Reflective Thinker

An engaging grammar / writing resource for the beginning of the school year! Fun and engaging bellringers or daily oral language practice! Help students grasp the importance of proofreading their work. Set high expectations concerning correct spelling, punctuation, grammar, and sentence structure, for effective communication and writing skills are targeted 21st century skills. Use this resource, which is filled with humorous, authentic examples of poor grammar, to help students embrace the value

A challenging, fun ELA review! Sure to keep students' minds engaged! Great classroom management extension activities for those who finish work early. This brain games and puzzles resource for Grades 4-8 includes 10 challenging brain games or puzzles to review English/language arts content. The games or puzzles facilitate critical thinking skills as well as reinforce all of the following skills: spelling, simile, metaphor, personification, theme, idioms, irony, mood, tone, novel, symbolism, v

This Socratic seminar contains a great message for the beginning of the school year! Socratic seminar is an excellent and engaging way for students to practice higher order thinking skills. Introduce your students to Socratic seminar with this easy-to-implement, step-by-step resource. This 32-slide PowerPoint resource with printables is a Socratic seminar to include pre and post activities featuring the poem “A Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. This resource includes a well-organized protocol fo

Use the 32 slides with engaging activities, appropriate primarily for Grades 4-8, to convince students to use transition words to spice up their writing. High school students, who need differentiated instruction concerning the use of transitional words, can benefit from this resource, as well. Research shows explicitly teaching writing strategies such as the use of transitional words has a strong impact on the quality of all students’ writing, and it has been found especially effective for stud

Fun and engaging! An easy to implement Socratic seminar and more! A great way to introduce Socratic seminar, promote active learning, and begin or end the school year with a positive, inspirational message. Socratic seminar is an excellent way to infuse 21st century skills and higher order thinking skills into learning. This 62-slide, Common Core aligned PowerPoint resource with printables is a Socratic seminar featuring the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling. It is easy to implement and will promot

Try this easy-to-implement seminar this fall. Socratic seminar is an excellent and engaging way for students to practice higher order thinking skills. The PowerPoint resource consists of 55 slides or pages with Common Core aligned Socratic seminar activities and printables featuring the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost. This resource includes a well-organized protocol for conducting a formal discussion or Socratic seminar based on Frost’s poem. On Day 1 and Day 2 students complete se

This well-organized “I Dream” poetry and speech analysis resource consists of teaching slides as well as 20 analysis tasks. Students identify, explain, and citing text evidence concerning theme, mood, tone, main idea, point of view, personification, simile, metaphor, symbolism, imagery, key vocabulary, and rhyme scheme. In addition, students draw conclusions, make inferences, and use context clues. The analysis tasks are centered around four literary texts to include three dream related poems

Socratic seminar is an excellent and engaging way for students to practice higher order thinking skills. This 55-slide PowerPoint resource with printables is a Socratic seminar featuring the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, which is a fitting poem for the winter season. The resource includes a well-organized protocol for conducting a formal discussion or Socratic seminar based on Frost’s poem. On Day 1 and Day 2 students complete several poetry, writing, and vocabular

High interest! Engaging! Fun! Sure to bring lighthearted laughter in your classroom! Spice up language lessons with "Falling into Fall," a resource filled with high-interest passages and pictures created to add pizzazz and humor to Daily Oral Language (DOL) and/or everyday edits (91 Pages). This engaging, fun resource contains 91 slides that are divided into three sections. Section 1 contains 11 grammar, conventions, and spelling teaching slides with interesting, funny examples, which can be us

Fun and engaging! This easy to implement resource is much more than a Socratic seminar. It includes high interest activities and a differentiated quiz. Socratic seminar is an excellent and engaging way for students to practice higher order thinking skills. This 73-slide PowerPoint resource with printables is a Socratic seminar featuring the poem “The Spider and the Fly” by Mary Howitt. The resource includes a well-organized protocol for conducting a formal discussion or Socratic seminar based o

