Creative Ways to Get Kids Reading

This post could also be called 

"How to Be The Coolest Reading Teacher Ever!"

Use a child's strengths in other subject areas! Interdisciplinary lessons are the most engaging and effective for all students. Most of these involve books and printables, but if you're looking for something different, see the bottom of the post - and / or leave a message. I just may have another post coming!

Read recipes and cook. This has an added bonus of teaching math and science at the same time! Read menus and restaurant reviews.

• Eat Your Math Homework: Recipes for Hungry Minds!
• The Math Chef: Over 60 Math Activities and Recipes for Kids 
• Building Real-Life Math Skills: 16 Lessons

Read comics. Here are some of our favorites: 

• Cartooning Projects
• Super One Page Math Comics
• Comic-Strip Math: Problem Solving

Read mysteries. It's easier to pay attention to details when you call them clues. Drawing conclusions is way more fun when you're solving a crime!

• Mini Mysteries

Learn globally. Read about people all over the world.

• Guinness World Records Math

Skip parts of the book! There are many books where you get to choose what happens next. Here is an awesome review as well as plot analysis of this type of literature.

• Choose Your Own Adventure Books
• You Choose Books
• You Choose: History Books (see below)

Read sports recaps and magazines. Create charts and graphs that show statistics. Discuss patterns you've noticed and predict what will happen next. 

• Sports Illustrated for Kids
• Football Math: Touchdown Acvitivies and Projects for Grades 4-8

Read diaries. 

• Dear America - historical fiction stories written from the point-of-view of young girls throughout American history
• The Royal Diaries - historical fiction written from the point-of-view of young girls throughout world history and based on real people
• My Name is America - historical fiction stories written from the point-of-view of young boys throughout American history

Read signs. Take pictures of them and write stories that include them in the plot. 

Download this page as a PDF here.

Really Cool Rollercoasters

Are you in search of a great STEM project to do at home or in class? This roller coaster design project is so much fun. It can take several hours or days depending on how you structure it. Check out a few of the 45 slides included.

This collaborative STEM project can be planned in person or virtually and be built in person. It's perfect for a modified remote learning situation, block schedule, or typical science / STEM class and can be shared via Google Apps or Google Classroom. Videos, research links, task directions, planning guides, rubric, and editable awards are included in the 45 editable slides.

Students are to design the safest, tallest, coolest looking roller coaster in the world. If your design is the best, it will be built at a local amusement park. They practice the steps of the engineering process as they research, plan and build, test, and retest their designs.

The best part is you can keep track of students' work both in class and from home. You can also comment and edit as needed, including by adding awards for the most creative, tallest structure, best collaboration, best use of materials, most sturdy, and best redesign.

Download this project here.

Kids not only love this project, but they also learn to work together and to follow the steps of the engineering design process through a real life application!

Want to try some virtual interactives? These are great for learning about potential and kinetic engergy.

 https://nj.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/hew06.sci.phys.maf.rollercoaster/energy-in-a-roller-coaster-ride/

https://www.learner.org/series/interactive-amusement-park-physics/

Did you miss out on a trip to Disney or an amusement park? Here are sone virtual roller coaster rides!

https://hellogiggles.com/news/virtual-roller-coaster-rides/

https://stories.hersheypa.com/take-a-virtual-ride-on-15-coasters-at-hersheypark/

Check out more STEM / science posts:

http://alysiabattista.blogspot.com/search/label/science

Digital ABC Book Research

Are your students hesitant to research? Do they struggle with learning about new topics? This project is a hit every year! Students also can draw or upload pictures, depending on whether your print or have them work digitally.

Choice is one way to differentiate your instruction. Students will be fully engaged and can work independently or remotely.

Download this product here.

Looking for other digital projects and lessons? Check these out: 

-Bitmoji Bookmark Projects

-Digital Memory Book

-Digital Escape Rooms

-Concrete Poems

-Meet an Author Opinion Writing

-Country Research Reports

Hands-on Reading Projects

Looking for some hands-on reading projects for intermediate, middle, and high school grades? These engaging ideas include templates, examples, and explanations for students to show what they know. They can all be done on paper or digitally!

