Nonfiction Features in Text

For those of you teaching your kids about nonfiction reading and writing, here's a free mini book that can help the students remember some of the basic features of nonfiction writing.  The mini book has cut and paste examples and facts for each of the 4 basic nonfiction features: Table of Contents, Pictures and Captions, Glossary, and Index. 

I walked my 1st grade students through the different features using a Science text book first.  Then we worked together to sort through the facts and examples to cut and glue onto our pages. When all done, I took a grade on the mini book and sent them home for the students as a reference for nonfiction text features. 

(For some reason I wasn't able to upload this to TPT, but here are the links to Google "Drive" and Teachers Notebook.)

 

Or click here to get it from Google Drive. 

Hope you like it!

Valentines at the last minute . . .

Looking for some festive activities for Valentine's Day?  Kids Cog Works has a great linky page going on!  Go grab some FREEBIES for tomorrow (or store some away for your jump start on next year's Valentine's Day activities)!

Who likes freebies?!?!

If you like freebies, you absolutely positively CANNOT miss out on this huge event!  Classroom Freebies has hit ONE MILLION views!  If you have not checked it out yet, you're going to want to bookmark this page.  (Seriously.) 

As part of our celebration we are posting tons of freebies we will be posting nonstop freebies for the next 24 hours.  There are more than 60 freebies scheduled to be posted!  See Charity Preston's (creator of Classroom Freebies) note regarding the celebration.  You can catch one of my freebies on there too!

"Synonym" Toast Crunch!

Oooh!  It's been a minute since I've posted a new product!  Sorry!

Here's a freebie for you.  We're about to start synonyms so here's a fun game I made a couple of years ago.  Really . . . if you put anything into a game format, the kids go crazy over it!

This game is called "Synonym Toast Crunch".  It's played similar to war.  Each player get's an equal share of "toast" cards face down.  They will also have a stack of "Crunch!" cards next to them ready to use.  On the count of 3 they throw it down between them.  If the two cards make a synonym pair, the 1st student to slap a "Crunch! card on top of the words and yell out "Crunch!" gets to keep the pair. After the 1st round of cards, students will reshuffle the unpaired cards and redistribute them to continue the game.  This continues until all words have been paired up.  The student with the most pairs of synonyms at the end wins!  You may now crown the winner . . . "Captain Crunch!"  HAHA!
(I know . . . I've been labeled corny and cheesy way too much to deny it.)

Hope you enjoy!

(Or click here to get it from Teacher's Notebook.)

It's Time to Study Time!

I'm not sure what your curriculum calendar looks like, but where I teach we are now starting Time to the hour and half hour again.  If you are also studying time right now, here's my free Race Against Time gameboard.

If you like that, check out my complete Time Unit!  It's 42 pages of differentiated Time practice, games, and activities!

Forms, Forms, Forms! over @ Classroom Freebies!

Do you need to get (or stay) organized?  I've posted a bunch of my free forms over in Classroom Freebies!  Go check it out and see if there's anything that can help you!

I Forgot to Mention . . .

Hey all!

So when I introduced the new blog "Simply Centers" I neglected to tell you something very important!  This blog has all things blog related for grade K-8!  That means there's a lot to be found for a wide range of ages, grades, and abilities!  It's a brand new blog, so keep checking back as the goodies are accumulated!

The Diva gives it away!

Then visit The Lesson Plan Diva to enter her 500 Follower Giveaway!  You can get my Syllable Zoo Center in her giveaway AND purchase her Year Long Language Arts Assessment packet!

Seriously . . . this is a giveaway you don't want to miss!  EVERYONE who follows the her blog and TpT and posts the giveaway to her blog wins 12 different lessons from our community of bloggers.  Then you also get a chance to win a $15 Amazon gift card.  Everyone walks away with a ton of great stuff but one person gets a gift card too!

Click on the icon below to go straight to the giveaway!