President's Day Freebie: A Ready-Made Research Project

Here is a *freebie I am sure you are going to love! Do you want to assign a take-home project? Are you  overwhelmed with testing, grading, RTI, and other everyday teaching challenges that seem to weigh on you like a ton of bricks this time of year? If so, this ready-made assignment has everything you need to assign a president report to your students. This mini activity unit comes with a directions page for your student, a grading rubric, an oral report rubric, a calendar for scheduling oral reports AND information cards for EACH United States president. All you have to do is hand it to your students, everything else has been done for you! 

Download HERE for *Free

Find more February Freebies by heading over to Laura Candler's blog and checking out her February Freebies linky party ! 

Enjoy : ) 

Free Writer's Checklist!!

Just wanted to share a writer's checklist that I use with some writing assignments. Feel free to download it! If you have a different variation that you would like to share, please post your link below and we can all hop on over to your blog!

Download for FREE

Preventing the Summer Slide

I recently wrote a guest post for Stephanie at Teaching in Room 6 on preventing the summer slide. If you are not familiar with the summer slide is the term many researchers and educators use to describe the regression of skills many students may experience during the summer months. “Summer slide” affects millions of children each year.... Preventing the summer slide begins with creating a summer reading schedule for your child and/or summer school student. In addition, providing activities for your child/summer student to use problem solving skills/ higher order thinking and writing is also important. To read my original article, click here. To download an awesome freebie that you can use with your child/summer school student throughout the summer, click here. 


Enjoy : ) 

FREEBIE: Compare and Contrast Mini Unit

This evening I reached over 750 friends and fans on The Diary of a Not So WImpy Teacher's Facebook fan page!!!To celebrate I spent some time putting together a really cool mini unit on comparing and contrasting. In addition to the typical ven diagram, I wanted to share a few other graphic organizers that you can use to compare/contrast items/people/events. Feel free to download the mini unit below. If you find it useful, please pin it! I look forward to your feedback, leave a comment if you this is a useful resource!

DOWNLOAD 

Enjoy : ) 

CELEBRATING 300 Facebook Friends with A FREEBIE!

YAY! The Diary of a Not So Wimpy Teacher is growing!! To celebrate AND to show how much I truly appreciate all of the love, I am sharing a FREEBIE!

Is it time to assign a report? Are you swamped with test prep, paperwork, grading papers, blah blah blah......? Well, if you need to assign a writing project and you are super busy, this freebie is perfect for you!! The President Report: A Ready-made Assignment, has everything created for you. I am providing you with a grading rubric, student directions, a rubric for an oral report, AND quick for facts for EACH president. All you have to do is pass it out! I hope you LOVE it, it really does make assigning a report (written and oral) super easy.

Stay posted, I have some REALLY great reading activities in the works! I had the pleasure of attending the African American Children's Book Fair today and I picked up some great new reads. I can't wait to share them with you : )

Selena, from Classroom Magic, has also created a great mini activity unit that is great for President's Day. She has a math lesson perfect for reinforcing statistical data, a writing assignment, and my favorite, a biographical poem. She is giving this activity away for free on her blog! Stop by and pick it up, let her know Kathie sent you! 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, 

Figurative Language Mini Unit

This week I will be reviewing figurative language with my students. Last week I had this huge idea! I was going to create this vibrant, fun, tasty unit using candy to teach onomatopoeias, similes, metaphors, personification....Then I thought about it.....and thought about it.....and thought..... that it may not be too wise to serve a bunch of 4th graders candy at 10:30 in the morning! So, I created a mini unit, like I planned. Only I limited the use of candy to POP Rocks on one day and either a Sweet Tart or a Sour Patch Kid on another day. After this unit we will continue to practice identifying the different types of figurative language in poetry and other types of writing. This was just an introduction that I created to highlight these key terms because it hasn't been addressed in the curriculum yet and I know it is an important (and tested) skill.

Check it out!! And try it out for yourself! Feel free to leave a comment, I would love to hear your feedback : )

Click HERE to download Figurative Language Mini Unit

Awesome Freebie...BUT putting myself on a "BLOGGING TIME-OUT"!!

I literally spent the ENTIRE day working on this awesome masterpiece that I am about to unveil. I knew once winter break came that I was going to spend lots of time on the computer, but I think today was overkill! Since Friday evening I have literally slept with my laptop every night! I am definitely putting myself on BLOGGING TIME-OUT! for at least ONE FULL vacation day! That is the plan anyway..... The good thing is I can scratch off another item on my list of goals. I have completed THE BEST Frindle Literature Guide that I have seen yet. It provides graphic organizers, daily discussion starters that activate prior knowledge, writing prompts that set a purpose for listening with each chapter and creative printables that can be added to a class book to celebrate your students' published writing. I plan on using this the first week we go back to school. After completing all of the activities, my students will use their story boards/ reading logs and workshop drafts to create an outline their very own commercial. Once they summarize the story and go through successfully complete their peer/teacher writing conferences, they will have the option of: 1. Creating a podcost (for the camera shy individuals) 2: Create a video (for the not so shy individuals) or 3: Create a book trailer (for those who are interested in a little of both). There is always room for improvement and this is my first official literature guide that I have created to share with the public. Please share any and all comments if you have any suggestions on ways I can improve this product. Enjoy : )

Prior to writing my own literature guide I did a search to see what was out there. Betterlessons.com had some pretty good reproducables I posted them to my pinterest board if you are interested in checking them out.

click HERE to download