Cohen's Creativity Corner

This is a resource to help students summarize nonfiction narrative, specifically biographies. Using the "Somebody Wanted But So Then Finally" familiar format, it helps students see that nonfiction narrative is an informational text that reads more like a story. Great launch for discussions about motivations, struggles, and lessons we can learn from these figures!

No Talking by Andrew Clements is filled with similes. This activity has students pick one from the text (some are paraphrased), and then students will draw the literal meaning of the simile and write what the expression means.

This is a fun, 20 clue scavenger hunt for items you can find around the school. Bonus, they rhyme! It also includes an answer key to easily check off that each person or team has each item. Feel free to edit the clues to make it useful in your school.

After reading chapter one of City of Ember, students reflect on which job would best suit them if they were to participate in "Assignment Day."

This chart helps students make inferences about a character by "Thinking F.A.S.T!" based on feelings, actions, what they say, and what they think! It can be re-used for any character in any book.

This is a visually-appealing, kid-friendly graphic organizer for an opinion writing piece! It has space for an introduction to state the claim, three supporting reasons and examples and evidence, and a concluding statement to restate the claim in a new way. Students love the Oreo shape!

This is a poem template for an "I Am" poem. The objective is to write this poem from the perspective of a historical figure. This includes an original "I Am" poem written from the perspective of Thomas Jefferson.

Popcorn themed bulletin board for "Words that POP!" - find stronger adjectives for overused words. Title page included at the end.

This powerpoint is scaffolded to walk students through the process of choosing a strong and "just right" topic for a research project. It begins with a class brainstorm on what makes for a researchable topic, and then becomes more individualized for each student. My students loved the freedom to come up with their own topic, but appreciated the scaffolded process to make sure it would be a strong topic for them.

This is a graphic organizer with a sample included for students to create their own math stories that involve word problmes in which you need to interpret the remainder. Students come up with one scene in which the remainder is ignored, one in which the answer is rounded up to the next whole number, and one in which it is reported as a fraction or decimal. A sample is included!

This is an assignment to give to students participating in book clubs. It has them look over their post-its to create a notebook entry that they can then share with their peers. Very open-ended assignment so it is a great opportunity to see what students can do to organize their thinking and spark book club discussions. You can edit this to make it work for any book clubs, not just biographies!

A simple game to reinforce place value, comparing numbers, and expanded form. Students roll a dice 5 times and make an informed guess as to which place to put each number in - the goal is to make the greatest number! They then write their number in expanded form, and compare it to their partner's

This writing project fits well with units of study on Ancient China, Confucius, philosophy, and folktales. Included in this activity are requirements for the writing project, a planning sheet, several of Confucius' sayings to serve as a moral, and a sample folktale that I wrote as a mentor text. There is also a link for a website that highlights examples of Chinese symbols to include in the folktale. **You can modify this project to fit any cultural unit of study by changing any references to

My class LOVED our folktales unit this year! We used this chart after we read a tale, and it helped us understand the story elements and to understand how to summarize. We then used this chart to plan our OWN folktales as writers.

Graphic organizer for fiction or folktale writing! Helps students think about their protagonist's traits, including how they feel, act, think, and what they say. It also helps students plan for an opposing character, so students can see how opposing traits lead to a story's conflict.

This is a wonderful, open-ended assignment that uses students' own daily activities as a launch for creating multi-step word problems. They will record the duration of their after school activities, create word problems for a peer to solve, but must create a detailed answer key as well.

This factor rainbow template is great for students to practice finding all the factor pairs of a number. There is space at the bottom to extend this concept to prime, composite, square, odd, even, etc! Use it as a fun activity or even as an assessment.

Use this format for students to respond to nonfiction texts. It's a great tool since it can be used and reused with virtually any text, and will give everyone something to share in a class discussion. It's perfect for an exit ticket, as well!

A fun way for students to become word experts! This activity works with any vocabulary list you are using in your classroom, from content-area words, enrichment lists, and any words from a word study list. Students create catchy advertisements for a product or experience they invent, related to a vocabulary word. Each product has directions written twice for easy copying and cutting.

Students can use this packet to organize their research during a biography unit. They can take notes on the paper OR categorize their post-its at the end of a day of research. At the end of each section there is space for "Big Takeaways" for students to synthesize their research and draw conclusions. Major categories are pre-filled in (early life, struggles, character traits, contributions to society) and two are left blank for students' own ideas; feel free to edit as you see fit.