The Joy of Teaching – Page 25 of 46

February 12, 2018
by Evan-Moor
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Honoring Abraham Lincoln in Your Homeschooling

Did you know that several presidents of the United States were homeschooled?

Abraham Lincoln was one of those homeschooled presidents. He began his life on a farm in Kentucky. His family depended on him to work to help support the family, so formal schooling was not a priority. He learned from books and experiences as a homeschooled child in Indiana.

Yet Abraham Lincoln taught himself to do more than just read or write. As a young man, he studied law books and passed the bar examination without going to law school.

When he moved to Illinois in 1830, he earned the nickname “Honest Abe” while working as a store clerk. He became interested in local politics, spoke out against slavery, and had great ideas of what the future of the United States could be. He was elected to be the 16th president of the United States in 1860.

President Lincoln worked to keep our nation together during a very difficult time. He is regarded by many historians as one of the greatest presidents in United States history.

In our homeschooling, we enjoy studying biographies of people who worked to make a difference in the world. Evan-Moor has numerous resources for honoring President Abraham Lincoln that work nicely with homeschooling kids of all ages.

Free Activity: Paper Portrait of Abraham Lincoln
To honor homeschooler Honest Abe, Evan-Moor is offering this free activity. With 6 simple steps, children can create a paper portrait of Abraham Lincoln.

Evan-Moor units available for purchase:

Theme Pockets: Presidents’ Day, Grades 1–3
This resource provides five pocket projects help your class celebrate George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The engaging creative writing and art projects are a great way to enrich your social studies curriculum.

Pocket Book for Two Great Presidents
If History Pockets or lapbooking are popular in your homeschooling, Evan-Moor has a History Pocket dedicated entirely to Abraham Lincoln. The complete unit also features George Washington.

Printable Lincoln Mini-book
Even younger students can learn about Abraham Lincoln in this printable mini-book!

Comparing Washington and Lincoln
In our homeschooling, the conversations we have are quite valuable. This activity invites children to write a compare-and-contrast paragraph about the lives of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. It is an insightful and quick way to get writing in your homeschooling while learning about our presidents!

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Access all of these Presidents’ Day activities and more with TeacherFileBox.

If you want the most bang for your buck, become a TeacherFileBox subscriber and get access to over 1,800 cross-curricular lessons and activities for grades PreK–6 for $12.99 a month. Learn more about using TeacherFileBox for your entire homeschooling curriculum here.

How are you honoring Honest Abe this year?

Let me know in the comments!

Amy Michaels is a certified teacher with 11 years of elementary classroom experience who is actively homeschooling her own children. Her mission is share the best teaching methods and resources with all homeschoolers. Amy supports parents through her podcasts, webinars, and online training for homeschoolers on her website www.thrivehomeschooling.com.

Chalkboard with Vocabulary Words and Games

January 31, 2018
by Evan-Moor
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Vocabulary Journals and Games for Your Classroom

Vocabulary instruction is directly linked to reading comprehension and word knowledge. On average, students are expected to add 2,000 to 3,000 words to their vocabulary every year! (Effective Vocabulary Instruction by Joan Sedita.) Students need multiple and engaging opportunities to practice and learn new words. It takes multiple exposures over time before students can apply new vocabulary.
To keep your vocabulary lessons fresh and fun, try using vocabulary journals and playing vocabulary games. These vocabulary activities help students learn and apply new words and build their vocabulary.

Vocabulary Journals

One resource that every student should have is a vocabulary journal. These journals serve as a reference for students to use in their writing throughout the school year.

Journals should follow a set pattern so students can look back at previous notes and understand what they wrote. This procedure always worked well for my students, and the picture at the end is always a popular incentive. (If you teach ELLs like I did, the picture is an absolute necessity.) Provide each student with their own journal.

