The Joy of Teaching

Cursive might seem like a thing of the past, but it still remains an important skill that all children should learn. Learning cursive writing can provide various benefits for children’s cognitive and motor skill development. Cursive handwriting requires a different set of fine motor skills compared to printing, helping children refine their hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity. The continuous, flowing nature of cursive writing also encourages better hand control and rhythm. Additionally, the unique letter formations in cursive can enhance memory retention and recognition, as the interconnected letters form a distinct visual pattern. Research suggests that the act of physically writing in cursive can stimulate different areas of the brain, potentially aiding in overall cognitive development and learning.

Evan-Moor’s digital lesson library, TeacherFileBox, provides hundreds of cursive writing activities to help children learn and practice. From beginning to advanced cursive, TeacherFileBox printables include engaging activities that make learning fun. Many of our curated cursive activities are units from Evan-Moor’s Daily Handwriting Practice books for grades 1–6.

Download free sample activities from Daily Handwriting Practice here. 

Practice makes perfect! Use these printables (for grades 2–6) to playfully engage children in practicing the basics of cursive letters:

View this TeacherFileBox printable here. With this activity, practice writing the letters A, B, C, D, and E. Repeat writing both uppercase and lowercase letters, then move to full sentences. This printable has a daily practice activity for each day of the week, rounding out the week by practicing lowercase letters with an e.e. cummings poem.

 

 

 

Work on cursive capital letters and the days of the week:

View this TeacherFileBox Printable here. Use this printable to practice the days of the week and alliterative sentences. Finish out the activity by copying a story in cursive.

 

 

 

 

 

Learn geography and cardinal directions while also learning cursive:

View this TeacherFileBox printable here. This daily practice activity works on capital letters and geographic vocabulary in cursive.

 

 

 

 

 

For younger kids (grades 2–3), try these creative activities:

View this Cursive: Alligator TeacherFileBox printable here.

This activity works on the capital and lowercase “A.” Students finish the activity by writing an original sentence about an alligator.

 

 

 

 

 

View this Cursive: Whale TeacherFileBox here.

This activity works on the capital and lowercase “W.” Students finish the activity by writing an original sentence about a whale.

 

 

 

 

View this TeacherFileBox Cursive: Dot-to-Dot printable here.

Create a hot air balloon picture with this connect-the-dot activity. Students connect dots of the A–Z cursive alphabet.

 

 

 

 

Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox printables are a great tool to help children learn cursive handwriting. The diverse cursive handwriting activities and games provide engaging learning experiences for kids. With over 80,000 lesson units available across PreK–6 grades, TeacherFileBox makes it easy to build your cursive handwriting curriculum. In addition to cursive handwriting lessons, TeacherFileBox also includes lesson units across the curriculum for grades PreK–6 in math, language, writing, science, geography, social studies, STEM/STEAM, SEL, and more! Save your favorite printables in your personal account—and print lessons, project them onto a screen, or share them in your Google Classroom! Try TeacherFileBox for free for 14 days and browse reading printables and activity ideas.

For more tips on teaching cursive, browse How to Teach My Child Cursive: Complete Instructions here.

 

 

 

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Natalie Robinson is a recent Communication Studies graduate from LMU. She has a strong passion for writing and loves children. Having grown up in a Montessori school and later transitioning to public school, Natalie values early childhood education and believes that social and emotional learning should be a core tenet within all homes and classrooms. In writing for Evan-Moor, Natalie hopes to build a career in copywriting and copyediting.

The 100th day of school is a major milestone during the school year and a great excuse to celebrate with special activities. We have some suggestions on how to make the 100th day of school just as exciting as the first day! Kick off the 100th day in the K–1 classroom with these ideas:

Evan-Moor’s printable activities:

Kindergarten

Grades K–1

Counting by 5s Printable

Grade 1

100 Days of School Thinking Skills Printable

This printable guides students through counting, recognizing patterns, identifying consonants versus vowels, and developing critical thinking skills. Find this printable here.

 

Brown Bag Math Book Printable

This is a directional and template printable that explains an activity designed to help students grasp big numbers. Students in groups create sets of ten “things” on a page, ultimately coming together to create a math book with sets of 10 or 100. Find this printable here.

Hands-on Art and Building Projects 

When I am 100 Activity: Have students create self-portraits of what they will look like when they are 100 years old. They can draw their portraits or create portraits with construction paper for wrinkled skin and cotton balls for white hair. To take this activity further, students can look into the future and answer prompts such as:

• “When I am 100 years old, my friends and I will. . .”
• “When I am 100 years old, I will eat lots of. . .”
• “When I am 100 years old, I will spend time. . .”
• “When I am 100 years old, I will look. . .”

