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March 11, 2016

Springing into Learning Blog Hop: Three ELA Freebies

It feels wonderful to be able to start a blog title with the word SPRING! It has been a loooooong winter, my friends. It's even more wonderful to be participating in this terrific blog hop hosted by Kim from Elementary Antics.


After a long, hard winter it is enjoyable to turn our attention to spring; to turn our classroom environment to a fresh look; and to fill our work sheets, anchor charts, and foldables with chicks, butterflies. and flowers instead of penguins and snowflakes.

One ELA activity that I like to do with my class each season and/or holiday is called a Take Three. This is a brainstorming/fluency of thinking activity that can be used as a pre-writing or stand alone assignment. Given a particular broad topic (in our case: spring), students add three details or supporting ideas for six sub-topics. Take Three's are easy to implement, need little instruction, and virtually no preparation. You can copy the worksheet so that each student has a copy, display the Take Three on a screen or board for students to work together, or have students copy the topic/sub-topics onto their own pieces of paper to save printing costs. Ready to give Take Three a try? You can download a freebie Spring Take Three HERE.


Another ELA Spring activity that I enjoy having my students do is adding spring foldables to their Language Arts Interactive Notebooks. INB's are just plain fun to begin with and remove the sting of having to take notes. In our Language Arts Notebooks we frequently look at how words work within a text: How do nouns name? What are the verbs and how do they display the time of the piece? How do the adjectives and adverbs lend to the description and imagery of the text?

Would you like a fun, little Spring foldable to use in your student interactive notebooks or just as a fun ELA activity? Download your freebie HERE.


When thoughts turn to Spring, it's often hard to keep students focused on work at hand. Let's face it- we would rather be outside in the fresh air and sunshine and so would they! So what's a teacher to do? Play a game, of course. One fun game to add to an ELA class is Boggle. Besides the obvious fun factor, Boggle is a super tool for practicing spelling and word recognition.

Here's a Boggle board decked out for Spring. Just download the pic and display it for your students to use. While you're at it, make sure you play along with them... it will help you quell your own Spring Fever!


Not sure how to play Boggle? Click HERE for the original game rules.

Need a Boggle board that you can edit yourself? Click HERE for a free editable board.

Want a blank boggle board template for your students to use with classroom boggle? Click HERE.

How about a variety of editable boards to change with the seasons? Click HERE for a bundle of fifteen boggle boards that you can program yourself.

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Be sure to hop on over to all of these great bloggers where you will find more Spring freebies and tips. Hoppy Spring!





2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing these great freebies!

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a treasure trove of amazing ideas and freebies! Thank you so much!

    -Lisa

    ReplyDelete

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