Introduce a word: write it
Define the word: definition
Discuss the word: adjective, verb, noun
Apply it: use it in a sentence/draw a picture

Vocabulary journals pair nicely with Evan-Moor’s A Word a Day vocabulary instruction. Each week provides four new vocabulary words and definitions along with examples of how each word is used. In addition, day five offers an informal assessment for the words learned that week.

Vocabulary Games and Activities

Games and interactive activities are another opportunity to reinforce learning. Here are a few of my favorites.

1. Eye Spy

Provide students with a list of names to search for in a story. Award points to individual words with criteria such as:

Longest word
Words with the most consonants
Words with the most vowels
Words with the “silent e” rule

2. Matching Antonym and Synonym

This activity works best on 3 x 5″ cards. Ask students to pair up words with their antonym/synonym such as:

Large/small
Smooth/coarse
Combine/separate

3. Charades

Call up a group of students or an individual and give them a card with one of your weekly vocabulary words on it. Without speaking, have them act it out for their classmates to guess.

How do you teach vocabulary in your 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.

January 23, 2018
by Evan-Moor
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Crystal Hearts Valentine Science Experiment

Incorporate science and math into your Valentine’s Day classroom celebration this year with a crystal hearts science experiment. This simple and easy salt crystal experiment is a great way to demonstrate how crystals form and to introduce the subjects of crystallization, solubility, and chemical reactions. This Valentine’s science experiment uses easy-to-find supplies and can be completed with small groups or with the whole class. Your students will enjoy the results – their very own crystal heart for Valentine’s Day!

Materials Needed:
Colored pipe cleaners
String
Pencils
Wide-mouth jars (beakers, coffee mugs, mason jars, milk cartons)
Borax
Boiling water

Before You Begin:
Before you start your crystal experiment, introduce the topic of crystallization with these key vocabulary words and concepts:

Chemical Reaction: a process where a substance changes to form a different substance.
- Chemical reactions happen everywhere, even in your own body (for example, when rust forms). Some changes can happen quickly, and some happen slowly over time depending on the substances.
Solubility: The amount of a substance that will dissolve in another substance (or become a part of another substance).
Crystallization: A process by which crystal molecules fit together to form a repeating pattern and unique shape.
- Most crystals form from liquids cooling and hardening.
- Crystals can form in different shapes (cubic, hexagonal, tetragonal, trigonal and more).
Crystallography: The science of the study of crystals and how they form.

Steps:

Shape each pipe cleaner into a heart.
Tie the string around each pipe cleaner and attach it to a pencil. Measure the depth and height of the jar and cut the string to a slightly shorter measurement.
Mix solution of boiling water and borax in a glass jar (3 tablespoons of borax to 1 cup of water). Students can measure the borax, but the teacher must pour the water and closely observe small groups of students to prevent any burns!
Lower the pipe cleaner heart into the solution and place the pencil over the top of the jar.
Wait 24 hours and pull out your crystals! (It works best to complete the activity at the end of the day and have students come back to check on the crystals in the morning.)
Tie a pink or red ribbon around your hearts and create a hanging Valentine’s Day decoration!

Reflections

Why did the water have to be boiling?
What shape are the crystals?
What would happen if you put your heart crystal into a pot of boiling water? (It would re-dissolve.)

Have students observe their crystal heart and record their observations in a journal. Ask students to describe the process of crystallization in their journals using key vocabulary.

For more lessons on chemical reactions, see this unit from ScienceWorks for Kids: Simple Chemistry: When Substances React Chemically (grades 4–6)

For more hands-on science activities, download these sample printables from Science Lessons and Investigations for grades 1-6.

For more free printables and lesson ideas, subscribe to our e-newsletter!

How to Inspire Young Readers and Improve Fluency with Readers' Theater

January 23, 2018
by Evan-Moor
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How to inspire young readers and improve reading fluency with readers’ theater

Have you used readers’ theater scripts in your homeschooling? It is a delightful reading activity to increase fluency and bring life to stories! Inspire struggling readers with interactive stories and dramatic voices! Give your children the chance to get up and move while reading—you may even discover a budding performer in your midst!

