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)
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
This bubbling concoction is a fun way to demonstrate chemical reactions. The reaction between the hydrogen peroxide and the yeast is called an exothermic reaction. You will feel warmth on the outside of the container because energy is being released. The yeast helps to remove the oxygen from the hydrogen peroxide, creating tons of tiny bubbles that make all that cool foam. Experiment with various sizes of containers and watch how the mixture foams differently. And there you have your witches’ brew!
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!
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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
Create an “S” poster, a recipe for spaghetti, spider and skunk activities, and more with this fun alphabet unit.
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.
This first grade spelling list from TeacherFileBox is a great way to introduce new words.
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.
These vocabulary centers presents a word game similar to bingo in which students listen for word families!
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!
Create and decorate a book cover for your favorite reading book! Book Cover
This fun activity unit includes The Tortoise and the Hare fable along with hands-on headband art to help young children retell the story with pictures. Tales with Headbands: The Tortoise and the Hare.
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!
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.
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:
Learn more about National Bullying Prevention Monthhere.
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!
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.
Letter Recognition: An alphabet hunt is a fun and interactive way to teach letter and sound combinations. For beginning readers, match objects that start with the same letter and sound.
Phonemic Awareness Activities: Phonemic awareness activities are a great way to engage children in fun phonics activities that focus on identifying individual sounds in words. Rhyming games that practice blending sounds and segmenting words help children learn to identify letter and sound relationships. Gather sets of rhyming objects to play the game “rhyme in a bag.” Split the sets, so half are placed in a paper bag and half are placed on a table. Have students reach into the bag, pull out an object, and match it to an item on the table that rhymes.
Phonics Games and Resources: Phonics-based reading activities and games help to reinforce important letter and sound relationships. Browse Best Phonics Printables to Help Children Learn to Read for more phonics activities and lesson ideas!
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 Machines for Sight Words: These fun sight-word activities from TeacherFileBox instruct children to create a word machine to help them practice and remember important sight words.
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:
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?
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?
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?
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
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.
Choose a book.
Have the child read the second page.
Hold up a finger for each word the child doesn’t know.
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.
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.
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.
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 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!
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!
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!
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!
Word Machines for Sight Words: These fun sight-word activities from TeacherFileBox printables instruct children to create a word machine to help them practice and remember important sight words.
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. You can demonstrate chunking on each card to help children sound out the words.
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.
Building Reading Fluency Passages: These reading fluency activities from TeacherFileBox are an easy way to provide children with frequent reading practice to increase their sight word recognition with meaningful context.
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!
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.
Morning check-ins are one way to help transition students into the school day.
These activities from Social and Emotional Learning Activities for grades 1-2 help students reflect on their feelings and work well as a morning check-in activity.
2. Social and emotional collaborative learning activities help students to get to know their classmates and think about how to foster positive classroom relationships.
These activities from Social and Emotional Learning Activities for grades 3-4 provide opportunities for students to discuss rules for having positive conversations.
Get free activities from Social and Emotional Learning Activities for grades 1-6 here! These creative and cross-curricular SEL activities keep children practicing important skills all year long.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Phonics instruction plays a key role in teaching students to understand the sounds of letters and that certain letter combinations make specific sounds. Practicing phonemic awareness helps students decode words and increases their word recognition, which ultimately increases their reading fluency. Phonics supports new readers and language learners and helps them understand the predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds.
Quality phonics activities help to engage young learners, struggling readers, and English language learners in practicing important phonics skills. Listed below are phonics printables and activities from Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox, a digital lesson library that allows you to design your lessons around your students’ needs. With over 2,000 phonics worksheets—including minibooks and games—the TeacherFileBox lesson library provides teachers, homeschoolers, and parents with engaging phonics practice and instruction to foster reading skills.
Phonics Readers
Phonics readers give children their own minibook and engage them in reading and practicing word families. Perfect for the classroom or home, phonics readers provide consistent practice and can be read over and over. TeacherFileBox provides over 120 phonics readers for grades PreK–3! Simply cut out and fold the phonics page, then give children the phonics minibook to color and read!
