Teaching Apostrophe's to younger Students

Teaching apostrophes can be a difficult concept to younger students but I cam across this great collection of printable resources from skillsworkshop.org.  Download this PDF file here and you will find a great collection of ideas and resources to teach apostrophes to younger students.

Kevin Cummins | Post a Comment | Sha

Online Spelling Bees

I have a couple of students in my grade that are really great spellers and are keen to partake in a spelling bee to test out their ability.  I have found a few online sites for them to try to sharpen their skills that you might like to try with your own students.

Interactives Spelling bee has challenges for all year levels and is a great starting point.

The Times Spelling Bee Challenge is a bit of a step up in difficulty and will even challenge English Teachers.

Spelling Bee the Game - Based on the movie and is a great interactive challenge for the kids.  This is for your freakishly good spellers only.

Anyhow Good luck and let me know if you come across any others.



Narrative Planner - The U Plan

Thanks to Scott at mytopten.com.au for this brilliant planning tool to ensure that students can identify and organise all of the key ingredients required to put together a great narrative.  Download the U-PLanner Here.

Kevin Cummins | Post a Comment | Share Art

Conjugate.com - The Ultimate Verb Resource for Teachers and Students

Just like Jenny Eather's Writing Fun dome web sites are just really useful and do simple tasks really well.  Conjugation.com is another classic example of this.

Just type the verb that you want to conjugate in any form. Any verb, regular or irregular. Click on “Conjugate.” A new page is instantaneously displayed, with the verb shown in all of its forms, voices and tenses.

This would now be my number one tool for teaching my students about verbs.  Check it out here.

An entire unit of work on "Where the wild things are" by Maurice Sendak

Where the Wild things Are

I would doubt that there is a decent school library in the world that does not have a copy of Maurice Sendak's 'Where the Wild things are' and with last years film release this book is finding a fresh audience amongst both teachers and students and is a great story to engage your students with.

A colleague of mine Mark Muldoon recently put together a brilliant unit of work for his grade 5/6 students that ties a number of elements of the book, film, soundtrack and artwork into a complete literacy unit.

The story is highly applicable to kids of all ages as it deals with emotions, family issues and how our behaviour and feelings affect the world we perceive around us.

Obviously for copyright reasons I cannot post digital copies of the book or film so the first thing you will have to do is source these.   I have supplied you with a number of resources below with a descriptor of what each element is.

Teacher Guide:  This is the official teacher guide from Warner Bros Pictures:  IT contains a range of activities and tasks for both teachers and students.  A great starting point.

Permission slip to see the film:  Use this if your students need parental permission to see the film at school.

What are the themes of Sendak's books? This activity explores the concepts and themes that run throughout all of Sendak's books for students to compare and contrast.

Book review;  This is a great example of a quality book review of where the Wild things are and should be shown and modelled to students before starting their own.

Making Family connections:  This is a great task for students to do in linking the events that occur in the book and film with those of their own lives.

Cloze Activity: of Book review

letter of Apology:  Make a list of the “mischief” Max did at the beginning of the book. Then write an apology letter from Max to his mother.

Transcript of the Film:  You might like to use parts of this in your reading sessions

Write your own Blurb:  Use the example to assist you.

When I feel sad I will..  get your students to write about their emotions

Leave your memories of "Where the wild things are"  Blog - great interactive activity

Craft Activities:  These are some great creative activities generally based upon the artwork from the book.   Activity 1, Activity 2, Activity 3, Activity 4, Activity 5

Create your wild self:  students can use this create a wild monster of their own that they might like to translate into a story.  A number of opportunities here.

 I hope you enjoy these and if you have any other ideas I'd love to hear them