Teaching with Thomas

This powerful poem is an amazing resource to cover a variety of elements. In the teacher notes you'll receive questions to facilitate your class discussions, answers, and prompts for student annotating. These teacher notes also make a great scaffold for various learners. The notes discuss the use figurative language, message, tone POV,, mood, and setting.

This guide walks you through how to question your students while comparing Tupac's lyrics for "Dear Momma” and Langston Hughes' Mother to Son. Both texts work well to analyze purpose, message, and mood/tone. Students enjoy the comparison, especially older ones who know who Tupac was. This resource can be used as a guide to preplanned questioning, a guided/scaffolded notes activity, or independent assignment.

Have your students analyze explicit and implicit meanings of a poem, identify figurative language, describe tone and mood, identify speaker and intended audience, and describe the poem's theme. Students will do this by completing a 6-sided star. The points of the star will be where students describe each component, and the middle they will illustrate an image to represent the author, title, and poem. Included in this is a printable slide, slideshow, a digital example, and a picture of an exampl

This poem is amazing to teach POV, tone, mood, and message. It's the perfect poem to make comparisons by only using one text. These teacher notes should make it easier to guide your discussion or scaffold for various learners.

This interactive "foldable" is designed for interactive journals. The tab that says "Types of Context Clues" is to be glued down in the journal and the tabs cut. I wrote the definition of the context clue on the backside of the tab and wrote an example sentence, using that context clue, on my notebook.

These quilting squares can be used to create a paper quilt for any writing task. Each quilting 'rectangle' contains a coloring square and a lined writing portion. There are 4 different designs and they alternate directions so that they will create a complete square. Two rectangles will complete one square.

This magical and fun Christmas poem is an amazing resource to teach for, tone, mood, message, and use of figurative language. These teacher notes should facilitate the class discussion by having pre written questions this is also a great tool for scaffolding for various learners.

These google slides allow students to step in to the mind of their character's by completing a writing assignment in the form of a postcard, diary entry, or text/DM exchange. Use this with any novel, no matter where students are at in the book! This resource can be used last minute, as the only adjustment needed is the directions.

This one page novel reflection can be used with a wide range of grade levels and with any novel, whether the students have completed it or not. Using google docs (pageless), students are walked through the steps of this one pager. However, this project can look very different student to student as I give a variety of different ways to show understanding and resources to give them ideas. This project also includes an example using the novel Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Septys, where I point ou

If you're using "I Heard it on the Bus One Day" with your class, this is a quick quiz to assess their understanding. It specifically covers the mood, point of view, and message of the poem. This poem is free use with a google search, but I have a more detailed version in my store as well. It helps guide students, using questions, to the different aspects of the poem. It would help prepare them for this quiz. Being a Texas teacher, all questions are formatted using STAAR stems for 6th grade...but

A perfect resource to have students show their understanding of argumentative texts, like debates, while supporting their position with logical fallacies. This is great for Middle School and High School students and uses the Frayer Model in either a printed or online slide show format. Sample prompts included, as well as sources for finding argumentative texts.

This resources uses Google Slides to have students digitally complete a synthesizing target. The first slide shows students a visual of how synthesizing builds your knowledge after reading text on a specific topic. Each circle is linked to the corresponding slide, for students to fill in the information. This can be used completely digitally or printed and students fill in by pencil.

These digital slides include two sets of graphic organizers with teacher instructions, student instructions, and complete examples. This is great for any grade level that is diving into argumentative text and identifying claims, counter arguments, and rebuttals. The first graphic organizer is great to introduce students to identify claims and counterclaims (and their evidence) from either teacher or student selected text, and the second graphic organizer allows students to find multiple examples

This resource is perfect for exploring informational text and having students synthesize new information about a familiar topic. Nipsey Hussle was a popular rapper who was killed in front of his clothing store. Students normally only know him as a rapper that was killed, but there was more to him. Students will explore his community involvement and how he gave back to the community he was raised in. This activity has students write what they know about him, then read an article (I provided sever

These 4 good morning/welcome slides are editable and hand designed. I created 4 different slides that stray from the usual bright colors and use neutral tones. Each slide includes different ideas for each category, but feel free to edit to match your needs. I also created the same slide designs, but with "Welcome," for teachers who have multiple periods throughout the day.

In video games, when a character dies, they leave behind the loot they have collected. In this activity, students will imagine a character from their novel has left behind loot. They will draw their loot and describe why their character would carry this using text evidence. It will work for just about any novel, multiple grade levels, and any characters. You can also use at different points in the novel. This resource is great in the virtual setting or in person, or a combination. Personally,

This two speaker poem is an amazing resource to compare different perspectives of a shared experience. It's simple, yet powerful, and really shows student's how author's use point of view to send a message.

Perfect Fall/Halloween poetry assignment that is fun, engaging, and so versatile! Use this resource with a variety of grades, levels, and even different texts! I have provided two different leveled poems, 5 different layouts, an example, and instructions!

Using either digitally or on paper, have students focus on the 5 big elements of informational text by finding examples, describing their examples, and explaining their purpose! The 5 elements are author's purpose, genre elements (text features), text structure, theme/message, and language. This can also be adapted for other texts and with other elements. There is an example included that explains each category more in depth, as well as given sentence starters to help guide students with what to

This is an easy and simple plot diagram. Each dot will take you to the corresponding slide so students can easily write what each component of the plot is. This is easy to use for distance learning and applicable for any story.