Reflective Thinker

Perfect for establishing norms before students engage in collaborative work! A great resource for beginning of the school year. Students must learn how to effectively work together and be taught how to build positive and supportive relationships with diverse members of a group, which is a critical 21st century skill. Effective collaboration must be developed; it doesn’t happen without work and effort. Showing students how to develop and use group norms is one researched-based strategy that help

Looking for challenging puzzles? Great summer fun for adults and students! This fun resource contains entertaining brain games and challenging puzzles designed to teach students about author’s tone while simultaneously engaging them in a cognitive workout that will keep students focused--their heads in the game (pun intended). These brain-boosting puzzles were designed to strengthen students’ understanding of author’s tone, increase vocabulary of tone words, offer examples of different tones, a

Do you teach collaboration skills? This is a great resource to use before students engage in a collaborative project or activity! The activities in this resource can be used in any content area across the curriculum to teach collaboration skills. During the first month of back to school or before students engage in collaborative learning, use the activities in this resource as a springboard to help students understand your expectations during cooperative learning assignments. The activities can

Great back to school resource and bulletin board idea! One of the best ways to find out how students learn best is to have them complete a learning styles inventory or learning styles survey such as the one found in this resource. This highly engaging, fun learning styles resource was designed to be used in Grades 3-9 across the curriculum to help teachers better understand the learning styles of their students and to help students understand how they learn best and grasp that their peers not

With the HUMOR and knowledge of five expert pigs your lessons on paragraph writing will not be a BOAR! This standards aligned resource helps students not only write better paragraphs through scaffolded, high interest teaching materials but also provides test prep practice and review concerning the following skills: main idea, topic sentence, unrelated details, supporting details, text evidence, transitional words, concluding sentence, narrow and broad topics, and paragraph writing. The mini u

Keep students engaged and enhance their vocabulary at the end of the school year or summer school. Students use critical thinking to solve the 12 brain games / word puzzles in this resource. Each brain game or puzzle is designed to engage and challenge students as they expand their knowledge and vocabulary concerning prefixes. This resource is best for students in Grades 5-12. It is also appropriate for adults and staff, who enjoy brain games and word puzzles.The 39 prefixes included in this sta

The five pumpkin critical thinking and logic activities included in this 17-page packet can be used across the curriculum in Grades 4-8. The five printable activities are perfect for a math, science, or literacy center. The engaging logic activities in this packet can be assigned as an independent work packet or used as collaborative work in a small group or large group setting. They could also be used as bellringers or assigned to early finishers. The packet includes critical thinking and logic

Inspire: A Sketch Art and Writing Journal was designed to facilitate students’ written, visual, and artistic expression of emotions and thoughts as well as provide for students an interesting review of the parts of speech. Included in this resource are 24 brainstorming exercises which precede each of the 24 writing prompts for journal writing. The activities in this journal provide inspirational topics for writing, review the parts of speech, promote creativity through written and artistic expr

This engaging resource was primarily designed not only to help students develop an attitude of gratitude but also to help students achieve better sentence variety through sentence combining. It is a good test prep resource in that sentence combining is found on many major, yearly tests. This resource includes CCSS aligned teaching pages on sentence combining that can be projected and which include various ways to improve sentence structure. The theme of the sentence combining activities is gr

This 23-page standards-based scavenger hunt resource is great for test prep and designed to engage students as they practice identifying complete sentences and sentence fragments as well as recognizing common symbols and signs and their representations. The preview for this item includes 13 pages. This resource appeals to auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and tactile learners and affords differentiated instruction in the form of student choice and student review materials. Students can choose to

The fun and engaging Naughty or Nice Game was designed to not only review punctuation rules but also reinforce positive behaviors or desired classroom behaviors and help students reflect on whether they have been naughty or nice this year. The Common Core State Standards aligned resource is 18 pages and includes instructions for Games 1-4, 24 punctuation review cards with rules and examples, and four pages of punctuation practice printables. The four punctuation review and practice printables

This fall, or autumn themed, fun and engaging Woo-Hoo Positive Behaviors and Punctuation Review Game is appropriate for Grades 4-8. The game was designed to not only review punctuation rules but also reinforce positive or desired classroom behaviors. It includes the following punctuation marks: period, question mark, exclamation mark, commas, apostrophes, quotation marks, colons, semicolons, italics, and underlining. The example sentences in the game for the aforementioned punctuation marks

More than 50 ideas for using blogs in classrooms across the curriculum or in any content area are outlined in this digital packet. The entries incorporate 21st century skills, provide critical thinking and cooperative learning opportunities, help with classroom management and peer editing or peer sharing, infuse ideas for differentiated instruction, and appeal to different multiple intelligences and learning styles. These ideas can be adjusted to meet the needs of learners in elementary schoo

FREE! Actively promote "No Bullying." Use this critical thinking activity to reinforce positive behaviors and to inform your students that everyone must stand against bullying. Use it in a math center as it requires spatial sense and logic skills or in a literacy center as it incorporates reading and writing. Students solve an engaging and concrete logic puzzle that embraces positive behaviors. When the puzzle is solved, students are left with the message that together we can turn bullying be

FREE! Actively promote "No Bullying" with this engaging and fun critical thinking activity. The activity is appropriate for a math center as it incorporates spatial sense and logic or in literacy center as it requires reading and writing. Even though you may not see bullying in your classroom, students need to know what to do when it happens. Use this critical thinking activity to reinforce positive behaviors and to inform your students that everyone must stand against bullying. Students wi