Popular ELA Print and Go Holiday Resource...FREEBIE

I hate to be the bearer of bad news! I know that most teachers have just begun their holiday break, but looking ahead... School does resume after the holidays are over. If you're like me, you're anxious to return to your kiddos, but the thought of preparing lessons and activities and a return to the paperwork can be disheartening. Here's a fun, engaging, print and go ELA activity that will help you get back into the swing of things. It's the first thing that I present to my sixers on the first day back after holiday break.

New Year Mystery Picture Parts of Speech

Following a key, students match a word's part of speech with its representative color. They then color squares to reveal a mystery picture. The parts of speech practiced in this mystery picture are nouns (singular and plural) and verbs (past, present, and future tense). The coloring sheet can be projected on a whiteboard for whole or small group instruction/participation instead of printing individual paper copies. 

With over 11,000 downloads, this popular FOREVER FREEBIE has been shared and used with numerous students and has been widely reviewed by teachers.

Buyer: I think this is a wonderful idea for kids to do and have fun at the same time
Sunflowers and Smiles: Thank you for providing this activity! The kids loved practicing their grammar skills.
Megan W.: Great for review and to ease back into the swing of things after break.
Buyer: Great for a warm-up or homework assignment.
Christina R.: This was great as an independent center last week! Thanks for sharing!
Lorraine C.: Great review for morning work! Thanks!
Jennifer G.: Great way to start the new year and review parts of speech. Thank you!
Buyer said: This is so AWESOME! I used it in my home school group and they loved it!
Martine C.: Great activity to help review the parts of speech while students are getting settled back into the routine of school.
Michelle B.: Thanks! Great idea for reviewing parts of speech, and easing into the new year next week.
Louise C.: I love that they are coloring and applying knowledge at the same time!
Buyer: This is such a novel idea and kids love mysteries so it will keep them engaged too, thanks very much!

To read more about this product or download a copy for yourself, please click HERE. If you like this product and would like more like it, click HERE. There are over 75 Mystery Picture products in my TpT Store!

Throwback Thursday Returns with a FREEBIE for the Fifth of May

What is Throwback Thursday? How does it work, you might ask? Simply look through your PURR-fect Previous Posts, perhaps a particular favorite of yours, and re-post it! Purr-fectly easy and simple! Your post doesn't have to be from LOOOONNNGGG ago; it can be from last month or even earlier this week. And if you don't have a post to share, perhaps an old photo or two from WAY BACK will do! Even a favorite pin is PURR-fect! Just join in the Throwback fun!

This post originally appeared on The Teacher's Desk 6 on April 26, 2013.

The CCSS ELA calls for students to demonstrate command of standard English grammar when speaking and writing. At nearly all grade levels identification and usage of specific parts of speech are listed in the standards. My sixth graders (and my fifth graders) hate to practice the nitty gritty skills of Language Arts such as this, but turn it into a game or make it a fun activity like coloring mystery pictures and you've got them hooked!

Here's a parts of speech mystery picture for the upcoming holiday of Cinco de Mayo. My students, both fivers and sixers, are learning Spanish and will be celebrating Cinco de Mayo as part of their study. This mystery picture "The Fifth of May" requires students to identify nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and prepositions. You can download it HERE, or by clicking on the link below the picture.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6Q14Z2f7SoAMGdpMFpiN2NsMTQ/edit?usp=sharing

Now it's your turn for a Throwback!

An InLinkz Link-up

Throwback Thursday: Fun Reminder

What is Throwback Thursday? How does it work, you might ask? Simply look through your PURR-fect Previous Posts, perhaps a particular favorite of yours, and re-post it! Purr-fectly easy and simple! Your post doesn't have to be from LOOOONNNGGG ago; it can be from last month or even earlier this week. And if you don't have a post to share, perhaps an old photo or two from WAY BACK will do! Even a favorite pin is PURR-fect! Just join in the Throwback fun!

This was such a fun activity to prepare and implement. I was so happy to unearth this older post from March 23, 2013; it serves as a great reminder.

As I posted earlier in the week, my sixers have been hitting the parts of speech pretty hard lately, at least the identification part. They do very well when each part of speech is worked in isolation, they do well when two or three are practiced at one time, but when we look at all of them together... uh oh! Some of my kiddos have even been staying after school- voluntarily- to get in extra practice. They've done worksheets, quizzes, lessons galore and are getting a bit ho-hum with the practice.

