Popsicle Sticks Game

The Popsicle sticks game is a fun way for students to practice vocabulary. To make a game you will need one Popsicle stick per word. Write one word on each stick. On the tip of one stick, draw a red dot. You will also need four sets of the words and definitions (one for each member of the group who will be playing). Place the Popsicle sticks in a plastic cup labeled with whatever story/skill/root-word/etc. is being covered by those sticks.

For two sets of playing direction ideas, click here:
Basic Popsicle sticks
Organizational patterns/author's purpose Popsicle sticks

October Library Ideas

October Research

Halloween Hunt:

Using the resources available in your school library, research the origin of Halloween. Report your findings to the class in the form of an oral report. Accompany your report with a list for each classmate of the “scary” books available in the library. 

Monster Search:

Monsters! Do they really exist? Is there really a Loch Ness monster? An abominable Snowman? Big Foot? UFO’s? Using the resources available in your school library, research monsters. Report your findings to the class in the form of an oral report. Accompany your report with a list of the “monster” books available in the library.

Eid-ul-Adha:

Research Eid-ul-Adha customs and traditions. You will present your findings to the class in the form of an oral report. Accompany your report with a list of books and short stories featuring Eid-ul-Adha that are available in the library.

Sukkot:

Research Sukkot customs and traditions. You will present your findings to the class in the form of an oral report. Accompany your report with a list of books and short stories featuring Sukkot that are available in the library.

Dussehra:

Research Dussehra customs and traditions. You will present your findings to the class in the form of an oral report. Accompany your report with a list of books and short stories featuring Dussehra that are available in the library.

Birth of the Bab:

Research Birth of the Bab customs and traditions. You will present your findings to the class in the form of an oral report. Accompany your report with a list of books and short stories featuring Birth of the Bab that are available in the library.

Leif Erikson:

October 9^th is Leif Erikson Day. Who is Leif Erikson? Why is he important enough to earn his own day? Based on your research about him, what would be an appropriate way to celebrate Leif Erikson Day? Present your information to the class in the form of an oral report.

United Nations:

October 24^th is United Nations Day. What is the United Nations? Why is it important enough to earn its own day? Based on your research about it, what would be an appropriate way to celebrate United Nations Day? Present your information to the class in the form of an oral report.

Black Tuesday

October 29, 1929 is known as Black Tuesday. What happened on that day to earn it such a dark name? What major event in American history did Black Tuesday lead to? Present your information to the class in the form of an oral report.

Main Idea Manipulative

Here is a great idea for creating a main idea- supporting details manipulative.
http://clutterfreeclassroom.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-tip-for-teaching-main-idea-visual.html

Speed Studying Activity

Speed Study

This activity was created after I saw a news segment about speed dating. I thought that the concept could be applied to studying. The kids enjoy it because they are moving, they feel like they are playing a game, and they don’t have to work with any one partner for too long. This particular description is for using flashcards; however, the speed study concept can also work with other activities.  

Arrange two rows of desks so that students will sit facing each other.

Hand out flash cards to the students in the left row.

Each student in the left row will use the flashcards to quiz the student across from him or her. For every correct answer, the student being quizzed gets to keep the flash card.

Every three minutes the teacher will say, “Switch!” and the students on the right will move down one seat (the students on the left stay where they are). The students will continue quizzing with their new partners.

Once every student on the right has had a chance to work with every student on the left, the students who were being quizzed will count how many flashcards they have managed to accumulate. The student who has collected the most cards “wins”. The students may then switch sides, with the students on the right quizzing the students on the left.

Daily Starters

Scholastic has daily starters available - for free - at http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/. Each one has a teachable moment (usually a day in history type thing), a brief writing prompt, and a vocabulary activity. For example, the starter for Sept. 24th reads:


Teachable Moment

Basketball was invented by James Naismith, who taught physical education at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachussetts. During the cold winter of 1891, Naismith had to come up with an exercise his students could perform indoors because it was too cold to go outside. And so he came up with the game of basketball!

My Morning Journal
Can you imagine inventing your own sport? Tell how the game would be played and what equipment would be needed.

Word of the Day
It’s National Punctuation Day!

!?”[*—!

Do you think the lowly comma is irrelevant? Think again. A comma can save a life! For example, read the two sentences below. How does the meaning change in each? Why did it change?

1. Let's eat Grandma!
2. Let's eat, Grandma!

irrelevant  [ih-rel-uh-vuhnt] adjective

•not relevant; not related to the matter at hand

Synonyms: unimportant, beside the point, trivial

Write a sentence for irrelevant. Be sure to punctuate it correctly.