Create a photobooth: Have students decorate a “100-themed” background for a 100th day of school photoshoot with their friends. I remember doing this activity in kindergarten, and I still have the photograph with my best friend to this day!

Make cheerio necklaces: Give each student a piece of yarn and 100 Cheerios. Have students string the 100 Cheerios onto their yarn to create a big necklace. It’s fun to eat, too!

Build structures with 100 objects: Have students build structures or buildings with 100 Legos, 100 plastic cups, or 100 popsicle sticks and glue.

Go outside for this 100 Seconds Challenge. Find this printable here.  

• Arm circles
• 10 jumping jacks
• Twist
• Squats
• Hop on one foot
• Bounce a ball 

List 100 things you’ve done or learned in the classroom:

Come together as a class and take turns listing 100 things that the students have done or learned in the classroom. Write these 100 things on a poster so students can proudly reflect on their learning and progress.

“100-themed” challenges:

• Challenge students to read 100 books leading up to the 100th day of school.
• Challenge students to take 100 steps each day.
• Challenge students to log 100 acts of kindness during the school year.

Make it a dress-up day:

Dice-roll game: Have students roll a die 100 times. Have them tally or keep track of how many times they roll a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. To take this activity to the next level, have the students graph their results.

Coin-flip game: Similarly to the dice-roll game, have students flip a coin 100 times and have them log how many times they flip a head or a tail. Students can also graph these results.

Add-to-100 game: Write a number on the board and have students call out what number would be added to equal 100. For example, if you wrote the number 82 on the board, students would call out the number 18.

Equation puzzle: For more advanced math, give students numbers and arithmetic operations. See if they can make an equation that equals 100 with the numbers provided using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

There are plenty of ways to celebrate the 100th day of school with projects and games centered around art, math, physical exercise, and critical thinking skills. It is important to commemorate this day in the classroom because it encourages students to love learning and take pride in their accomplishments. Mark the 100th day of school on your calendars and don’t forget to incorporate our activities into your classroom this year!

For more 100 days of school ideas and printables across the PreK-6 curriculum, check out Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox. Get a free trial and print 50 pages of activities to use with your students!  

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Natalie Robinson is a recent Communication Studies graduate from LMU. She has a strong passion for writing and loves children. Having grown up in a Montessori school and later transitioning to public school, Natalie values early childhood education and believes that social and emotional learning should be a core tenet within all homes and classrooms. In writing for Evan-Moor, Natalie hopes to build a career in copywriting and copyediting.

Every day is the perfect day to spread joy and compassion; however, there’s no better day to learn about and encourage kindness than on World Kindness Day. This day of awareness began in 1998 when world kindness organizations from 28 nations came together to launch the first ever World Kindness Day. Now, on November 13th, adults and children around the globe annually pledge themselves to committing acts of kindness in honor of World Kindness Day. When we demonstrate and learn about empathy at a young age, it brings us closer to achieving the world kindness organizations’ collective goal of creating a kinder world. As educators, it is imperative that we promote kindness both inside and outside the classroom through social and emotional learning (SEL).

Below are some of our favorite social and emotional learning activities, along with some ideas for kindness projects, to celebrate World Kindness Day.

Commit yourself to kindness.

In the spirit of World Kindness Day, start by committing to be more kind. Sign a pledge or take an oath with the children. You can even challenge them to do one act of kindness each day.

Share stories about when someone treated you kindly and how it made you feel.

Have children take turns recounting times when they felt compassion from someone else.

 

 

Make a list of various acts of kindness to complete.

An “acts of kindness list” provides good examples and holds the kids accountable. The children can even get creative and brainstorm these acts of kindness on their own.

Read a story centered around kindness.

Not only will children practice reading comprehension, they will also come to understand kindness better through the story. 

Track acts of kindness and spread love with kindness cards

Keeping track of acts of kindness inspires kids to continue being kind in the future. Create a wall with student names and a paper folder or bucket underneath each name. Assign each student a partner and have them write something kind about the other person and put it in their bucket or folder. Work with students each week to share notes of encouragement and kindness with other students in the classroom.

By writing and delivering positive messages, the children can recognize the kindness in others while also doing something kind for others. These kindness hearts and messages from Social and Emotional Learning Activities for grades 1-2 provide great examples of how to show kindness to others. 

Teach kindness to oneself.

World Kindness Day is a fantastic reminder that children should start observing, learning, and practicing kindness at a young age. Not only are these activities beneficial to the children, they are also beneficial to the teacher or parent, as they encourage positive behavior development; this allows for better classroom management and even creates a more inclusive classroom.