What is Readers’ Theater?
Readers’ theater is when the actors in the performance read their scripts instead of memorizing their lines. This style of reading forces children to pay attention to punctuation marks and read with inflection—no more monotone reading aloud!

Why I Adore Readers’ Theater

It provides an audience and purpose for children’s reading—to project and entertain.
It encourages creativity—to create puppet shows, plays, and character voices.
It forces children to maintain their attention and read at appropriate cues. (Often, they are even reading the other parts as well to follow along.)

How I Use Readers’ Theater in Our Homeschooling

I use it to give children an authentic reason to read aloud for others.
I use it to improve reading accuracy. When children take on the voice of the character, they naturally want to read aloud with more accuracy, feeling, and excitement. This is a rich way to enjoy reading aloud for a meaningful purpose.

My Favorite Resource for Readers’ Theater in Our Homeschooling
Evan-Moor has a terrific series of books called Readers’ Theater for grades 1–6. The scripts are interesting and short enough that the kids can focus.

There are many fun plays in Readers’ Theater such as:

The Three Little Pigs (Grade 1)
How Anansi Brought Stories to Earth (Grade 2)
Space Camp is a Blast! (Grade 3)
The Girls of the Round Table (Grade 4)
Tall Tales from the Wild West (Grade 5)
Romeo and Juliet (Grade 6)

If you are looking for more readers’ theater options, the Leveled Readers’ Theater series of books can help you find the readers’ theater scripts that are on your child’s exact reading level, too!

How to Include Readers’ Theater with Any Homeschool Curriculum

Fun Fridays—Introduce a new script every Friday for reading practice.
Swap theater scripts for your weekly reading lessons. If your child is able to read the script with ease, he or she is ready to perform it.
One performance a month—Practice and record one script a month and share it with friends and relatives.

Remember, you can have access to the entire series of Readers’ Theater books and over 400 other titles when you join TeacherFileBox for $12.99 a month or $99 a year per household. Click here for more information on TeacherFileBox for homeschoolers.

Will you add readers’ theater to your homeschooling this year? Let me know in the comments!

January 16, 2018
by Evan-Moor
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3 Reading Comprehension Strategies to Teach Author’s Purpose

Analyzing texts and determining an author’s purpose is an important reading comprehension strategy for students to develop in our information-filled society. This type of in-depth analysis can be weaved into your reading comprehension for kids’ lesson plan. Students learn that the stories they enjoy reading often have one or more underlying themes that may correlate to real life lessons. Teach your students to identify an author’s purpose by focusing on recognizing the text structure and determining important information.

Approach the purpose of reading by selecting books to teach author purpose in a way that engages young minds. You can also choose to use an author’s purpose worksheet for interactive study.

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1. Structure of the text

Help students draw conclusions about an author’s purpose by identifying transitions and text structures. Discuss with students that authors put their ideas in a special order, and good readers figure out how the author organized the text. To understand a text’s organization, the reader needs to pay attention to words the author uses.

Organization of Text	Key Words and Phrases to Look for
Cause and Effect	Because, so, if, then, before, after
Sequence	First, second, third, next, then, after, before, last, finally
Compare and Contrast	Like, alike, both, but, different, however, too
Main Idea and Details	For example, also, one reason is, for instance, most likely
Question and Answer	Who, what, where, when, why, how

This visual is taken from Daily Reading Comprehension.

2. Determine Important Information

Teach students to identify the relevant parts of the text that reflect the author’s purpose by asking three questions. By determining important information, students are able to better identify the author’s intent.

Why are you reading?

Are you trying to get information to answer a question? To write a report? Look for words that are big or in bold type.

What information are you looking for?

Find information that answers a question. Read the topic sentence and sentences that tell about pictures.

What things are about the main topic?

Do you see key words about the topic? Identify details that are not as important for understanding the main topic. Do not focus on sentences that are not about the main idea.

