Teacher Appreciation Week Sale!

TeachersPayTeachers is having a site-wide sale! Use coupon code TAD12 to get 10 percent off of everything you purchase from Sunday, May 6 through Tuesday, May 8. I will be marking everything in my store 5% off which means a total savings of about 15% off for you. (It doesn't come out to exactly 15% because the %5 is discounted from the already-10%-discounted price. Confused? Me too.)

Sunny Day Fun Figurative Language Centers and Worksheets

Summer is around the corner! It would be a stretch to say sunny warm days have arrived, but they're getting close. To get ready, I've updated my Elementary Figurative Language Worksheets by giving them a sunny day fun and sports theme. There's over 30 pages that can be used as worksheets or they can be printed in color, laminated, and used in centers. I've included activities for a variety of skill levels and EL students. I made an effort to include sports and activities that appeal to a wide variety of interests:  tetherball, soccer, football, tennis, volleyball, sandcastles, bubbles, swimming, diving, surfing, skateboarding, swingsets, and more.

The packet includes

Simile - 4 Pages
Personification - 4 Pages
Metaphor - 4 Pages
Hyperbole - 4 Pages
Combine Simile and Hyperbole - 2 Pages
 Alliteration - 5 Pages
Onomatopoeia - 5 Pages
Figurative Language Practice with Picture Prompts - 2 Pages
Triple Challenge - Combine 3 Types of Figurative Language
Figurative Language Illustrated "bookmarks" so students will always have the definitions handy - 2 Pages

I used these worksheets with my 9th grade EL students and they were a hit. At first, they thought the graphics were a little immature for them, but they quickly got over that and had a good time. I like to think my worksheets helped them forget about their adolescent problems and pressures for awhile and just revisit the happy carefree days of their youth.

Common Core Standards Posters - Roundup

Back in October, I started making Common Core Standards posters at the request of colleague of mine. Since then, I've made posters for third, fourth, and fifth grades. Sixth grade is in the works. Since fifth was the grade I started on, the posters went through a lot of "prototyping" at that stage. So I have a total of four different options for that grade. I have two different options for fourth. But the time I started working on third grade posters, I had the format nailed down.

All the different choices get a little confusing sometimes, even to me. So I've organized them all here into one list.

Fifth Grade Posters - Five different backgrounds
Fifth Grade Posters - Illustrated - English Language Arts
Fifth Grade Posters - Illustrated - Math
Fifth Grade Posters - Illustrated - Math and English Language Arts Combined
Fourth Grade Posters - (not illustrated)
Fourth Grade Posters - Illustrated
Third Grade Posters - Illustrated

The difference between "illustrated" and everything else is: in the illustrated posters, the concept or learning goal of each standard is "visualized" with a graphic, like in the examples below.

Word Origins 101 - Serendipity

I was walking along the sidewalk with my three year old daughter this afternoon, coming back from kite-flying and monkey-bar romping at the playground. She stopped suddenly and exclaimed, "Look!" There on the ground was a little yellow happy face magnet, smiling back up at us. We took it home and it now has a happy new home on the fridge, next to the Jelly Belly magnet.

The little magnet she found is remarkably like the one that dots the "i" on my web-site header at the top of this page. This got me thinking about the word "serendipity." I've used it a lot but never much thought about where it comes from. I thought it might be somehow related to "serene," but it turns out the story behind serendipity is a lot more interesting than I could have imagined.

It was coined in 1754 by a British chap the name of Horace Walpole (1717-92) who was the 4th Earl of Orford. He used it in a letter to the Isle of Mann; he said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale "The Three Princes of Serendip," whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of." The name is from Serendip, an old name for Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), from Arabic Sarandib, from Sanskrit. Simhaladvipa, which means "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island." Source

So the short of it is, the word serendipity comes from a word that means "an island where lions live." A totally unexpected and weird little fact. That's cool.

And, even more interestingly, we learn from all that that Sri Lanka was originally named "the island where lions live."

On another note, the photo of the magnet was taken by my daughter with her Vtech Kidizoom camera. It's a great little camera that is super easy to use. At $40 there are cheaper digital cameras out there, but they aren't nearly as durable and kid-friendly. My daughter's preschool teacher even uses a couple of them in her classroom for projects that involve photography. They come in orange and pink.

Roots of Numbers Word Wall Freebie

Here's a new freebie for teaching numeric roots. I like to use these for pre-reading. I use them to introduce students to the numeric roots they will be encountering in the upcoming reading. Another way to do it is to assign a student to be a "counter." Whenever one of these roots is found in the reding, they take out the card and put it in the pocket chart so we can talk about it afterward. Great for English learners and struggling readers. Each card has the root, the English meaning, a picture to represent the meaning of the root, and the origin (Greek or Latin)