Are you looking for more SEL activities? Check out these free sample printables from Social and Emotional Learning Activities here. 

 

 

For additional lesson ideas on kindness and more, browse Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox printables for grades PreK–6. Try it for free for 14 days. School discounts are available. Learn more here. 

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Natalie Robinson is a recent Communication Studies graduate from LMU. She has a strong passion for writing and loves children. Having grown up in a Montessori school and later transitioning to public school, Natalie values early childhood education and believes that social and emotional learning should be a core tenet within all homes and classrooms. In writing for Evan-Moor, Natalie hopes to build a career in copywriting and copyediting.

When we think of Halloween, we think of pumpkins, bats, witches, and, of course, the memorable classroom Halloween parties. These spooky chemistry experiments, creepy art projects, pumpkin writing, and free Halloween printables are a great addition to any classroom party or classroom activity.   

Free Halloween Printables for Grades PreK–6

These fun and free Halloween-themed worksheets from Evan-Moor include hidden pictures, word searches, coloring pages, Halloween writing prompts, thinking skills, drawing, patterning, and more! The free Halloween printables will keep students’ minds engaged in learning, amidst the spirited fun of the day. (32 printable activity pages for grades PreK–6)

Halloween Arts, Crafts, and Activities

Make and Hang Paper Spiders

Dangling paper spiders are simple to make and can become instant classroom décor or inspire spider-themed lessons and activities. Get the step-by-step instructions here.

 

Create Paper Skeletons

With simple art supplies and a skeleton pattern, your students can make paper skeletons. Browse this article for free skeleton printables and related activity ideas here. 

Draw a Haunted House

All you need is a blank piece of paper and a writing journal for each student to have students draw a house and write a spooky story about it. Students can share their stories and illustrations with the class.

Decorate a Pumpkin

As a kid, this was always my favorite activity at my local Halloween fair. Bring in mini pumpkins for the students or have them bring in their own. Use markers, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, and glitter glue for them to decorate their pumpkins. It is the most adorable way to get everyone in the spirit and decorate the students’ desks around Halloween.

Host a Parade

Encourage students to dress up in their Halloween costumes. Then, have the students show off their creative costumes with a classroom parade.

Put Together a Spooky Mystery “Touch and Feel” Bag

In a paper bag, put items such as cotton balls for cobwebs, corn flakes for toenails, nuts and bolts for Frankenstein parts, raisins for witches’ warts, and gauze for mummy skin. Without looking in the bag, have students touch the objects in the bag and, on a piece of paper, write down adjectives to describe different textures that they can feel in the bag. After they describe the objects and guess what’s inside, reveal all of the secret objects.

Spooky Science Experiments

Spooky Slime Chemistry Experiment

Create some spooky slime with these simple ingredients and answer the question, “is slime a solid or liquid?” (The answer may surprise you.) Slime is a wonderful example of how two different substances can combine to form a new substance, which is created after the chemical reaction between the two main ingredients: polyvinyl alcohol and borate ion.

Ingredients and supplies:

• Water
• Glue
• Food coloring
• Laundry detergent
• Bags or jars

Directions:

• Measure ½ cup of water and pour it into a bowl.
• Mix in ½ cup of glue.
• Squeeze in a few drops of orange, purple, or green food coloring.
• Stir in about ¼ cup of liquid laundry detergent.
• Knead the slime with both hands until it’s firm.

Divide the slime and store in bags or jars.

Witches’ Brew Chemistry Experiment 

Ingredients and supplies:

• Dish soap
• Yeast
• Newspaper
• Hydrogen peroxide
• Green food coloring
• Dish soap
• Different sizes of containers or small plastic cauldrons

Directions:

• Put out newspaper; this could get a bit messy!
• Pour ½ cup of hydrogen peroxide into a container.
• Add about 10 drops of green food coloring for the witches’ brew effect.
• Mix in 1 tablespoon of dish soap.
• In a separate cup, mix a packet of yeast into warm water and stir for 30 seconds.
• When ready for the foaming chemical reaction to make the witches’ brew, add the yeast and water mixture to the beaker.

Halloween is a fun time of year for both teachers and students. Be sure to enjoy the holiday with all of these fang-tastic activities that everyone will love!

 For more Halloween activities, browse 20 October and Halloween-Themed Writing Prompts.

 

 

 

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Natalie Robinson is a recent Communication Studies graduate from LMU. She has a strong passion for writing and loves children. Having grown up in a Montessori school and later transitioning to public school, Natalie values early childhood education and believes that social and emotional learning should be a core tenet within all homes and classrooms. In writing for Evan-Moor, Natalie hopes to build a career in copywriting and copyediting.

