April is National Poetry Month, and what better time is there to teach and explore poetry with your students?!?! I love to spend the month of April having students read, write, and share poetry in our classroom. At the beginning of my poetry units each year, I find that my students are often intimidated by poetry, especially when it comes to writing it. Over the years I have tried to find the perfect activities to ease them into writing their own poems. One of my favorite activities is taking my students on a Haiku Hike!! Several years ago I found this book, Haiku Hike from Scholastic. The story and poems in this book were written by a class of 4th grade students. The idea behind the book is that the students in this class went on a nature walk, and instead of taking pictures of the different things they saw, they used the form of haiku to capture different moments and scenes in nature. I loved this idea so much that I decided to implement it in my own classroom. Here’s ho...

April is one of my favorite months of the school year because of Poetry Month.  It's fun to write, fun to read, and the students enjoy all of it!  Below you will find a list of activities that are perfect for celebrating Poetry Month. 1.  Poetry Flip Book With students, study the different types of poetry and create a poetry flip book that students can use as a reference throughout the month. Find the poetry flip book HERE . 2.  30 Poems in 30 Days Using construction paper or cardstock for a cover, have students create a poetry book in which they spend the entire month of April writing and illustrating poems.  We obviously aren't in school all 30 days, so you could double up some days or even assign for weekend homework.   3.  Poetry in Pairs After studying types of poetry, pair students up to write a collaborative poem.  They could collaborate in writing the poem from beginning to end, or one students writes a line then passes it to their partner ...

        As teachers, we know the benefits of giving kids movement in the classroom. It's easy to see that after even a short period of sitting, kids need to get the wiggles out so they are ready to learn again. Scientific studies support this idea and even contend that frequent brain breaks lead to higher  a cademic achievement, increased concentration, better on-task behavior, and improved student attitudes. Sounds great, right?         I love brain breaks so much that I wanted to share a dozen of my favorite brain breaks here. If you like them, you can find a link at the bottom of the post to a FREE set of 12 print and digital task cards in my TpT store. 1. Places and Spaces : Kids pretend to tour a particular place in the world and do movements that relate to those places. For example... We are now touring the United States! Pretend to… Surf the beaches of California, Stomp through the swamps of Mississippi, Climb the stairs of the Statue of Liberty ...

Although we may only think of using fables in lower grades, using fables in upper elementary can be very beneficial. Not only are fables an excellent genre for teaching morals and themes in stories, but because they are short, they are wonderful to use when comparing and contrasting the treatment of similar themes and topics. Using these short stories can be both beneficial and fun, even for our older students. Finding Free Resources Finding free resources for teaching fables is easier than you may think. One wonderful resource can be found at Library of Congress.  This website contains a list of classic Aesop fables that you can print or display with your overhead projector for your entire class to use.  Another website is Aesop's Fables that also contains a large list of fables. A Fun "Fable Strip" Activity Recently, my students read a variety of fables that I printed from Library of Congress. The students discussed the morals of each fable, compared f...

Dyslexia is not going away. Research shows that 1 in every 5 students have some form of dyslexia. (learningally.org) Although there is not a cure, there are many strategies for parents, educators, and even curriculum designers to help children with dyslexia be successful scholars. Read on to find out the truth and myth about dyslexia, what it looks like in the upper elementary classroom, and what strategies work. What is dyslexia and the myth behind it? People who haven't had the correct education about dyslexia tend to think it is reversing letters and numbers in writing . That is far from the truth. So what is dyslexia? According to the International Dyslexia Association , " Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability. Dyslexia refers to a cluster of symptoms, which result in people having difficulties with specific language skills, particularly reading. Students with dyslexia usually experience difficulties with other language skills such as spelling, writin...

Teaching the meanings of prefixes and suffixes is undoubtedly a skill that needs to be scaffolded over multiple grade levels. When I taught second grade, my main goal was to teach students how a prefix or a suffix affected the meaning of a word. We started with five basic prefixes and six basic suffixes. (Check out this affix blog post at my personal blog if you want to view my anchor chart, or read about my favorite way to introduce prefixes and suffixes to younger students.) Then, with each passing grade level, a few more prefixes and suffixes are added to the list. When I work with 4th and 5th grade students, I like to use concept circles to provide an opportunity for students to analyze affixed words in a more challenging way. (If you're interested in using these with your own upper elementary students, don't miss the free student worksheet version near the end of this blog post!) This activity involves four steps: Students read the four words written inside the...