This visual is taken from Daily Reading Comprehension.

3.Determine why the author wrote this.

Explain to students that authors always have a purpose for writing a text. By analyzing the text’s structure and important information, they can identify the author’s purpose.

This chart is taken from Reading Comprehension Fundamentals.

These strategies are taken from Evan-Moor’s Daily Reading Comprehension and Reading Comprehension Fundamentals. Designed to work together, these reading resources offer a systematic and comprehensive approach to teaching reading comprehension strategies and help you reinforce comprehension skills with which students are struggling.

January 8, 2018
by Evan-Moor
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How to Incorporate Critical Thinking into Your School Day

Students need to develop higher-order thinking skills such as inquiry, evaluation, and analysis to be successful in the classroom, on assessments, and in the real world. But how do you incorporate critical thinking activities into your already stuffed curriculum? Here are a few ideas that will challenge your students to use critical and creative thinking skills — and not overwhelm your schedule.

1. Extend Your Lessons with a Question
One simple and quick method to incorporate critical thinking activities into your day is to extend your lessons with a question. Questions should move beyond recalling and understanding of content into application, analysis, evaluation, and creation of learned skills. Here are some sentence starters incorporating Bloom’s Taxonomy levels of analysis, evaluation, and creation.

Analysis: How would you categorize…
Analysis: What could you infer from…
Evaluation: How would you compare…
Evaluation: Which do you think is better…
Creation: What might have happened if…

2. Daily Challenge Question
Provide a daily challenge, which is ideal for morning work and to engage students in learning.

You can design your questions from lessons taught the previous day, using Webbs Depth of Knowledge wheel for keywords that require your students to think deeply. Students may record their responses in a journal or on a separate paper. (Levels three and four in the DOK wheel provide the most in-depth evaluation.)
Evan-Moor’s Daily Higher-Order Thinking classroom resource provides 30 weeks of daily challenges that focus on a behavioral verb. Students are required to use information they already know and apply higher-order thinking skills to solve a problem. These challenges can be completed independently or in small groups.

3. Critical Thinking Task Cards
Create a task card box for center activities or early finishers with assignments that develop students’ higher-order thinking. Develop one concept/question for each task card with a focus on analysis, synthesis, inference, and application. Topics should include a diverse array of subjects spanning the curriculum and connect thinking skills with real-world situations.

These task card sample topics are from Daily Higher-Order Thinking, Grade 3:

Fill in the blank: I was carved by a river. I have very steep sides. If you speak to me, will respond with an echo. I am a _ _ _ _ _ _.
Unscramble the sentence: I wind blows the my fast hair run when
Use four digits to create three 2-digit numbers that can be rounded to 40. (Do not use a digit more than once in a number.)
1, 4, 6, 3
Generate a word problem with these facts
The blue whale is the largest of all the whales. It grows up to 100 feet (30 meters) long. The dwarf sperm whale is the smallest whale. It grows up to 9 feet (3 meters) long.
Imagine you are a sea creature on the bottom of the ocean. What sorts of adaptations, or body features, would you have that would make it easier to survive in the deep?

There are many different ways to encourage your students to think critically and creatively about the world around them. How do you incorporate critical thinking into your school day?

For a limited time receive 20% off Daily Higher-Order Thinking with coupon code DHOT20 until 8/28/19.

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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.

January 2, 2018
by Evan-Moor
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Geography Games and Activities for Home

Geography games and activities are a great method to promote global awareness within your home. Here are some simple activities that introduce your child to the world – including geography concepts and cultural awareness — without breaking your travel budget.

1. Encourage free exploration of maps and globes around your home.

Try putting together a map puzzle. Younger children will have success with larger puzzle pieces.
Invite your child to pick a place on the map or globe and plan a make-believe trip. Have him or her design a travel itinerary with places to visit, clothes to pack, and transportation.

