Poinsettia Goals

I started this blog to keep track of my favorite lessons I had done at work and to share my ideas. However, recently I have been wanting to blog more about everyday things, things in my life outside the classroom. We'll see how it goes. 🙂 It is Day 5 of the New Year ... …

Lost on an Island, Part 2

I first tried this writing prompt with my fourth-graders (which you can read about here) and I enjoyed it so much I decided to use it for my younger grades as well. For first and second graders, I kept the same ideas and instructions as the older kids, but I made it a little simpler. Like …

Lost on an Island Writing Prompt

I was looking through some books in our classroom yesterday when I came across these laminated cards that picture school supplies and other objects. I'm not sure what they were used for in the past, but I thought I could turn them into a fun writing prompt for my fourth graders.      I first told the …

100th Day!

It's the 100th Day over here at our school! My class of third-graders will arrive in about 10 minutes but I wanted to write about what I've been doing so far for this day! My co-ESL-teacher isn't here today so I have all the kids to myself! Sometimes I'm a little overwhelmed with the larger …

Chrysanthemum

Do you ever feel like you're really unorganized, but then everything magically comes together? That was (sort of) me this morning. Even though it's only Tuesday, this week has been a little unusual already. We didn't have any of our normal classes yesterday, and won't have all of them today because of some testing the students …

Proofreading, Part 3

For the last lesson on proofreading with fourth-grade, I had them each write a paragraph. I gave them a few topics they could choose from: their favorite restaurant, the best part of their day, or how they thought they could be a good friend. Once they had completed their work, they had to find two people in …

Beautiful Glasses

One of the 1st-graders in my class recently got glasses. The frames are dark and there are sparkly designs on the sides. She told us ahead of time that she was getting them. And when she walked into class with glasses for the first time, I noticed and made sure to mention how great they looked. …

My colorful sister is jogging

Or as a subtitle: Nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Throughout the year so far, my classes have done different lessons using nouns, verbs and adjectives. I'd been thinking about doing this activity for a while and thought it would be a good way for my 1st - and 2nd - graders to put all these concepts together. …

Proofreading, part two.

The fourth-graders that come to the ESL classroom I work in really enjoyed correcting the crazy spelling mistakes I made in the sentences I wrote on the board. For my next lesson, I wanted them to try proofreading the work of their classmates. I passed out papers and had each student write a paragraph about …

Proofreading, part one.

I noticed that a lot of the fourth graders in my class had trouble with spelling and grammar. I wanted to plan some lessons that would help them improve the overall quality of their writing. I decided that it was time to teach them how to proofread. In my first lesson, I turned to the …