Dr. B's Common Core Websites

Here are the websites Dr. B suggested we use for Common Core: 

http://schools.nyc.gov/Academics/CommonCoreLibrary

State Department of Education

North Carolina  www.dpi.state.nc.us/

New York:

www.nysed.gov/  Using teaching units from www.commoncore.org and will be posting math units

Massachusetts  www.doe.mass.edu/

Missouri  dese.mo.gov/

Nevada  www.doe.nv.gov/

Evidentiary Statements

Click here for the excellent poster Ms. T sent out with starters for evidentiary statements. This is a great tool to get our students ready for TCAP writing!

Exit Ticket Templates

Exit tickets are an awesome way to wrap up a lesson! Click here for templates of 10 different exit tickets.

Bulletin Board: Genre

Teaching genre? Here is a board Ms. Burtram created for just that topic! This would be a great board to have a few of your kids reproduce during R and E.

Bulletin Board: Bee a Good Reader

Here is a fun bulletin board for keeping track of accomplishments. We use this board to celebrate when a student has completed a Versatile book. Each flower represents a specific book. When a student has successfully completed each exercise in a specific book, his/her bee goes up next to that flower. This would work for any list of accomplishments you had - like, for example, your study island assignments.

Bulletin Board: Thinking Strategies Good Readers Use

This would be a fabulous board to let some of your kids work on during R and E - they are learning reading strategies (and hopefully thinking about them) as they are creating a great reminder for all of your students. If I have visited your class during DEAR, this board was created using the same template as the handouts I gave your students. If you would like your own copies of that handout, and some other great reading posters/bookmarks/etc. click here.

Bulletin Board: French Phrases

French Phrases
How we used this board:
Step One: We took each French phrase from the Tennessee middle school SPI's and created a board with the word, definition, and a visual reminder.
Step Two: Students recreated the board on construction paper, creating original visual reminders.
(You can let some of your kids come in during R and E to create the original board - they will come up with really creative visuals!) 

Bulletin Board: Synonym Rolls

Fresh Baked Synonym Rolls
Here is how we used this board last year:
Step One: We had our students read an informational text about Lewis and Clark.
Step Two: Each student chose from the story a word he/she thought would have multiple synonyms.
Step Three: Each student made a synonym roll, starting the roll with the word he/she had selected from the text and continuing with synonyms from the thesaurus.
Step Four: We chose our favorite synonym rolls and used them to create a bulletin board.

Bulletin Board: Text Features

Text Features Bulletin Board
R and E Activity:
Pull 4-5 high kids into your R and E class. Give them magazines and/or newspapers and show them a picture of this board. Ask them to find and cut out an example of each text feature on the board (a couple of features - like the index - may need to be photocopied from a textbook). Once they are done, they can check with you to make sure that each of their examples in acceptable. Then, let them use their samples to create a bulletin board like the one in the picture. 

2012-2013 Protected Reading List

Click here to see the list of protected novels for middle school 2012-2013.

Click here for the permission to teach a non-protected novel. Remember, it is only necessary to fill out this form if you plan to teach the novel to the entire class.

Infographic: Olympic Science

Here is a fantastic article about how the bodies of Olympic athletes have changed over time. It has an incredible infographic along with some other interesting charts. For example, one chart shows how slenderness (height divided by bodywidth) has changed to rasie the center of mass of sprinters.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/08/09/158448224/olympic-bodies-they-just-dont-make-them-like-they-used-to

Lesson Plan: The Drought of 2012

Here is a lesson plan for you using information text and focusing on a current event: the drought of 2012.

Predict: Have students start out by making a web. In the center of the web is the word "drought". Around the center, they should brainstorm different kinds of people who could be hurt physically or economically in a drought (farmer, politician, etc).

Next, show the students the PBS Newshour segment entitled "The Drought of 2012". http://www.pbs.org/newshour/thenews/thevote/story.php?id=19477&package_id=634

Reevaluate and Adjust: After showing the video, have students go back to their web and make adjustments based on the new material they have learned.

Discuss and Describe: Ask the students the following discussion questions:

What is a drought?

How does the 2012 drought differ from other droughts the United States has experienced?

How have farmers/politicians/citizens responded to the drought?

Expand: Have students do a cloze read of the New York Times article "Severe Drought Seen as Driving Up Cost of Food". http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/business/food-prices-to-rise-in-wake-of-severe-drought.html?_r=1&hp Students should read the article through once. Then, students should read the article again and highlight the information that indicates how people are being impacted by the drought. Finally, have students discuss with a partner or small group what they have chosen to highlight and why.

