOOO Loves Books?!

Today, I took down our Valentine's Day projects that were hanging in the hallway.  To start this project, I had the kids write a book review.  I got this book review worksheet as a freebie from Shahna Ahmed's TpT store (thank you to Shahna)!  Here is a link to it.  Then, we made the heart owls to "clutch" their reports.  If it was another time of year and I wanted to use this project, I would just change to a standard owl craft template (rather than a heart owl template).  Below, I posted an example of a different owl craft that could be used for this project from Crafty Morning.  For more information on how to make the craft, click on this link to go to the Crafty Morning site.
Photo Courtesy of Crafty Morning

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Presidents' Day Bulletin Board

I found this president bulletin board/craft idea on Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits.  

To start this lesson, I read a book about the president's job.  Then, they used their new knowledge from the book as well as prior knowledge from social studies to launch them into their writing.  I had each student use the "If I could be president..." sentence starter and write about what he or she would do as president.  THEN, **drumroll** they got president makeovers!  I can't decide what I enjoyed the most...reading about what they would do as presidents or seeing them as first grader George Washingtons!