Projects include:

-Diorama

-Triorama

-Character Interview

-Scrapbook page

-Movie poster

-Newspaper

-Yearbook page

-Timeline / Plot diagram

-Diary entry

-Travel map

-Song Scenes

-Foldable book

-Pop-up book

-Cell phone dialogue

-Play

-Comic

Students can be given the ability to choose between 16 projects or all students can complete the same project with different books. This Google Slide presentation includes links to Google Docs templates that students can use to complete projects as well as links to other websites where projects can be completed digitally. Rubrics are also included for some projects.

Download these projects here.

#projectbasedlearning #PBL #remotelearning #distancelearning

Looking for other digital projects and lessons? Check these out: 

-Bitmoji Bookmark Projects

-Digital Memory Book

-Digital Escape Rooms

-Concrete Poems

-Meet an Author Opinion Writing

-Digital Escape Rooms

-ABC Research Book

-Country Research Report

Earth Day activities

Happy Earth Day! 

We raised 5 butterflies from our Eric Carle Insect Lore kit and released them today! 

   

We also crawled through tunnels like caterpillars, 

and did Do-a-Dot caterpillars. 

Find the full color printable here. Older kids can cut and glue the circles at the bottom.

We also listened to some silly songs, 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Song

made fuzzy caterpillars with pom poms,

 

and played with our caterpillar in the chrysalis (Jack in a box).

We knew that butterflies need a temp above 55 degrees Fahrenheit to be released, so we made a sugar water mixture and gave them fruit for two days before it was warm enough.

How did you celebrate Earth today?

Check out other science posts:

https://www.funbrain.com/books/judy-moody-saves-the-world/page/1

Testing, Testing 1-2-3!

I know, I know. The last word a teacher or student wants to hear at the end of the year is test, but that's what most of us are doing - finishing guided reading and end of the year math assessments, grading finals, compiling writing portfolios, and giving report card grades. Let's be honest, when you hear the word assessment, you probably think test. Students learn in different ways and so we teach to different learning styles and call it differentiated instruction. But have you thought about differentiating your assessments? In my first couple of years for teaching, I always used summative and formative assessments in my classroom, but I wasn't as creative as I am now. Problem based learning and project based learning have become very popular as they are easy ways of holding your students accountable for showing what they learned without having to take a quiz or test.They can just be plain fun too!  Try involving students in creating a rubric at Rubistar.

For more detail and research on instruction and assessment, check out the What Works Clearinghouse from the U.S. Department of Education.

Check these ideas out:
http://daretodifferentiate.wikispaces.com/file/view/MeaningfulMenus.pdf
http://daretodifferentiate.wikispaces.com/file/view/tictactoe.pdf
http://daretodifferentiate.wikispaces.com/Choice+Boards (different from Picture Exhange Communication system)

Two of my favorite ways of assessing students are to have them create a foldable (upcoming blog) or a scrapbook page of what they learned. Once pages are put together, they have a memory book of the school year! I had students bring in pictures from home that had a similar theme (nature, holiday, etc.). If they forgot, I had them use PhotoBooth to take a couple of pictures. I used our school's die cuts to make it decorative. Go to freescrapbookfonts and Lettering Delights to check out their current freebies, which are perfect for scrapbooking (and blogging / worksheet creation) if you have a printer or can take screenshots. If you don't have any die cuts or a color printer, you can have the students draw with colored pencils or markers. I avoid crayons because the wax and pictures don't get along very well! Students can cut out letters, words, and phrases from newspapers or magazines too. We created borders and picture backgrounds by cutting construction paper with decorative edge scissors.

 Check out these pictures to see what my students created when I was an artist for a day at our arts festival. (I was one of the "artistic teachers" mentioned in the newspaper article.)