Engaging children in literacy games is an excellent way to make learning fun and interactive. These hands-on reading games, art projects, reading centers and active reading activities from TeacherFileBox printables are great for kinesthetic learners and make reading interactive and enjoyable!

Hands-On Alphabet Letter Activities

Word Building with Manipulatives

Provide students with manipulatives like magnetic letters, letter tiles, or foam letters to build words. Encourage them to manipulate the letters, blend sounds, and create new words. This hands-on approach strengthens phonics skills, word recognition, and spelling abilities. For a fun classroom center activity, provide students with their weekly spelling list and have them build the words with letter tiles before writing them.

Word-Family Games

Learning word families can be fun with these center activity games for up to six players! Improve word recognition skills and reading fluency with these activities.

Hands-On Sequencing Activities

These short story sequencing activities from TeacherFileBox printables are a fun way to have children show the order of events in a story.

Book-Based Art Projects:

Extend the reading experience by incorporating art activities inspired by books. Encourage students to create illustrations, dioramas, or crafts related to the stories they’ve read. This not only reinforces comprehension but also encourages creativity and self-expression. These activities from TeacherFileBox printables include fun, hands-on book reports!

Reading Center Activities

Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox printables are a great tool to help children learn to read. The diverse reading activities and games provide engaging reading experiences for kids. With thousands of reading activities, parents and teachers can create a reading curriculum around every child’s abilities and interests.

With over 80,000 lesson units available across PreK–6 grades, TeacherFileBox makes it easy to build your reading curriculum. In addition to reading lessons, TeacherFileBox also includes lesson units across the curriculum for grades PreK–6 in math, language, writing, science, geography, social studies, STEM/STEAM, SEL, and more! Save your favorite printables in your personal account—and print lessons, project them onto a screen, or share them in your Google Classroom! 

Try TeacherFileBox for free for 14 days and browse reading printables and activity ideas.

For more reading lessons from Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox printables, see Helping Children Learn to Read with Phonics, Sight Words, Reading Comprehension and More!

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Heather Foudy is a certified elementary teacher with over 7 years’ experience as an educator and volunteer in the classroom. She enjoys creating lessons that are meaningful and creative for students. She is currently working for Evan-Moor’s marketing and communications team and enjoys building learning opportunities that are both meaningful and creative for students and teachers alike.

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and the timing couldn’t be better to remind students how to have a bully-free school year and create a positive classroom culture. 

National Bullying Prevention Month unites communities nationwide to educate and raise awareness of bullying prevention, and while the focus is during October, the life lessons for a kinder, safer community can be carried throughout the year.

How to Create a Safe Zone in Your Classroom 
Involving students in establishing bullying prevention rules helps them to recognize what bullying is, how it affects people, and what students can do to stop it or to ask for help. Making your classroom a “safe zone” positively affects your classroom culture and reinforces behaviors and attitudes that students take onto the playground, onto the school bus, and to after-school activities.

Free Posters: Use these posters to help establish your safe-zone messaging in your classroom. 

Download 6 posters here (11 x 17 tabloid size)

Download 6 posters here (8.5 x 11 paper size)

Printing note: You may need to adjust your printer for 11×17 paper. Go to “Page Set Up” in your printer settings and change the paper size to “Tabloid (11 x 17 inches).”

Five Anti-Bullying Activities for Elementary School Students

1. Talk About What Bullying Is

Before you guide students in a discussion about what bullying is, you may want to take some time to review the different types of bullying that can occur. The website stopbulling.gov is a great resource and a quick read. website what is bullying.gov  

Depending on students’ ages and grade levels, the nature of their understanding of bullying will vary. Have students share what they know about bullying. Use the questions below to get the discussion started. Guide students in understanding what bullying behaviors are.

• What does “bullying” mean to you?
• Why do you think people bully?
• Have you ever felt scared to go to school because you were afraid of bullying?  
• Have you left other kids out on purpose? Do you think that was bullying?

2. Talk About How to Prevent Bullying

Parents, teachers, and other school staff play an important role in preventing bullying. Help students understand their role in preventing bullying. Again, stopbullying.gov provides valuable guidance on this topic. website stop bullying.gov 

Guide students in a discussion about how to stand up for themselves safely and how to get help. Make sure students understand what policies your school has in place to help stop bullying. 

3. Explain What a Safe Zone Is

Now that students understand what bullying is and how to prevent it or respond to it, explain to students that a “safe zone” is a place where all students feel safe and are free from bullying. Point out how your classroom rules reinforce physical and emotional safety. Then invite students to brainstorm things that make them feel safe, such as the following:

• Being around people who are nice
• Being able to ask questions without being laughed at
• Feeling like it is okay if they don’t understand something
• Being able to say how they feel
• Being able to take a time out to calm down or cope with their feelings

4. Post Visual Reminders

In addition to bullying prevention posters you display, have students get into small groups and work together to make bullying prevention and safe-zone posters. Model how to include positive messages that remind and inspire students to keep their classroom a safe zone. Post words for them to use, such as communication, kindness, respect, and patience. 

