Mrs Difficult

Teaching poetry can sometimes feel a bit dry! Turn it into a fun, detective activity. With this Poetry Detective Guide, your student collects clues about stanzas, rhyme, and figurative language---then your students apply what they have learned to a challenging poem. Voila! Your students have mastered the basic elements of poetic structure! Look for more advanced Poetry Detective Guides to come!

The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant is a classic short story and is perfect for middle school students. This product contains the story The Necklace with a large glossary for difficult words.It also contains high quality nonfiction passages about the historical period in which the story is set. But wait there's more! You'll also get discussion questions and essay prompts with guidance on how to help students identify a theme and support it with evidence. This is EVERYTHING you could possibly ne

This Common Core aligned unit features EVERYTHING you need to teach reading and writing nonfiction about U.S. Presidents including: • four biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Barack Obama • card game to check for student reading comprehension • cloze structure to help first graders write a biography of a president • Compare and Contrast chart to compare/contrast presidents • cloze structure to help first graders write a compare and contrast essay on 2 U.

Young Goodman Brown is a classic short story that is typically read during the high school years. This adapted version enables ELLs and struggling readers to get the full benefit of this classic story. An accompanying glossary helps ELLs and students with limited vocabularies understand any unfamiliar words. This adaptation retains the length and complexity of the story while making sentence length, vocabulary difficulty and overall readability much more accessible.

First Graders need to know all about the Ice Age. This fun foldable contains lively pictures and text to take them back into that forgotten age long ago. Students will compare and contrast what life was like for humans in the Ice Age and what life is like for humans today. Write-on lines enable first graders to answer questions directly on the foldable. Perfect for in-class work or as homework!

Comparing and contrasting are critical ELA skills. Take a break from comparing and contrasting two passages. Instead compare and contrast PICTURES. You and your students will analyze a portrait of Princess Diana and her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. Then, your students will analyze a portrait of Queen Victoria and two of her grandchildren from the 1800s. How is each royal family presented? How have royal portraits changed over the last century? The answers might surprise you! Thi

The Danielson Framework is well known to many teachers. Carol Dweck's research into the Growth Mindset has revealed important insights into helping students --and teachers--- learn . So how do we integrate the two? This document takes the Danielson Framework and offers two tips for each component of every domain. This document gives your teachers concrete strategies for applying the Growth Mindset to each aspect of the Danielson Framework. Whether you are a teacher, a coach, a principal

The CCSS exams LOVE to give questions on point of view. And point of view can be tricky. The term can be used in a number of different means. It can be used to mean "first person point of view" or "third person point of view". It can be used to refer to an author's bias toward a subject they are writing about. And it can be used to describe a character's feelings about events in a story. This worksheet really drives home each of these different uses of "point of view" so that your student

This 30-plus page interactive workbook introduces students to some of the greatest figures in the Age of Exploration: ---the extraordinary Queen of Isabella ---the determined Christopher Columbus ---the ruthless Ponce de Leon ---the ill-fated John Cabot Writing and reading comprehension activities are included. Vocabulary exercises are also included. Through an engaging text and beautiful maps and illustrations, this text brings the history of exploration alive for students. The reading co

The must-read fable in fun, Readers Theater script form!

Foldables are perfect for first grade hands! This fun foldable teaches first graders all about Mesopotamia. What was life like for the nomads who roamed the desert? How did they survive in the desert without permanent homes and in constant need of water? This foldable lays the foundation for the settling of the first civilization. First graders will ask and answer critical thinking questions about nomadic life in the desert. Write-on lines give young hands plenty of room to write their an

As we near the end-of-year state exams, let's face it: Social Studies tends to get nudged to the side. These worksheets allow you to embed math word problems within Social Studies content. These challenging problems encourage critical thinking and creative problem-solving while also imparting important history and geography knowledge to third and fourth graders. Fun to teach, these word problems are truly refreshing for teachers and students during the Math test prep period!

Calling all Pre-K, Kindergarten and Grade 1 and 2 teachers! This handout is great to provide to parents to encourage their reading at home with their small children. It covers the many benefits to child development---including their cognitive development, linguistic development, social development and emotional development. After reading this, parents will be crystal clear about why nightly reading is perhaps the best investment they can make in their child's academic development.

This is a two-lesson mini-unit on Text Features which allows your students to learn what text features arehow to identify themhow they help present and organize informationhow they are different from text structuresIt includes a fascinating sample nonfiction article on Anastasia Romanov which your students can use to identify text features. It also includes a Text Feature Finder Worksheet, Answer Guide, Discussion Guide and more. Your student will be text feature experts from now on!

Celebrate Women's History Month and practice short responses at the same time! This includes three passages on Eleanor of Aquitaine including one play excerptone nonfiction excerptone novel excerptStudents will be enthralled as they learn about the fascinating Medieval Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine who ruled both France and England, participated in the Crusades, bore 9 children and helped her sons lead a revolt against their own father. Each passage is followed by a short response. A great way to

We need parents to read to their children. Here is a handout for parents that give them step-by-step instructions on how to start a reading practice with their child. This is perfect to send home with students ---or to handout at parent-teacher conferences or Parent Night events. One of the most valuable aspects of this handout is that it spells out just how a parent should read to their child and how many books parents should gather so that their children have a little home library of books

If you're teaching A Tale of Two Cities, you need great questions to keep your students engaged with this challenging text. Have them at your finger tips in this interactive version which contains: --questions on each page --multiple choice questions --short response prompt --essay prompt PLUS an interactive version that has audio!!!!! The audio version reads the text dramatically WHILE also pausing to clarify the text and ask probing questions. If you have an iPad the interactive version a

An outline is essential to writing a strong extended response. Most students struggle with outlining. Use this 5-STEP process to teach your students how to outline effectively so that they can ace the extended response question on exams!

If you're teaching about Westward Expansion, you'll be needing this great resource on General Custer, the Washita Massacre and Custer's Last Stand. Students will learn to evaluate and compare/contrast historic sources on Custer's Last Stand. This source book provides: --primary sources (including eyewitness testimony and news articles, even reports by Custer himself!) -secondary sources (encyclopedia entries, narrative history) --timelines --historical terms/vocabulary practice. This is a f

Read Chapter 3 of A Tale of Two Cities with comprehension questions that address plot, theme, motif and literal/inferential understanding. This is a PDF with comprehension questions along the margin. A great way to teach rich literature in an engaging way. If you have an iPad, there is also an INTERACTIVE version with audio of the chapter and questions---as well as interactive multiple choice questions. Just email Mrs Difficult and she will send you the iBooks interactive version