So to perk things up a bit this week, that LOOOOOONG week just before a break, we are going to have a Parts of Speech (POS) Round-up on Tuesday morning.  I've been gathering the materials and organizing everything for the past few days. Today it's all ready, except for the laminating (that's Monday morning). 

Here's how it will work. Instead of a regular Language Arts class I'll be setting up six stations, one per table, around the room. Each table will house one activity for practicing the parts of speech. Students will rotate every fifteen minutes until they have visited each station and completed the activity. 

The stations are as follows:

1. POST... a card game (available in my TpT store) for up to six players in which each player brainstorms a list of words for randomly selected part of speech beginning with a particular letter

2. Mystery Pictures based on the fowl tempered friends with whom my sixers love playing. These are available in my TpT store.

3. Egg-cellent Verbs and Egg-citing Sentences... identifying verb tenses and writing sentences with randomly selected verbs that are hidden inside of Easter eggs

4. Parts of Speech Dice... purchased from Amazon, that require students to write sentences using particular parts of speech

5. MadLibs... Easter stories, collected from across the internet, to be completed by providing missing parts of speech

6. Parts of Speech Computer Battleship... the familiar board game turned digital at Quia Quiz site

Tuesday's Round-up should make it a little more fun when practicing the parts of speech. It should also help to make the day pass more quickly... ONE MORE DAY CLOSER TO EASTER BREAK! Can you tell I'm ready?

Although I still have a little time left before Easter break this year, I am planning ahead for those days just prior to vacation, those days when students and teachers alike are anxious to be away from school, enjoying the spring weather. A round-up is the PERFECT activity for this time!

Now it's your turn for a Throwback!

An InLinkz Link-up

Tried and True Teaching Tip for Throwback Thursday

Welcome to...

Look through those PURR-fect Previous Posts, perhaps a particular favorite of yours, and re-post it! Then add this badge to your post and add your link below! Purr-fectly easy and simple! Your post doesn't have to be from LOOOONNNGGG ago; it can be from last month. And if you don't have a post to share, perhaps an old photo or two from WAYBACK will do! Even a favorite pin is PURR-fect! Just join in the Throwback fun!

I am linking my own throwback post this week to The Teaching Tribune where they are gathering Tried and True Teaching Tips today. I think my throwback post fits their topic PURR-fectly!

This post first appeared on my blog on Feb. 22, 2013. It was only the fourth post I had authored.

Besides being a teacher, I am a musician and singer. I constantly have music floating through my head and I generally walk to a beat. As a result I have always tried to include music in my teaching. Setting facts and concepts to a familiar tune and teaching it to children results in a quicker and longer retention rate of material.  It does take a bit of time to set your instructional content to music, but with the advent of YouTube it is easy to locate a piece of music for just about any concept that you must teach. Just ask the parents of  my current sixth grade class.

I had the pleasure of working with this group of students when they were in fourth grade, teaching them Science. I introduced the concept of the periodic table and its features to them during a unit on "Kitchen Chemistry." Pretty heavy stuff for fourth graders! However, knowing that these children LOVED to sing, I went in search of some music about this concept. I found a few gems on YouTube that were suitable for this age group and shared them with the class. One turned out to be quite a treasure! They beg me to let them sing it TO THIS DAY (two years later) and they have gone on to write additional verses. Nearly every one of my current sixth graders is able to recite AT LEAST the first 20 elements in the periodic table thanks to this video.

With that being said, I am pulling out an old, old song I used years ago in my Language Arts classes, one to help my students learn the purpose of each of the eight Parts of Speech. It's been hidden in a drawer of my desk, collecting dust far too long. It served my students well at one time, and since my class this year LOVES to sing, it's time to air it out once again. It was developed by me and a few staff members who were attending an after school inservice about multiple intelligences and thematic planning (hint as to the decade).

Parts of Speech song

Sung to the tune of "Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush"

What are the parts of speech, parts of speech, parts of speech?
What are the parts of speech?
Listen well and learn!

Nouns,verbs and interjections, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions,
Conjunctions and adjectives
Are the parts of speech.

