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Fool your students with this fun "quiz" where kids get some practice following directions and also celebrate this silly holiday! Students have to read the quiz to the end and follow the directions carefully in order to find out that the whole thing is a joke!

Story cards tell the favorite fairy tale of "The Elves and the Shoemaker" and then students cut out the cards and sequence them with a partner (reading level G/H). Important vocabulary words are highlighted with pictures and a matching activity. Students complete a multi-modal worksheet on compound words.

In navigating this land of CCSS, it is helpful to have a list of apps and resources for parents on hand. This list can be used at Open House, Back to School Nights, or informational presentations. I also keep it in a folder on my Community Bulletin Board. Surprisingly (or maybe not so much so!), many of my parents prefer the Smart Phone apps to anything else so that they can work with their students at home. There are also educational videos, and information available in other languages.

Teaching Haikus helps with syllables and can be a great way to teach sensory language. It is also a great way to make poetry more accessible to young children. These Haikus are fun for early elementary and also teach some great vocabulary. I used them to introduce the genre, then we had another week of Haikus before writing some of our own!