Are you feeling LUCKY?

With St Patrick's Day quickly approaching, I still wanted to challenge my students to use figurative language on a regular basis. They have worked on reading logs all year (their only homework), but to change it up they will be working on building these figurative language skills. They still get some of the types mixed up, only because most of these are new to them this year (although I did look back and saw that figurative language begins in 3rd grade with discussing literal and non-literal meanings). Here is a fun way to practice these skills (see below):

Are you feeling lucky?? You have the opportunity to win this set for FREE if you link up with me for my NEW linky this coming Wednesday!! Check back Wednesday for more details!

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Thank you in advance for supporting our classroom with any purchase you make!

Take a Journey Through a Text!

We all want our students to read, but wouldn't it be great to have them REALLY read and dig deep into their texts?

I am extremely excited about this newest creation, as it will be VERY helpful in the next few weeks for review and assessing what kids know and are able to do {or not do}. We have some board members and business folks visiting a couple of classrooms (MINE included). During their visit, they want to see how we are utilizing technology. Well, I need to review during this time and touch on some areas with a few students who are not grasping certain skills. With this in mind, I wanted to create something of quality that can be used time and time again.

Putting all of that in perspective, I designed the "Take a Journey Through Your Text" activity set to allow students the opportunity to close read and dig deeper into a text in a variety of ways.

This was created to be used on multiple occasions & can be used with ANY text. These activities are most suitable for grade 3+

This "Take a Journey Through Your Text" close reading activity set covers the following standards:

Grades 3+
* ELACC RL1
* ELACC RL2
* ELACC RL3
* ELACC RL4
* ELACC RL6

* ELACC RI1
* ELACC RI2
* ELACC RI4
* ELACC RI5

This set includes the following items:

* Directions for Show What I Know Tech Method
* Directions for Text Journey (paper/pencil format)
* Show What I Know Menu # 1
* Show What I Know Menu # 2
* Rubric for Show What I Know Tech Method
* Rubric for Text Journey (paper/pencil format)
* 13 Journey pages including:
* Figurative Language
* Inferences
* Textual Evidence/Main Idea
* Textual Structure
* Vocabulary
* Sentence Structure
* Visualization
* Context Clues
* Summarizing
* Theme
* Character Analysis 
* Point of View

Each activity calls for students to close read in order to site evidence in various ways, touching on each of the standards above. This is a great assessment activity, could be used as homework, or to just enhance your lessons along the way. 

Click the image to take a closer peek!

Figuratively Speaking...

The more we work with figurative language (FL), the better my students get with it. We have been reading Out of the Dust and pulling our different examples of different types of figurative language. By the end of our reading each day, they must have pulled 2 different examples from the text, decide the type, tell how they determined the type, and explained the meaning. When we first began, students were getting them mixed up. After a week and a half for practice and stopping and modeling with the students, they are getting MUCH better!! Now, I want them to work more independently with digging deeper to understand the different types of figurative language. Here is a set I created to allow students to work with and dig deeper... Students will read a short passage, find 2 examples of FL, and explain how they determined the type. In addition, they will 'HUNT' for FL in their text (any text) and do the same. It is not only important to identify FL, they must be able to explain the meaning AND explain how they know it is that particular type (I do not want them guessing)! Visit my TpT store to grab a copy! Thanks!

Reading/ELA Detailed Vocabulary Mini-Posters 5th Grade

I have been working on these for quite a while and have FINALLY finished! I would work on them here and there, but they are a great resource, so I wanted to finished them before school begins!!


With being new to the 5th grade standards, I wanted to dig deeper into the Georgia Teacher's guide for 5th grade Reading/ELA to get acquainted with the standards and learn the new vocabulary. These are a tool for me, as well as for the students. I will have these somewhere (not sure just yet) to where the students can reference them during lessons (and so I can refer to them). I wanted to provide some type of visual or example, to help trigger my memory of the word's meaning (and it will hopefully help the students to picture what the words mean).

These are words from the 5th grade standards for Reading/ELA from the Georgia Teacher Guidance document.

You can get these here!

On another note: Please join my Teacher Tour Tuesday Linky #teachertourtuesday if you are able. Will have it going on each Tuesday... :)

Interactive Notebook Vocabulary Packet

This will be my first time using interactive notebooks, as I never incorporated them into a kindergarten class. As I have been creating my vocabulary cards (almost finished!!!) for Reading/ELA for 5th grade, I began to think that I needed a vocabulary section in the notebooks. I wanted to create some templates that can be easily copied and pasted into the notebooks, rather than spending time drawing it out. There are 4 pages in this packet: Other Way to Say..., Focus on a Word Foldable, and How do Affixes change words Foldable: Prefixes & Suffixes.

You can get these here!

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