A noun is a naming word, naming word, naming word.
A noun is a naming word,
a person, place, or thing.

A verb is an action word, an action word, an action word.
A verb is an action word or
am, is, are, was, were.

A pronoun renames a noun, renames a noun, renames a noun.
A pronoun renames a noun:
she, he, it, they, we.

An adjective's a describing word, describing word, describing word.
An adjective's a describing word;
it tells about a noun.

An adverb describes a verb, describes a verb, describes a verb.
An adverb describes a verb:
how, when, where, how much.

Interjections shows surprise, show surprise, show surprise.
Interjections show surprise.
Oh my gosh!

Conjunctions are joining words, joining words, joining words.
Conjunctions are joining words:
and, but, or, for, yet.

In, around, about, behind, over, under, up, inside,
Into, during, with, before
These are prepositions.

Now you know the parts of speech, parts of speech, parts of speech.
Now you know the parts of speech.
You will use them in your writing.


Please feel free to borrow this song and use it with your students. I'd love to hear how the experience goes.

Five for Friday FREEBIES

T.G.I.F! It's time to link up with Doodle Bugs for...

We are still celebrating Advent, or trying to! It's hard to contain the Christmas spirit, what with all the commercials, TV specials, carols on the radio, and shopping expeditions,  but to wait in patient hope is wonderful! The anticipation of Christmas is tremendous, so to maintain a bit of calm while focusing on the reason for the season is indeed awesome. It is humbling to engage my sixers in conversations about the Advent season. They see its simple beauty and purpose and can talk about their struggles with keeping Christ in Christmas. To help them along, I really try to keep Santa, the elves, and all those kinds of Christmasy things to a bare minimum and focus on Adventish items. Here are a few things I've used this past week. They are yours for the taking just by clicking on each graphic.

Advent Notebook Foldables: The fifth graders and I used these with the popular Christmas novel "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" by Barbara Robinson. It's a great book to accompany our pageant practice time. First we created an anchor chart that helped us focus on how the author used particular words in her writing (verbs and their tense, adjectives, and adverbs). We used post-it notes to record our ideas as a group, then the foldables to record our individual ideas.

Integrated Language Arts/Religion/Music Activity... I used this with my sixers and my eighth graders. The quintessential Advent song is "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." I used the lyrics to create a language arts worksheet to help my kiddos practice some grammar skills and become a bit more familiar with the hymn.

Speaking of Advent... We decorated our Jesse Tree this week. It starts out as a Charlie Brown type tree that is Advent violet (it matches the decor in our classroom, too), and ends up looking gorgeous as my sixers place their Jesse Tree ornaments on it. For anyone who is unfamiliar with a Jesse Tree, it is simply a tree decorated with ornaments that represent the members of Jesus's family tree. Jesse was King David's father, and one of the Old Testament prophecies regarding the Messiah stated, "A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse."  The ornaments on our tree range from Adam and Eve to John the Baptist.

Of course, during Advent we are preparing for Christmas. This week my sixers spent time making stars for the stage decorations for the Christmas pageant/concert that will be held Tuesday of this coming week. We had glitter EVERYWHERE! But the stars are REALLY neat. They started out as flat pieces of paper. After coloring, scoring, and folding, they become nearly three dimensional.

Last year I found a photograph on Pinterest of a really cool Christmas hallway display idea. It featured Christmas tree light cut-outs that were turned into book reports. The title of the display was Reading Lights Up Our Lives. I loved it and pinned  and moved happily along my way to other pins. When I returned to the pin and tried to find the actual website from whence the idea came, it was a dead end. I wish that I could credit the original poster, but his/her idea was enough and I was able to create my own cut-outs. Our fourth, fifth, and sixth graders re-created the display last  year, sharing a lot of good books, and receiving MOLTO compliments for their display!

This year our entire elementary school, K-6, joined in the display "Books Light Up Our Lives." I tweaked my cut-outs to make them a bit more grade level friendly (only a picture to draw for K-1, words and a picture for 2-5, and only words for 6). You'll notice the different types hanging along the electrical wire (yarn) throughout the elementary wing. We finished stringing the lights this afternoon.

If you'd like the patterns to do your own holiday hallway/book report display, just click on the graphic and they're yours. Only two are shown in the graphic; however, there are three in the file that you will download.

