There is never a dull moment.....

I am sorry to those of you who really love Mondays. I am not a huge Monday fan because it always seems like something strange happens on them. Today, may just win the Oscar for Weirdest event. Why?

My morning walk to the office for sign-in was disturbed by our lead janitor staring up at a corner with a look of sheer terror on his face. Nestled ever so snugly into the corner was a tiny black bat. He had no clue how it got in the building, or better yet, how to get the bat out of the building before the students arrived. I guess Mr. Bat didn't get the memo about Halloween being in October or he is just as sick of the ice as the rest of us. 

I'm not sure who they called or how they got the bat out, but it was gone when I went down the hallway later this morning. 

Has anyone else had a little critter break into their building?

Luck of the Freebies

It's President's Day! I am taking advantage of my day off by searching for new St. Patrick's day goodies to use next month. Hopefully, you will also find one or two of these packets to be useful.

Articulation

1. Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato Articulation Companion
2. Spring Speech Companion- word lists for /S, R, L, SH, CH, J, TH/

Comprehension

1. The Lucky Leaping Leprechaun- Adapted Book with wh-questions
2. Luck Leprechaun's Listening Comprehension
3. The Old Lady who Swallowed a Clover- activities you can use with the book

Language

1. St. Patrick's Day Sentence and Paragraph Scrambles
2. Shamrock Absurdities 
3. Fact or Opinion

Crafts

1. Worth More Than Gold

Go for the gold.

I know that it's a little early to be talking about March, but somehow I just couldn't wait any longer to share one of my favorite crafts for St. Patrick's Day. 

The top hat can be used for pretty much any goal that you need to work on with your students. I initially used this craft to focus on parts of speech. My example contains adjectives for MacKenzie O'Shamrock from The Luckiest Leprechaun story. If you notice, I left off his actual name so my paper so that my students would have to guess who my card was about. 

For my older students, I had them write their adjectives into sentences that described their object.

You could also adapt the craft into a mobile by hanging the gold pieces on pieces of thread rather than placing everything on a sheet of construction paper.

I also included a tiny bonus to this craft packet--- idiom cards and a short vocabulary game!

Grab your copy of the Irish Hat Craft here.

While everyone else is seeing hearts......

I am working on the differences between facts and opinions with my younger crowd. We have spent the past week working on the basic definitions of a fact and an opinion. We've sampled popcorn, looked at Frozen pictures, and even stuffed animals to help us understand the difference between the two words. (The popcorn, while fun, was not the most effective teaching tool.)

We are slowly moving towards sorting and writing activities. Since I seem to have an abundance of Frozen experts, I am kicking off the sorting activities with a quick activity that focuses on Anna, Elsa, and Olaf. 

Next, comes the fun of making sure that we can carry our new-found skills over to something that is not covered in pretty snowflakes.

The sorting pages give several examples to help remind students of what they are looking for in each statement.

I also kept the statements on these cards shorter than my previous Fall and Christmas editions since this activity is aimed at lower grade levels.

You can grab your copy of Fact or Opinion: Boot Camp here.

Adventures in language sampling

Language samples. It must be THAT time of the year again! Yes, folks, I have just started wading in the waters of evaluation season.

We all know that standardized assessments are only one piece of the puzzle. Information has to be gathered in other ways through interviews with parents, teacher rating scales, work samples, academic grades, etc......Even at the school-aged level, one of the best informal measures of a student's language and articulation skills is a language sample. I thought I would share some free resources that I use for language samples today.

1. Language Sample Record Sheet for 100 Utterances. 
2. Language Sample Checklist Part 1 (This targets preschool, but I use it for lower elementary too)
3. Language Sample Checklist Part 2
4. Language Sample Checklist for 20 Utterances
5. Free Language Sample Prompts  (Prompts for students who don't need pictures)
6. No-Words Freebie: Build A Snowman. (You can also use wordless picture books from the library.)
7. Free Internet Coloring Pages - just make sure you get one that contains a scene. I decided to print out some options from Frozen, but you could also use popular cartoon shows.

I have to say that using the Frozen pictures for language sampling has made my life so much easier.

Getting ready for Valentine's Day

My students really loved the Ho, Ho, Ho and a Lump of Coal game that I found on Pinterest. My smooth skating game for winter words has also gone over better than I expected. (Frankly, I am still surprised by how much they love this simple card game.) So, I am back with another version of this vocabulary card game for Valentine's Day.  

Hearts! is played in the same way as the other two games. Students have to describe the vocabulary word written on the heart in order to keep the card. You might also want them to make a sentence using the word for additional practice. If they get a Cupid card, they must return all of their cards to the pile. The fairy card means that they get an extra turn.

You can grab your copy of the Hearts! game here.

My Dream Craft

We are getting a *slightly* early start on Martin Luther King, Jr. activities this week in my groups since there is a teacher workday next week. I am kicking my little mini-celebration off with a new craft activity that can be adapted for skill/grade level. 

To start off this lesson, I talk to my students about Martin Luther King, Jr. and his famous "I Have a Dream" speech with a little bit of help from BrainPopJr. The majority of my students really enjoy watching these small videos and the little quiz. The only time I have ever had one complain is when I left the lights on instead of turning them off like their teachers. 

 For the "My dream" craft, I asked them to think of something they would like to do that could help other people. I gave my younger students one medium-sized cloud to draw a picture of their dream. Then we used the larger "I dream that...." cloud to write about the picture. My older students got two clouds, like in my example above, so we could draw a cause and effect dream.

 I gave them the example of how I wanted to be a singer when I was younger. I always thought that if I became famous, I would buy thousands of copies of favorite books to share with other children. We then made predictions about what might happen if each other's dream were to come true. Once all of my groups get finished with their final touches, I will be sharing the pictures with other groups to practice making more predictions and even some inferencing.

My one tip for the craft is to have your female students add some extra hair to the picture of the sleeping child. I could only find an image of a little boy so we just used our colored pencils to solve that problem.

You can grab a copy of the "My Dream" craft here.