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Home in the Desert: Lesson for Use with This House is Made of Mud
Third graders examine how a family modifies their environment to create a home out of mud. They read the book "This House is Made of Mud" by Ken Buchanan, and write a description of their own home that compares the home of mud to their...
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The Anatomy of Cool
Students explore differences between superficial and real "coolness," how marketers use cool to sell products, and how their own attitudes and perceptions are affected by media messages that reinforce specific messages about what...
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Verb Tenses
Discover how to use proper verb tenses with context clues. Five sentences help first graders decide if they should use -ed or -ing to end simple verbs. Each sentence provides context clues to indicate the time. Use the resource in...
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Fanning The Spark: Fostering Your Students' Creativity
Here is a packet of lessons which are designed to help you to foster your pupils' creativity. The lessons are designed to develop their fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration on ideas. The are built around field trips to a...
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Oceans of Fun
Here is a great hands-on activity that should lead to a greater understanding of salt water, why the ocean is salty, and how ocean waves are formed. This terrific, old-school lesson plan has clearly described activities, and all of the...
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Osage, Legend, and Arkansas History
Elementary schoolers evaluate the legend of Norristown Mountain by looking at facts about the Osage Indians and the legend itself. They do an exploration of Arkansas' Native American groups which includes a look at their legends,...
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Compound Words
Compound words are important for kids to understand. At first, they are a bit intimidating becaue they look so big! However, once they understand that a compound word is just two short words put together, they aren't so scary. Each of...
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The Power of Retelling: Developmental Steps to Building Comprehension
Empower your readers by modeling for them the steps for retelling a story. Designed as a teacher resource, Dr. Cummins argues that shifting responsibility for retelling to the learners increases their comprehension. The procedure is...
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Making A Valentine Box
Use this comprehension worksheet to have your learners read a short story about how to make a Valentine box. After reading, they answer seven muliple choice questions about the procedure. Then, they get to actually make the box. A nice,...
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Scrambled Sentences
Here's a clever classroom game that will help learners with their sentence writing skills. It's a fast-paced game that is played in groups. Each makes up scrambled sentences that the other groups must solve. There are plenty of examples...
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Cat Facts
Kids love cats! Here is a lesson that invites youngsters to do some research on the critters. They must answer questions such as: "How many different kinds of cats are there?" "Why did Egyptians worship cats?" and, "How far can cats...
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Heroes in History - ABC Book
Youngsters research information about people in history that we recognize as heroes. They write short biographies about their assigned heroes, and create an ABC book. This is an ambitious project becausev26 people must be chosen and...
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Homophones and Homographs
Getting tired of correcting to, two, and too? What about weather and whether? Use a thorough lesson on homophones and homographs to clear up those differences. Fourth and fifth graders identify which words sound the same and are spelled...
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Storytelling of the Four Tribes of Nevada
Learners work in groups to identify the major characters and events found in a Nevada Native American folklore story. Each of the groups takes on the role of a different tribe, and they are given a story from that tribe's oral history....
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Statements and Questions
Teach your class the differences between statements and questions with a simple activity. After reading four statements, third graders rewrite the sentences as questions. They do the opposite in the last section. A helpful activity for...
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Malapropisms
What's the difference between an allegory and an alligator? Fifth graders work with malapropisms to determine the meanings of words that sound alike. Five sentences challenge them to find the malapropism and change it to the correct...
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Prepositions
Prepositions are an important part of descriptive writing. Fourth graders fill in the blanks with prepositions from a word bank, then write ten sentences with the remaining words.
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Writing to Make a Point
Begin your persuasive writing with a helpful exercise on making points. With a list of ten points on transportation in a city, third graders map a logical order to their argument. They then write one or two paragraphs about the points...
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Roger Robot
Read the story of Roger Robot included in the lesson and have kids move creatively by interpreting how a robot might move. Read a part of the story, then stop and let the class act it out. Read some more, and let them move some more....
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Compound Words - Two Words In One
Compound words sure do come in handy! For young readers, learning how two words can go together to make one word is a big deal. It's also a confidence builder because they are suddenly able to read "big" words. This sweet presentation...
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Writing an Explanation
Bananas are an important part of a healthy diet - but where do they come from? Third graders write an explanatory text about the origins of bananas. The bottom part of the paper includes necessary information about bananas, as well as a...
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Its or It's
What's the difference between its and it's? Clear up any misunderstandings in your third grade language arts class. Practice sentences use its or it's twice, prompting learners to use context clues for each usage. At the end of the...
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Perfecting Plural Nouns
Turn potato into potatoes with a great activity on plural nouns. A quick reference guide at the top of the page shows third graders how to make regular and irregular nouns plural. They list as many nouns as they can think of, then work...
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Silent W
Spelling can be hard enough without silent letters. Help your third graders decode nine words that have the silent letter W, such as wrinkle or wrong. Once they decipher all nine words, they use each in a new sentence. The bottom of the...