5. Respond to Bullying Right Away

Students who are bullied and students who are bullying both need help.

Students who are hurting and don’t know how to deal with their anger, sadness, and frustration often lash out and become bullies. They need to know that behavior that harms another student or creates a hostile environment is not okay, and they also need to know that they can make different choices and receive help for their own feelings of hurt, anger, and sadness.  

Students who are being bullied may feel too scared and confused to report it. It is important that they understand that there are adults who can help them and there are things they can do to safely help themselves and stop the bullying. The website stopbulling.gov provides important guidance about how to stop bullying on the spot. website how to prevent bullying.gov  

Additional resources

Classroom resources that provide lessons and activities about social and emotional learning and culturally responsive classroom environments can help create a culture of safety and belonging in your classroom.

Try these free Evan-Moor sample lessons with your students:

Social and Emotional Learning Activities Sampler

 

 

 

Culturally Responsive Lessons and Activities Sampler

 

 

 

Learn more about these resources that support positive classroom cultures:

• Social and Emotional Learning Activities, grades PreK–6 (Print and E-book teaching resources)
• Culturally Responsive Lessons and Activities, grades 1­–6 (Print and E-book teaching resources)
• Social Skills Activities for Today’s Kids, Ages 4–11 (Full-color activity books; Class Packs)

Learn more about National Bullying Prevention Month here.  

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Lisa Vitarisi Mathews serves as Publisher of Evan-Moor Educational Publishers. She has over 20 years’ experience in PreK–8 education, and has worked closely with teachers across the United States through Evan-Moor product training and workshops.

Reading fluency refers to the ability to read text with speed, accuracy, and prosody (expression and phrasing). Fluent readers can decode words quickly and automatically, enabling them to comprehend the meaning of the text more efficiently. Fluency involves smooth and natural reading, with appropriate emphasis, pauses, and intonation, and it plays a significant role in reading comprehension. When students can read with fluency, their cognitive resources are freed up to focus on understanding and making connections within the text.

Ways to increase fluency:

• Phonics (letter and sound rules)
• Phoneme awareness (blending and separating sounds)
• Phonic word patterns such as oy, ow, ou, sh, ch
• Appropriate pronunciation
• Repeated readings (reread books)
• Choral reading (read aloud together)

Phonics Activities to Improve Reading Fluency

Build phonemic awareness with phonics activities from TeacherFileBox printables.

Building Reading Fluency with Fluency Passages

These Building Reading Fluency Passages from TeacherFileBox printables are a great way to expose children to new words and texts!

Reading Fluency Recommendations

A words-per-minute grade-level chart is an easy way to see at a glance the most common fluency reading levels for each grade. Remember, accuracy and reflection are the main emphasis when looking at the number of words read per minute.

Listed below are reading level recommendations for students to read grade-level-appropriate texts by the end of the year. Experts’ opinions vary, but these are some good baselines to monitor your child’s fluency.

Keep in mind that a reading words-per-minute grade-level chart is a simple gauge and just one measurement tool used to identify students’ readiness. Every student learns in a unique way, at his or her own pace. If a child is not at grade level, focus on increasing his or her current score by 10 to 15 words by the end of the year, and then celebrate the successes!

Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox printables are a great tool to help children learn to read. The diverse reading activities and games provide engaging reading experiences for kids. With thousands of reading activities, parents and teachers can create a reading curriculum around every child’s abilities and interests.

With over 80,000 lesson units available across PreK–6 grades, TeacherFileBox makes it easy to build your reading curriculum. In addition to reading lessons, TeacherFileBox also includes lesson units across the curriculum for grades PreK–6 in math, language, writing, science, geography, social studies, STEM/STEAM, SEL, and more! Save your favorite printables in your personal account—and print lessons, project them onto a screen, or share them in your Google Classroom! 

Try TeacherFileBox for free for 14 days and browse reading printables and activity ideas.

 

 

For more reading lessons from Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox printables, see Helping Children Learn to Read with Phonics, Sight Words, Reading Comprehension and More!

 

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Heather Foudy is a certified elementary teacher with over 7 years’ experience as an educator and volunteer in the classroom. She enjoys creating lessons that are meaningful and creative for students. She is currently working for Evan-Moor’s marketing and communications team and enjoys building learning opportunities that are both meaningful and creative for students and teachers alike.