Completely not school related... Please meet the newest member (I hope) of my household, Pansy Lou. Daisy Mae, my old queen is not happy about her new little sissy. It's only been a week since Pansy has joined us. I am hoping and praying that Daisy will come to accept her, otherwise I'm afraid Pansy will have to return to her former home. Luckily that would be at my niece's home, so I could still the little cutie!

Be sure you visit Doodle Bugs to check out all the other Five for Friday posts.

Happy Teaching,

Angela

The Teacher's Desk 6

Tried It Tuesday: Teaching Fourth Grade Language Arts

I didn't expect to link up with Holly for Tried It Tuesday this week. There was really nothing I had tried, just the same ole, same ole. However, something really fun happened today, and here I am!

The teacher who teaches fourth grade Language Arts also happens to teach fifth grade Science. She needed the fifth graders for an extended time today so they could do some hands-on science stations about animal adaptations. The only time in the schedule that we could conjure up was when I normally had the fifth graders for Language Arts. However, my sixth graders were with another teacher who was administering a social studies test to them soooooo...... I took the fourth graders for Language Arts.

What to do at the last minute? SCOOT, of course! The fourth graders had been studying nouns and verbs, particularly as subjects and predicates. I decided to ramp it up a bit for them and add adjectives into the mix.

I started by sharing one of my new favorite books: Bats at the Library by Brian Lies.

With the predictable rhyming text, the fourth graders were quickly chiming in and helping me to read. After the first reading, we went back, extracting nouns and matching words that described them... ADJECTIVES. Next we brainstormed all the adjectives that we could think of to describe HALLOWEEN NIGHT, and what a list it was! We then used the words in sentences, noting nouns and verbs as well as adjectives. Then finally we played SCOOT wherein they practiced identifying nouns, verbs, and adjectives in sentences.

They caught on quickly and really enjoyed the activity! So much so that they asked to come back again SOON! I think it might have had something to do with the cool orange paper that I gave them to write on... LOL!

The fourth graders made my day! I'm REALLY glad that I Tried Teaching Fourth Grade Language Arts today!

Happy Teaching,
Angela
The Teacher's Desk 6

Tunes Tuesday; Givin' It a Try!

I have always used music as a staging ground for teaching and reinforcing classroom skills (see this post)... but I had not used popular tunes' lyrics. I was a bit doubtful about popular tunes. I am old, well... semi-old! I admit it. I don't really listen to the music of today, that is unless my grand niece or nephew ask me to listen to something they like. To be completely honest, if it's not seventies' music... well, not really interested.

Nick over at Sweet Rhyme-Pure Reason had me intrigued, however, with his Tunes Tuesday. I read and reread his post and thought and thought and then just dismissed the idea. Yet, today as I watched the blog roll with all the Tunes Tuesday titles, I was hooked. I couldn't get to my computer earlier since I had a lot of running around to do today but my mind was running also, thinking of all the songs that I could submit. Then it hit me...


To top it off... I actually like this song!!!! So here's my humble attempt at Tunes Tuesday. This song's lyrics are perfect for identifying pronouns and antecedents as well as contractions, and it's perfect for distinguishing the difference between "your" and "you're." You can download a FREEBIE containing the lyrics and spaces for student responses HERE or by clicking on the graphic.

Happy Tuesday,
Happy Teaching,
Angela
The Teacher's Desk 6

Memorial Day FREEBIE

Many of you know that my sixers love mystery pictures! Like, CRAZY love them! They think it's the best way to practice parts of speech and other drill type Language Arts skills. I've been working on some summer related mystery pictures that I'm sending home over the summer with both my fifth and sixth graders, and thought I should take time out to make at least one picture for Memorial Day. It's nothing fancy, just some patriotic bunting, practicing nouns, verbs, and adjectives. If you are interested you can download it HERE or by clicking on the graphic.

If you like this design, you might like another that I recently created. It features a soldier in battle fatigue and also has students practicing parts of speech: singular and plural nouns and present, past, and future tense verbs. It is available for purchase in both my TpT Store and Teacher's Notebook Shop.

Happy Memorial Day,
Happy Teaching,
Angela
The Teacher's Desk 6