Phonics Printables and Worksheets
Practicing phonemic awareness helps children decode words and increases their word recognition, which ultimately increases their reading fluency. These engaging phonics activities in TeacherFileBox provide important practice of letter combinations. The phonics activities begin with grade PreK and progress by grade level to increase the skill practice.
Beginning sounds
Grades PreK–KGrades K–1Grade K
Consonant Blends and Sounds
Vowel Digraphs and Word Families
Weekly Phonics Units
Weekly phonics units provide systematic instruction, practice, and application over 32 weeks. Perfect for morning work, small group instruction, or review, these in-depth units help students review and practice important phonics skills. Each week focuses on one phonics skill, and the daily lessons progress through scaffolded listening and speaking activities to reading and writing activities.
Grade 3Grades 4–6
Hands-On Phonics Games
These colorful games are a great way to reinforce sound and letter correlations.
Additional Phonics Activities
The fun activities listed below are creative ways to keep students practicing important phonemic rules.
Alphabet Hunt: An alphabet hunt is a fun and interactive way to teach letter and sound combinations. For beginning readers, matching objects with the same beginning and ending sounds reinforces this concept. Assign a letter of the week and have students find objects within the classroom that have the same beginning sound as the weekly letter. Depending on your class, you could assign more than one letter per week. (Students could also bring objects from home to share as well.)
Rhyming Phonics Game: Gather sets of rhyming objects to play the game “rhyme in a bag.” Split the sets, so half are placed in a paper bag and half are placed on a table. Have students reach into the bag, pull out an object, and match it to an item on the table that rhymes.
Pen, hen
Sock, rock
Fan, can
Boat, coat
Rhyming can help children understand that words that share common sounds often share common letters.
Phonics Flip Book: Phonics flip books can be a fun way to teach sound and letter combinations. All you need is a wire-bound index card notebook, scissors, tape, and markers. You may design your flip book to practice three-letter words and sounds, blends, or word families. Word families help children identify common spellings and sounds in words.
To make a blending flip book:
Divide and cut the notebook into three sections.
Label the first, second, and last paper with letters A–Z.
It is OK if your combinations don’t all make words. The purpose of this technique is to teach blending of sounds.
To make a word-family flip book:
Divide and cut the notebook into two sections.
Write your word family in the last section.
Choose letters that form words with your word families.
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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.
These creative Father’s Day cards make the perfect and unique Father’s Day gift! Create a picture card or a thoughtful gift box and poem with these free templates.
Create memorable Father’s Day gifts with these handprint DIY ideas.
Helping Hands T-Shirt Personalized Father’s Day Gift
You can use these instructions to create a fun t-shirt or apron.
Items needed
T-shirt in adult size or apron
Paint
Paper plate
Fabric marker
Cardboard
Instructions
Put paint on paper plates.
Place cardboard between the front and back of the t-shirt to prevent paint from soaking through.
Dip hands, one at a time, into the paint and press on the t-shirt or apron. (Press and lift straight up to prevent smearing.)
Let the t-shirt dry and add the words “Dad’s helping hands” to the shirt with a fabric marker.
Add the child’s name and the date to the t-shirt.
Helping Hands Card Father’s Day Gift
This creative card or picture frame is a thoughtful gift that captures a cherished snapshot in time.
Items needed
Fold construction paper in half. (If you are using a canvas frame, follow instructions for painting.)
Dip the left hand into paint and press onto the front of the folded card or frame. (The little finger should be lined up with the folded edge.) Let the paint dry.
Leave the card folded and cut around the hand print. Do not cut around the fold. (If you are using a canvas frame, this does not apply.)
Add a message to the inside of the hand print. (If you are using a canvas frame, add the message on the inside of the hand print.) Wanted to give you a hand. You’re a great dad! Happy Father’s Day
Celebrate mothers, grandmothers, and caregivers with thoughtful, homemade Mother’s Day gifts this year. From flowerpot art to creative writing, these memorable crafts will create thoughtful and treasured Mother’s Day gifts that are easy for kids to make.
Explore these Mother’s Day gift ideas and inspiration for celebrating moms everywhere.
Fingerprint Flowerpot Grades PreK–K
This colorful art project is the perfect way to say thank you.