Prior Knowledge/Making Connections/ Write: Show students the graphic on products containing corn. http://www.kycorn.org/documents/cornuses.pdf Have the students use what they have learned (that the drought is going to cause a hike in the price of corn) and this list of corn based products to come up with main idea statements and supporting details to explain how specific people will be hurt by the rising price of corn.

Example:

Students may be negatively affected by the drought because of higher corn prices. The drought of 2012 is causing the price of corn to go up. Older students will have to pay higher prices for paper and pens because paper and ink both use corn. Younger students will also be affected because crayons and glue also contain corn. Students will may even have to pay a higher price for those new school clothes! Yes, the fabric that makes our clothes can also contain corn.

For a list of further resources and more lesson plan ideas on the drought, see the resource http://www.pbs.org/newshour/thenews/materials/Drought2012.LALessonPlan.pdf - a lesson plan from the.news.

Lesson Plans: Frogs and Superfish

 Here are three of cross-curricular lessons!

LESSON PLAN ONE: THE THIN GREEN LINE

PBS Nature has some excellent resources that are perfect for cross-curricular activities. They aired a fascinating special on frogs entitled The Thin Green Line that is still available for streaming at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/frogs-the-thin-green-line/video-full-episode/4882/. There are some fabulous resources accompanying the video, include a great infographic. I have included a link to the infographic below. You could display the infographic using your projector. Start by going over the infographic with your students. Then, allow them to work in pairs or groups to answer the questions in the attached document (a sample question is listed below).

Frog Infographic

http://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/nature/files/2012/08/froginfographic_fnl.png

Features:

A PBS infographic on the anatomy of a frog, comparisons to toads, and the development of the frog

Sample skill question:

According to the infographic, if a frog is 3.5 inches long, can it jump more or less than 62 inches?

Click here to view the full question sheet.

LESSON PLAN TWO: SUPERFISH

PBS Nature also aired a program on billfish that was quite interesting. The entire video is no longer available for streaming, but there are several resources still available along with some video clips. One of the resources is an article on Mercury levels in seafood. It is available here http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/superfish/a-warning-to-seafood-lovers/1008/

This would be an example of an article to use for a cloze reading. First, print the article for your students. Have the students read the article silently. Then, hand out highlighters (or allow your students to get out a pencil) and let the students read through again. During their second reading, the students should highlight information that they think is important or interesting. They can also make notes or comments. After this second reading, you can hold a class discussion on the article or allow students to discuss in groups what they felt was important about the article.

LESSON PLAN THREE: SUPERFISH PART TWO

The Superfish resources also include a great infographic! Use it as you would the frog info-graphic above. (The font seems to be more visible using Explorer rather than Firefox).

Superfish infographic:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/superfish/infographic-all-about-billfish/1005/

Features:

A PBS infographic on billfish including a comparison of various types of billfish and fishing data

Sample skill question:

Using the information on the infographic, explain why the names swordfish and spearfish are accurate for how the fish look but not what they actually do.

Click here to view the full question sheet

TCAP Writing

Here are two sites that offer practice writing assessment questions:

http://www.state.tn.us/education/assessment/writing.shtml

https://tn.misttest.com/practice

Thanks to Mr. F for the links.

5 Extra Minutes

If you find yourself with 5 extra minutes at the end of class today, you may consider showing this video from Flocabulary.  They do a "Week in Rap" every Friday on all the current events that are happening in our world.  It makes for some pretty interesting discussions between our students and us.  

Jennifer Burtram
Smyrna Middle School
Reading Interventionist

	Hurricane Isaac & Will.i.am on Mars Lance Armstrong lost his Tour de France titles. Hurricane Isaac hit Louisiana. Will.i.am's new singled was beamed out on Mars. Romney and Ryan are the official Republican presidential nominees. And RIP Neil Armstrong. These stories and more in your Week in Rap. Watch the video. And remember, you can click on the lyrics to learn more. Activity of the Week Think About Your Thinking Each week, we create a printable activity to accompany the video. This week? Think About Your Thinking. Students investigate three events from The Week in Rap and create informed opinions. Click the Activities link on the side of the video page, or download Think About Your Thinking now. And don't miss our lesson plans to expand your current events instruction. Free Flocab Video of the Week The Number Line - The Number Line Middle School Math This August, we were thrilled to debut 20 songs and videos for middle school math. And our video about positive and negative integers is free all month. Where can you find us? On that number line. Watch Now. Want to make sure you have The Week in Rap all year? Subscribe >> Like us? Like us.

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