Reading is an essential skill that lays the foundation for a child’s academic success and lifelong learning. As parents and teachers, we have the remarkable opportunity to empower children with the tools they need to become confident and fluent readers. See these effective reading strategies below for helping children learn to read by incorporating phonics, sight words, and reading comprehension techniques. Encourage a love for reading with fun and engaging reading activities that build foundational reading skills.

The printable worksheets, reading activities, and hands-on projects in this blog post can be found in Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox, an online lesson library that provides a comprehensive reading resource.

Phonemic Awareness and Reading Activities for Kids

Phonics is a method that teaches the relationship between sounds and the written letters or groups of letters that represent them. Phonics helps children learn how to decode words, which leads to improved reading fluency. Below are some tips for incorporating phonics into your reading instruction.

If children are just starting to learn to read, start with letter recognition. Introduce each letter of the alphabet, helping children associate the sound with its corresponding symbol.

Sight Words: Rapid Word Recognition

Sight words, also known as high-frequency words, are words that appear frequently in texts and do not follow regular phonetic patterns. Mastery of sight words is crucial for fluent reading and comprehension. Consider these activities to help children learn sight words effectively.

Word Scavenger Hunt: Hide word cards or objects with printed words around the room or outdoors. Provide children with a list of words to find. As they locate the words, they can read them aloud or match them to corresponding pictures.

Sight-Word Relay Writing: Divide children into teams and set up a whiteboard or a large piece of paper for each team. Call out a sight word, and one member from each team races to write the word on their team’s whiteboard. The first team to correctly write the word scores a point. This game reinforces spelling and recognition of sight words.

Developing Reading Comprehension Skills in Children

Reading comprehension goes beyond word recognition. It involves understanding the meaning, making connections, and drawing inferences from the text. Reading comprehension is directly linked to reading fluency. After reading fluency is established, reading comprehension begins with children’s ability to plan, check, and adjust their understanding while in the learning process. Explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies will improve children’s ability to monitor their own understanding as they read. Here are some strategies to enhance reading comprehension skills:

1. Make connections: When we make connections between new learning and previous experiences, our brains make stronger links in our learning over time. Some questions to ask are:

• What does this story remind you of?
• How is this similar to other stories you have read?
• Can you relate to the characters in this story?
• Can the events in this story happen in the real world?

2. Ask questions: Part of developing children’s reading comprehension is teaching them to ask themselves questions as they read. Start this habit early by asking children questions about what he or she is reading. Begin by reading aloud and asking questions about the story. A few examples are:

• What do you think?
• Why do you think the character did that?
• What do you think will happen?

3. Ask what is important (narrow down the details of the text):

• What is the topic of this story or text?
• What are the details in the text?
• What are the details in the text mostly about?

4. Monitor Comprehension: There are many different techniques for monitoring reading comprehension. Incorporate a few into reading routines.

• reading aloud
• rereading texts
• reading slower
• identifying confusing words

5. Provide the right types of books

Choose books that are within each child’s reading level and ability. If the reading text is too difficult, children will spend most of their brain power decoding new words and not remember or understand what they read. If you don’t know how to make sure your child is reading books within his or her reading level, try the five-finger rule.

1. Choose a book.
2. Have the child read the second page.
3. Hold up a finger for each word the child doesn’t know.
4. If there are five or more words the child doesn’t know, choose an easier book.

The most important thing to do to improve reading comprehension is to read consistently throughout the week. Practice is an essential part of children’s word recall and understanding. The more words children can read with ease, the easier it will be to understand the content of what he or she is reading.

Reading Games and Activities for Kids

Engaging children in literacy games is an excellent way to make learning fun and interactive. These hands-on reading games, reading centers and active reading activities are great for kinesthetic learners and make reading interactive and enjoyable.  

Book-Based Art Projects:

Extend the reading experience by incorporating art activities inspired by books. Encourage students to create illustrations, dioramas, or crafts related to the stories they’ve read. This not only reinforces comprehension but also encourages creativity and self-expression. These activities from TeacherFileBox printables include fun, hands-on book reports!

Reading Center Activities

Hands-on Sequencing Activities

These short story sequencing activities from TeacherFileBox printables is a fun way to have children show the order of events in a story.

For more reading games and activities, checkout Hands-On Reading Games and Activities for Kids.

 

 

Building Reading Fluency

Reading fluency refers to the ability to read text with speed, accuracy, and prosody (expression and phrasing). Fluent readers can decode words quickly and automatically, enabling them to comprehend the meaning of the text more efficiently. Fluency involves smooth and natural reading, with appropriate emphasis, pauses, and intonation, and it plays a significant role in reading comprehension. When students can read with fluency, their cognitive resources are freed up to focus on understanding and making connections within the text.