2. Explore food around the world by introducing multicultural recipes. Make it a party and invite friends to bring a dish from a specific country or culture.

3. Help your child draw a map of your home to introduce spatial awareness. Be sure to have your children label each room and include drawings of furniture.

4. When you travel, discuss the route you will drive and draw a map.

Introduce terms such as north, south, east, and west as well as abbreviations such as S.W., S.E., N.W., and N.E.
Encourage your children to read a map in the car or look at your vehicle’s GPS monitor as you drive.

5. Read books about different places and people. Here are a few suggestions:

Beginner’s World Atlas (National Geography Kids)
The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World (Lonely Planet Kids)
Kids Around the World Cook!: The Best Foods and Recipes from Many Lands by Arlette N. Braman
Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China by Ai-Ling Louie
Once There Was a Story: Tales from Around the World, Perfect for Sharing by Jane Yolen

6. Introduce geography activity books such as Skill Sharpeners: Geography! These colorful activity books are a wonderful combination of fun and learning. The interactive activities allow children to explore the world while learning important map skills and geography concepts.

Promote free observation and inquiry within your home while teaching your children to be globally minded. What activities do you enjoy that build children’s geography awareness?

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December 18, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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3 Benefits of Homeschooling While Traveling Overseas

My homeschooling adventures began ten years ago when my daughter was six years old. At the time, I had no idea that my personal life and career were going to change radically, requiring my daughter and me to travel frequently. We have experienced many life lessons on this homeschooling adventure. Here are 3 of the most surprising ones:

1. A new understanding and practice for connecting socially

I am frequently asked, by people who do not understand homeschooling, if my homeschooled daughter is missing out on social situations. I found the opposite to be true. Because of our travel, my daughter learned to communicate and interact with individuals of varying age, race, and gender. In my opinion, our travel provided unique opportunities for my daughter to learn social skills and provided her with the confidence to approach any individual. As she grew older, my daughter learned to be interested in conversations that were not age specific. She would also show immediate compassion for a person younger in age and have no qualms about intermingling socially with an older age group. Today, with ten years of experience in connecting with a variety of people, I can confirm she has developed a high level of social intelligence.

2. Language, geography, culture, math, history, and other subjects become relevant in practice with tangible action

Access to good educational material such as Evan-Moor resource books is necessary in assuring that a level of the curriculum is maintained for a child’s learning expectations. However, with travel, the brain is allowed to connect concepts within a subject matter to the surrounding environment, helping learning to come alive.

Here are a few examples of how to extend learning while traveling:

Start a journal with your child and have him or her use it for writing, drawing, or pasting pictures to express what he or she discovers while traveling.
Allow your child to manage the money for a day. Math lessons regarding money are best learned when the homeschooler is allowed to manage the day’s travel budget. Although the language of money is a universal one, we have to learn to communicate it in different currencies as well as accepting differing ideas regarding money.
Cook and prepare locally inspired food. Sourcing and preparing food in the country of travel allowed us to learn the extensive range of a food’s ingredients in a country and learn more about the local culture.

3. Adaptability – a necessary skill for the new world
Homeschooling while traveling overseas forces lessons in flexibility upon us. It provided multiple opportunities to create and design varied learning experiences. As we travelled, we learned to adapt ourselves to our changing environments rather than expect others to accommodate us.

There are still so many more lessons to be learned. Travel is on our life agenda. I believe this means that we will be learning for a very long time.

Lara Jay Hequet is a life entrepreneur, certified and qualified in many fields of knowledge. She is a single parent to a fifteen year old daughter who is ‘lifeschooled’ for the last ten years. Together, they travel the world creating life stories and capturing stories of other wonderful people via film and the spoken word.

She is the founder of wowageing.com, a community of people who choose to Live Older instead of growing older. She intends to inspire and support unique individuals and their parents in the art of homeschooling.