Fun and engaging! Add fun and humor to your comparative and superlative adjective lessons with this supplemental, no prep resource. The humorous, comparative and superlative adjective review game was designed to be an engaging and amusing practice to spice up your current comparative and superlative adjective lessons. This resource, which was designed to appeal to varied learning styles, contains a brief review which might be all that a middle school student needs. If you teach upper element

Use the 230 ENTRY and EXIT ticket choices across the curriculum and throughout the school year with any content topic to promote critical thinking, review content material, differentiate instruction, and collect data as a formative assessment for instructional decision making. Because the entry and exit ticket questions span a wide range of readiness and difficulty levels, this resource can be used to differentiate instruction in Grades 4-12. Project the 82 slides or print them and use them in

SENSORY DETAILS improve writing! This resource encourages students to use sensory details in their writing. These engaging, descriptive writing lesson activities are aligned to writing standards and are appropriate for Grades 4-8. In Activity 1, students categorize sensory details into categories that appeal to the various senses. This is a good test prep activity as sensory details are often covered on standardized tests. Activity 2 is a descriptive writing puzzle /game activity involving favo

This 43-slide PowerPoint resource contains a fun and engaging reader’s theater of O. Henry’s short story “Hearts and Hands." The activities contained in this resource were designed to be used either as a PowerPoint or as printables in a literacy center or whole group setting. The materials, ideas, and activities were designed to accommodate different learning styles and can be easily used to differentiate learning. The activities require students to analyze, evaluate, apply, synthesize, compa

Do you need a laugh? Do your students need one, too? This fun and engaging resource was designed to entertain students as they learn. The 28-slide PowerPoint resource is a fun-filled reader’s theater version of O. Henry’s short story “The Cop and the Anthem” created for Grades 7-12. The reader’s theater play is quite humorous and contains numerous examples of irony. Colorful slides, or setting backdrops, enhance the fun as students read and/or act out each scene. The story contains themes of

A fun resource that builds community in the classroom! Socratic seminar is an excellent and engaging way for students to practice higher order thinking skills. This 63-slide PowerPoint resource with printables is a Socratic seminar featuring the poem “A Poison Tree” by William Blake. This seminar would be an excellent way to address problems with bullying or to discuss openly anger management skills. The resource includes a well-organized protocol for conducting a formal discussion or Socratic s

This high interest resource is a great way to review or practice in an engaging, fun way compound /complex sentences structures. The story "The Lady or The Tiger" by Frank Stockton is one that students enjoy. The high interest lessons and activities in this resource bring the story to life. To begin, students are accused of a silly or petty crime. As a consequence, students pick either Door 1 or Door 2. Behind the door is a terrible fate or a great reward. Later, students compare the criminal

Socratic seminar is an excellent and engaging way for students to practice higher order thinking skills and speaking and listening skills. This 62-slide PowerPoint resource with printables is a Socratic seminar featuring the poem “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe. The resource includes a well-organized protocol for conducting a formal discussion or Socratic seminar based on Poe’s poem. On Days 1-3 students complete several analysis, critical thinking, and writing activities as well as vocabulary

Do you need a best practice idea for a back to school staff development or professional learning team or collaborative inquiry session? This 15-slide, editable PowerPoint with slide notes and instructions outlines an 8-step protocol for improving instruction and looking at student work. It was designed as a tool to help teachers with data-driven decision making about instruction to better meet the needs of students. The PowerPoint can be used in a staff or professional development session or

Need an easy-to-implement, step-by-step, interesting Socratic seminar resource? Socratic seminar is an excellent and engaging way for students to practice higher order thinking skills. This 56-slide PowerPoint resource with printables is a Socratic seminar and activities featuring the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes. The resource includes a well-organized protocol for conducting a formal discussion or Socratic seminar based on Hughes’ poem. On Day 1 and Day 2 students complete several po