Tricks and Treats (with The Friendly Teacher)

 This time of year students begin to lose some of their engagement. It is the time right around the holidays were you need to up your engagement strategies. This lesson was a HIT in my classroom! Students were working so hard on text evidence, text features, main idea and detail and more! The best part of this bat lesson is that you can do it on anything you want to! This is a way to get your students to review any standard that you need too!

Here is what you do!
*Create a bat cave on your door. All I did was crunch up black paper and made it look like a cave.
*Tell your students to wear all black and bring a flash light. The key here is to not tell them why. It will add suspense and your students will be talking about it at home all night long.
*You can create a cave inside your classroom or you can just  turn the lights off and put a cave picture on your smart board. This is the area where you can go far out and create something awesome or you can just keep it simple!
*Create wings for yourself. All you do is take a black piece of paper, fold it in half, then cut triangles out of one side! You have two wings! (I was going to take pictures of this, but it was so easy I felt like you all would think I was silly ;))
*Rip your bat wing in several places.
*Run into the classroom telling your students that you were flying and your wing got caught on a tree. It is ripped and you cannot fly any longer. The only way to fix it is if all of your bat family works hard to help you. Their job is to finish the assignment at hand correctly. If they do, they receive a piece of tape to help fix your wing. To fix the entire wing each person/group will have to complete the activity.
*Students complete whatever you give them. (For me, I had lots of passages with questions to answer) Then, when they get them all correct you hand them a piece of tape and they tape a spot on your wing. Once everyone is done your wing is fixed.

Extras:
**When they got done they got to read Halloween books and eat Bat Poop. (Chocolate Raisins)
**When everyone got done we watched a small Halloween show!
**We had every student make bat wings and tape them on their backs and they LOVED it!

My favorite fall activity is to have my students color a pumpkin. Once they color their pumpkin they write a how-to writing on how they colored their pumpkin. Then, they give the writing to one of their friends in the classroom. That friend tries to color the exact same pumpkin. This is a great lesson to teach students the importance of adding detail in their how-to writing pieces. My newsletter followers received this for free last month and now you can also grab it for FREE here! 

(If you want more freebies like this sign up for my newsletter here)

Tricks and Treats from Teach Two Reach

Hellloooo fall! The best season of the year.. :) I'm here today to share with you some tricks that have worked in my classroom and a sweet little treat!

Main Idea and Details

I think teaching about main idea and details is right up there on the list of tough comprehension concepts to teach little ones - right alongside plot. For young kiddos like first and second graders, it's difficult for them to grasp their head around what the main idea is. 

I like to start off by having them pretend they are detectives. We learn that the main idea is WHAT THE WHOLEEEE STORY IS ABOUT. The details have to PROVE that main idea. 

I show them the following anchor chart. We imagine that the main idea is in the form of the cloud. It is the biggest thing and what the story is mostly about. The raindrops that come out of it are the details. They come out of the cloud, that means, whatever they tell me the details of a story are, must PROVE or tell more about the main idea. It can't be some random raindrop from another cloud. 

Next, we practice this concept with short paragraphs. I show them a paragraph with the topic sentence being the main idea, and then some detail sentences. 3 of them deal with the topic and one doesn't. We do whole model lessons about which one is a random raindrop and which ones are the actual raindrops coming from the main idea cloud.

Here in this picture, students practiced underlining the main idea sentence in red, details in green, and crossing out the random detail.

We always tie the comprehension skill into the basal story for the week. This week we read a short non fiction text on astronauts in space. Sometimes, non fiction can be easier to teach main idea because the details are pretty straight forward. 

We worked together filling in the cloud and details organizer to go along with this topic. 

Once they were able to provide me with the main idea and three details they read about astronauts in space, they got to create their Main Idea hat. And this is where the TREATS part comes in for you. 

I gave students a boy or 
girl
 Main Idea Star template. They also got four rectangles - one for the title and main idea of the story, and three rectangles for three different details and pictures. 

Then I cut long construction paper to the approximate size of the kids' heads. Students had to complete this graphic organizer dealing with the story of the week. Then they glued the boy or girl at the beginning of the construction paper slip, followed by the main idea and the three details. I stapled the hat together at the end. 

You can pick up the template for this HERE or by clicking on the  picture.

BUT THERE'S ONE MORE TREAT FOR YOU. You can enter the Rafflecopter below for a chance to win this Teacher {Heart} Full t-shirt. Check it out here in my Etsy store. It's a super comfy relaxed fit ladies' tee and the heart is in this beautiful glitter that is so much prettier in real life than in the picture!

Thanks for visiting! Good luck in the contest.. ;) 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tricks & Treats {ALL Y'all Need}

Hello, I'm Lisa from ALL Y'all Need and I can't believe it's almost Halloween! This year has really flown by! My Pre-K kiddos have really been focusing on mastering syllables and learning the alphabet. 

My trick...

Don't be afraid to use props to master concepts! This week, we have been stomping out word parts with our monster feet. I have a sweet Grandmother of one of my students made these adorable monster feet for me! They are made out of foam and all purpose craft glue. 

My treat...

We have also played a "Find the Monster" alphabet game. This game has been an absolute hit! Some of my kiddos have very little exposure to the alphabet and others are ready to begin guided reading. So, all of my alphabet games have to have the ability to meet all of my students' needs. Our theme this week is Monsters and it is truly one of my most favorite weeks! 

Click on the picture to grab your copy of the game! 

Happy teaching!

Tricks & Treats from The Learning Chambers

Halloween is just around the corner and that means it's time again for EE's Tricks and Treats.  The Elementary Entourage bloggers will be sharing some of their favorite teaching tricks and tips.  We will also have some terrific teaching treats just for our readers!  Make sure you stop by each day for some trick or treating fun!

I am very excited to share some teaching tricks to help you implement an ozobot challenge into your classroom.  I love STEM challenges that involve programming and the ozobots have definitely been a class favorite lately.  Here are some tips and tricks to help you implement a challenge that uses both quadrants and coordinates.

My first trick is to make sure that you give your students time to explore.  It will really help with classroom management and will also give your students time to work through challenges and learn how to use the ozobots independently.

My second trick is to align your ozobot challenge to something that your students are currently learning about.  My students were learning about x and y coordinates and the four quadrants, so our ozobot challenge centered around that.

After our lesson, I gave the students a piece of grid paper and a checklist.  The students had to find the point of origin and then label the x and y coordinates.  As part of the challenge, they had to determine the starting part or where their ozobot would start.  Then we used ozoblockly to program our ozobot to complete "tricks" inside of the grid.  The challenge was to make sure that our ozobot stayed inside the grid.  It was a challenge but a fun one!

Do you want to have your students complete this ozobot challenge using quadrants and coordinates?  I have this freebie as a treat just for you!  I included several different grid paper sizes for easy differentiation and also an easy to follow checklist.  I hope this helps you implement the coordinates challenge into your classroom.

Click HERE to grab your treat!