December 4, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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Every Snowflake Is Different: Snowflake Crafts and Writing Prompts for Your Classroom

Inspire creative writing in your classroom this month with paper snowflakes, lovable snowmen and winter writing prompts!

What is a winter wonderland without snowflakes? Turn your classroom into a beautiful paper blizzard with a fun and easy snowflake project for your students. All it requires is paper, scissors, and a little creativity. While making snowflakes can be simple enough, add a short writing prompt to encourage thinking. Let’s start with the snowflakes!

Snowflake Paper Craft Activity

How to make a snowflake with a circle:

Start by cutting out a circle in your paper.
Fold your circle into a semicircle with the curved edge facing you.
Fold the left side over onto the right, forming a cone-looking paper.
Cut out pieces from the outside of the paper. Be careful not to cut all the way through. You can also punch holes in your paper with a hole puncher.
Unfold and behold your snowflake.

How to make a snowflake with a square:

Start by cutting out a square with your paper, with the pointed side facing you, like a diamond.
Fold the left point over to the right.
Fold the bottom point to the top.
Cut away from the edges. Be careful not to cut all the way through the paper.
Unfold and behold your snowflake.

See this page for picture instruction.

Snowflake-inspired Creative Writing Prompts

Now that your classroom is decorated with beautiful paper snowflakes, ask your students to look around at the designs. Ask them what they notice when they compare the snowflakes. Hopefully, with maybe a little hinting, they’ll notice that no two snowflakes are exactly the same. There is an estimated 1 in a million trillion chance of finding twin snowflakes.

Suggested writing prompts:

Like a snowflake, how are you different than those around you?
What makes you a special snowflake?
If you were a snowflake, where would you want to fall?

Snowman Bulletin Board

Download this snowman bulletin board and make your classroom transformation complete. Option: add students’ paper snowflakes and creative writing samples.

Winter brings the perfect opportunity for your students to express their creativity in beautifying the classroom with decorations. It also allows for a chance for kids to embrace that everybody is different in their talents, looks, and personalities.

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Christine Wooler has experience working with children as a youth soccer coach and summer camp counselor. She is currently studying English Literature and journalism in college. She enjoys exploring educational topics that help students have fun while learning.

November 29, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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How to Teach Evidence-Based Writing in 5 Easy Steps

Evidence-based writing is an important component in today’s writing curriculum. Students are expected to support their writing with text-based evidence and clear arguments. These writing lessons can become overwhelming and laborious for teachers and students alike. Keep confusion to a minimum by strategically scaffolding your writing lessons into bite-sized steps. Here are some strategies to help you scaffold your evidence-based writing lessons.

Strategies for text-based writing

1. Identify the purpose

Have students answer the following questions

What are we going to read about?
What are we going to learn about?
What are we going to write based on this article?

2. Read the article closely

Read aloud with the class modeling think-alouds. It is important for students to hear and understand your thinking process as you are reading.
Point out interesting information and underline it.
Re-read parts that are difficult to understand and highlight information relevant to the writing prompt.

3. Organize the information

Graphic organizers are the perfect visual tool to organize information. Explain to students that the graphic organizers guide students through the planning process of writing their paragraphs.

4.Write

Use a visual tool on the board to demonstrate to students how the information within their paragraphs is related. The hamburger model is a popular visual to demonstrate these connections. This model demonstrates how topic sentences and details are related.
Read examples of well-written samples and discuss the elements that create a quality text.

5. Feedback

Resist the urge to mark every missing detail in red. Before you grade your students’ papers, decide what the key concepts of the lesson are and focus on those (especially for young writers).

Text-Based Writing Sample Lessons

Frequent practice analyzing texts and identifying evidence is the best method to improve your students’ analytical writing abilities. Evan-Moor’s Text-Based Writing: Nonfiction is a comprehensive classroom resource that gives students continual practice with citing text evidence. Each unit provides a nonfiction reading article, vocabulary and comprehension questions, graphic organizer, and writing page to guide students through their writing. Get your free sample lessons here.

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