Ways to increase fluency:

• Phonics (letter and sound rules)
• Phoneme awareness (blending and separating sounds)
• Phonic word patterns such as oy, ow, ou, sh, ch
• Appropriate pronunciation
• Repeated readings (reread books)
• Choral reading (read aloud together)

These Building Reading Fluency Passages from TeacherFileBox printables are a great way to expose children to new words and texts!

Reading Fluency Recommendations

A words-per-minute grade level chart is an easy way to see at a glance the most common fluency reading levels for each grade. Remember, accuracy and reflection are the main emphasis when looking at the number of words read per minute.

Listed below are reading level recommendations for students to read grade-level-appropriate texts by the end of the year. Experts’ opinions vary, but these are some good baselines to monitor your child’s fluency.

Keep in mind that a reading words-per-minute grade level chart is a simple gauge and just one measurement tool used to identify students’ readiness. Every student learns in a unique way, at his or her own pace. If your child is not at grade level, focus on increasing his or her current score by 10 to 15 words by the end of the year, and then celebrate your child’s successes!

Browse A Guide to Reading Fluency: How Many Words Per Minute Should Children Read? for more tips and activities to help children develop reading comprehension. 

By combining fun games, engaging phonics instruction, sight-word recognition, and reading comprehension strategies, children can develop important skills for reading success. Reading has the ability to open the doors to a world of imagination, knowledge, and endless possibilities!

Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox printables are a great tool to help children learn to read. The diverse reading activities and games provide engaging reading experiences for kids. With thousands of reading activities, parents and teachers can create a reading curriculum around every child’s abilities and interests.

With over 80,000 lesson units available across PreK–6 grades, TeacherFileBox makes it easy to build your reading curriculum. In addition to reading lessons, TeacherFileBox also includes lesson units across the curriculum for grades PreK–6 in math, language, writing, science, geography, social studies, STEM/STEAM, SEL, and more! Save your favorite printables in your personal account—and print lessons, project them onto a screen, or share lessons in your Google Classroom! 

Try TeacherFileBox for free for 14 days and browse reading printables and activity ideas.

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Heather Foudy is a certified elementary teacher with over 7 years’ experience as an educator and volunteer in the classroom. She enjoys creating lessons that are meaningful and creative for students. She is currently working for Evan-Moor’s marketing and communications team and enjoys building learning opportunities that are both meaningful and creative for students and teachers alike.

 

Sight words play an important role in building a strong reading foundation for beginning readers. These frequently used words, similar to high-frequency words, cannot be easily decoded using phonics rules alone. Sight words are words that appear frequently in written text and often do not follow regular phonetic patterns. They are typically short, common words such as “the,” “and,” “is,” and “to.” Due to their high frequency and irregularity, it is crucial for young readers to quickly recognize these words on sight, without needing to sound them out. Being able to read sight words quickly and correctly helps children increase their fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

Frequent practice is the best way to help children learn and master sight words and high-frequency words. The printable worksheets, reading activities, and hands-on projects can be found in Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox, an online lesson library that provides an all-inclusive reading resource.

Here are a few strategies for mastering sight words.

• Repetition and exposure: Incorporating sight words into daily activities such as reading aloud, writing sentences, or playing word games is a great way to help children learn and recall important words.
• Contextual reading: Seeing these words in meaningful context reinforces recognition and comprehension simultaneously.
• Chunking and word families: Chunking helps children identify common patterns and word families within sight words. This approach helps them recognize new sight words more quickly by focusing on familiar letter combinations. Example: Plant would be split into Pl-ant

Fun games and activities are a great way to help children learn sight words and high frequency words! 

Mastering sight words is an essential step in developing strong reading skills. By recognizing these high-frequency words instantly, children can enhance their reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. With a combination of repetition, contextual reading, and engaging activities, children can develop a solid foundation in sight-word recognition.

 Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox printables are a great tool to help children learn to read. The diverse reading activities and games provide engaging reading experiences for kids. With thousands of reading activities, parents and teachers can create a reading curriculum around every child’s abilities and interests.

With over 80,000 lesson units available across PreK–6 grades, TeacherFileBox makes it easy to build your reading curriculum. In addition to reading lessons, TeacherFileBox also includes lesson units across the curriculum for grades PreK–6 in math, language, writing, science, geography, social studies, STEM/STEAM, SEL, and more! Save your favorite printables in your personal account—and print lessons, project them onto a screen, or share lessons in your Google Classroom! 

Try TeacherFileBox for free for 14 days and browse reading printables and activity ideas.

