Social Studies

I have been looking for some ways to combine some social studies themes with reading comprehension. I found this guided reading passage about Daniel Boone that looks pretty good. There is also a video on Tennessee History for Kids about Boone and the Cumberland Gap.

Here are the links:
Boone Guided Reading

Cumberland Gap Video

Questions I Will No Longer Answer

I love this idea. I saw a post from The Brown-Bag Teacher that included a list of questions that are asked repeatedly in the classroom on a daily basis. You can post these after the first month or so of school to let your kids know these questions are off limits and they should know how to solve these problems themselves. I am going to start this right away!!!

The Brown-Bag Teacher

One I will add right away is..."What are we going to do?"

Winter Break Reading Challenge

I was going to give this a try to challenge my kidos to read over the winter break.  I'll let everyone know how it goes in the new year.  It is a free download from TeachersPayTeachers if you want to give it a try yourself.

Winter Break Marshmallow Reading Challenge

More Close Reads...

Here are some outstanding close reading activities that are aligned to our old Reading Street books. They supply the text dependent questions, as well as a culminating task. Could be a good supplemental resource. Here is the link:

http://bpscurriculumandinstruction.weebly.com/4th-grade--close-reading-lessons.html

The link takes you to 4th grade materials, but the site includes each grade level.

Cool close reading video.

I did Day 1  of the Because of Winn Dixie close reading activity from Achieve the Core. It went pretty well, the kids liked the passage and the discussion was good. Here is a link to the New York DOE site the has some more ELA units that include close reading.  The link will pull up 4th grade, but the left side of the page has units for K-12.


 Engage NY ELA Units

I.N.K. Interesting Nonfiction for Kids

     I found a blog that has great ideas on using nonfiction text in the classroom.  It is written by nonfiction authors and they give ideas on using their books.  It has TONS of really good ideas on it and I have only scratched the surface...

                                           I.N.K.-- Interesting Nonfiction for Kids