Literary Themes

Here is a set of posters I've made to help students recognize themes.  It includes many recurring literary themes.  I also accompanied each word with a symbol to help drive home meanings.  My students use this set of posters often as they are searching for great words to describe the theme of a passage or book. 

I created this set of posters to help my students realize the common themes among books.  Theme can be a difficult, abstract concept to grasp, and I've found that these posters help students communicate a book's theme more readily.  Oftentimes, the theme of a book can encompass many of these ideas, but these words act as a springboard for brainstorming themes!

Get a FREE download of my Literary Themes Posters!  It is a google.doc in PDF format.

Literary Conflict

It can often be difficult to teach about literary conflicts with elementary students.  I don't just mean "what is Johnny's problem in the story," but rather the causes, effects, and changes due to conflicts.  To be honest, I don't think I fully grasped the concept until high school; however, I have found a way to help my students begin to dissect conflicts that they read about and experience.   

When it boils down to it, every conflict comes from one or more of the following perspectives: religious, political/power, psychological, economic, social, technological, philosophical, and cultural.  Even the youngest of students have experienced these things (the power conflict of different bedtimes, the economic conflict of not getting the candy bar at the store, the social conflict of disagreeing with friends). 

One of my graduate professors actually shared these 8 perspectives with me and I now use them to classify all conflicts with my students.  Even though the vocabulary is a bit sophisticated, the pictures remind students that these perspectives are always in play.  Plus, the kids get a kick out of learning college-level material! 

Try using these perpectives with your students, or even just reminding yourself of these perspectives when you come across conflict in your life.  There are always different perspectives being challenged . . .

Get a free download of my Literary Conflict Perspectives Posters!  It is a free google.doc in PDF format.

Writing Center

My writing center contains absolutely EVERYTHING my students need for all steps in the writing process.  It is an integral station in our classroom.

The top shelf is home to blank index cards for making flashcards, writing prompts to get ideas flowing, pens, pencils, highlighters, tape, a stapler, electric pencil sharpener, and group cups containing scissors and rulers.  The lower shelf has rhyming poetry dictionaries, scissors, handheld pencil sharpeners, a three-hole punch, lined scrap paper, and white scrap paper.  The lined scrap paper was pulled from old notebooks that students donated at the end of previous years.  The white scrap paper is from worksheets and paperwork that was only printed on one side.  It's a great way to recycle and have paper for drafting, sketching, drawing, and math computations.

These plastic drawers contain labeled sections for handheld sharpeners, regular scissors, and decorative-edged scissors.  The labels serve two purposes: they give me an excuse to use my favorite label maker and students always know where to return the supplies!

Since the electric pencil sharpener can only be used during the morning routine, recess, and at the end of the day, we have sharpened pencils ready to go.  I made these two containers by covering coffee cans with construction paper.  The "Ready!" bin is home to pencils that are sharp and ready to use.  The "Need to be sharpened" can is for students to place dull pencils to be sharpened later.  A student helps with sharpening so I can focus on other things (what student doesn't love to use an electric sharpener?).  If students absolutely need to sharpen a pencil during the day, they simply use one of the quiet, handheld sharpeners.  

The cart of dictionaries is directly next to the other writing supplies.  The cart has various dictionaries and thesauruses as well as binders of graphic organizers and writing prompts.  The bottom left side of the shelf is reserved for other books that help with the writing process.  

Now, if only these writing resources could help me grade papers, we'd be in business!

Keeping Track of the Writing Process

Here is my writing process number wall:

These posters and numbers are hung near my writing center (pens, pencils, dictionaries, prompts, six traits posters, etc.) so everything is all in one area.  This wall allows me to visually keep track of where each student is in the writing process.  The numbers are held on with sticky tak.  As students move through the process, they move their number to the appropriate section.

Students move from the initial planning process to draft writing at the beginning of the writing process.

Then, as students are working on their drafts, they move their numbers to the revising/proofreading/editing section.  I put these process steps together because, let's be honest, we often do all three simultaneously as we are working.

The final writing process steps are publishing and sharing.  I remind students that we don't always have the time or capacity to share every piece of writing, especially short assignments.  So, sometimes students move from publishing back to the planning step without sharing.  

Download your free Writing Process Posters here!  It is a google document in pdf format.

Common Core ELA Grade 5 Checklists

STUDENT CHECKLISTS:

I created these checklists to keep track of student progress on each of the ELA standards for Common Core. 

These checklists are for all strands of the ELA standards: language, literature, informational text, writing, reading foundations, and speaking and listening. 

The checklists have spaces for student names as well as corresponding boxes to keep track of student mastery.  When a student meets a particular standard, write the date in the matching box.  This helps you document student progress. 

The checklists can be very long (specifically the writing checklist), so I glued them together - see the first picture.  In order to fit the large checklists in my grading binder, I folded each list to fit. 

Get a free download of my Common Core ELA Grade 5 Student Checklist!  It is a free google.doc in PDF format.

TEACHER LISTS:
This checklist is for teachers to correlate the new Common Core ELA Grade 5 Standards to their current textbook and curriculum series. 

This checklist includes already prepared columns with the Common Core ELA standards - one column with the official language, one with more common language.  There are also two additional columns for you to write the corresponding chapters or sections in your current textbook and other activities/projects/worksheets that you use.  This chart is a fantastic way to organize your current materials to work for the Common Core standards.

Get a free download of my Common Core ELA Grade 5 Teacher Checklist!  It is a free google.doc in PDF format. 

Also take a look at my MATH checklists!