 

 

 

For more reading lessons from Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox printables, see Helping Children Learn to Read with Phonics, Sight Words, Reading Comprehension and More!

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Heather Foudy is a certified elementary teacher with over 7 years’ experience as an educator and volunteer in the classroom. She enjoys creating lessons that are meaningful and creative for students. She is currently working for Evan-Moor’s marketing and communications team and enjoys building learning opportunities that are both meaningful and creative for students and teachers alike.

In the world of education, creating an optimal learning experience for students extends far beyond textbooks and lesson plans. It begins with building the foundation for a positive classroom environment that nurtures students’ growth, enhances their engagement, and allows them to thrive academically and personally. When students feel safe, supported and valued, their emotional well-being flourishes, paving the way for effective learning.

Build a harmonious and thriving classroom community all year long with activities that are not only ideal for the “first week of school,” but can be used throughout the school year to help with classroom management.

Create a welcoming classroom culture with these practical ideas to help you kickstart the year on a positive note.

Cultivate positive classroom relationships with social and emotional learning activities that provide students with the necessary tools to understand and manage their emotions, develop empathy, build positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

1. Morning check-ins are one way to help transition students into the school day. 

2. Social and emotional collaborative learning activities help students to get to know their classmates and think about how to foster positive classroom relationships.

Promote a growth mindset by creating a “mistake friendly classroom.” Encourage students to embrace challenges, view mistakes as learning opportunities and believe in their ability to improve. Redefine the word “mistake” in your classroom as an “opportunity” and highlight it on the board so students can see what you value most in your classroom!

One strategy to reinforce this belief is to think ahead about why a student might make a mistake on a task. Brainstorm and prepare ahead of time so that you can help students deconstruct their answer and celebrate the learning process! Embracing all mistakes as positive, teachable moments can transform students’ fear into curiosity and encourage them to take chances. You can also turn the question over to your class and ask them to think about possible mistakes that could be made on a task.

Cultivate a respectful and inclusive classroom with activities that honor the diverse identities and experiences of all students in your classroom. Listed below are five ways to create a safe learning space for all students.

1. Build authentic connections between your students and cultivate positive relationships with activities that provide opportunities for them to share their unique experiences and learn about others.
2. Encourage student voice and choice by incorporating opportunities for students to share their thoughts, ideas, and questions. Offer choices in assignments and activities to promote autonomy and ownership over their learning.
3. Foster collaboration and cooperation with creative opportunities for collaborative learning, group discussions, and peer support. Emphasize the value of teamwork and respect for diverse opinions, fostering a sense of belonging and unity.
4. Establish clear expectations with consistent rules for behavior, academic performance, and classroom routines. When students understand what is expected of them, they feel a sense of security and are better equipped to succeed.
5. Address bullying and conflict promptly by establishing a zero-tolerance policy for bullying and addressing conflicts impartially. Teach students conflict resolution strategies and promote empathy to ensure a safe and inclusive classroom for everyone.

Culturally Responsive Lessons and Activities for grades 1–6 includes inspirational stories and activities to help students build connections between their experiences and the classroom. The robust units include individual, whole class, and partner activities to help students practice working together in groups and allow them to explore different ethnicities and cultures. Also included are project menus that support student choice and creativity by allowing students to choose the project they would like to complete. These activities are a great addition to your back-to-school activities, with topics and lessons that encourage student voice and foster collaborative learning experiences.  

Get free activities and printables for grades 1–6 to try in your classroom.  Click here for your Culturally Responsive Lessons and Activities sampler.

 

 

A positive classroom environment lays the foundation for optimal learning experiences, fostering emotional well-being, respect, and engagement among students. By nurturing positive relationships, embracing diversity, and promoting active participation, we create a space where students feel supported, empowered, and motivated to reach their full potential. Let’s embark on this journey together, transforming our classrooms into vibrant communities where every student can thrive and succeed.

Get access to all the resources mentioned in this article with a subscription to TeacherFileBox printables, Evan-Moor’s digital lesson library. TeacherFileBox includes 80,000 activities and lessons for grades PreK–6 and simplifies the lesson planning process with easy search options and diverse resources. Try TeacherFileBox for free for 14 days (no credit card required). Learn more about TeacherFileBox here!

School discounts are available on 10 or more classroom subscriptions, saving 60-75% off the total cost! Learn more here. 

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Heather Foudy is a certified elementary teacher with over 7 years’ experience as an educator and volunteer in the classroom. She enjoys creating lessons that are meaningful and creative for students. She is currently working for Evan-Moor’s marketing and communications team and enjoys building learning opportunities that are both meaningful and creative for students and teachers alike.