Valerie's Core Classroom

Teach your students how to engage in academic discourse using these CCSS aligned sentence starters. The download includes sentence starter classroom posters as well as printable cards for individual students. Sentence starters provide students the framework needed to participate in collegiate discussions. This resource will change your classroom discussions for the better!

Use these posters and coupons to reward your students without spending a penny! These rewards support any classroom management style or system. These free rewards are both motivating and fun for students to collect!

This write-around activity engages student in close reading, annotating text, citing evidence, examining word choice, and written discourse. Students work in groups to silently participate in the group activity. Students rotate the activities around in their groups. This resource provides teachers with a quick and simple assessment of students comprehension and depth of understanding.

Great resource for back to school, end of the year, or any time in between! These posters contain mottos to reinforce a growth-mindset based on the work by Carol S. Dweck, PhD. In addition, three activities are included that guide students through identifying what these mottos "look like" in practice. Specifically, students can use the pages to reflect on a challenge they're experiencing and create a plan of action. This resource also contains an activity that helps students track their progres

Use this graphic organizer to compare and contrast ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia based on topics such as Geography, Rise, Fall, etc. Extend on the activity by having your students write a compare and contrast paragraph based on the details included in the graphic organizer.

This flowchart covers the impact of agriculture on societies. Students write short summaries with supporting details. Each summary is illustrated. I've used this flowchart with my students for a few years now. It serves as a great assessment to check my students' understanding of the basic beginnings of civilization.

As I start to build my own classroom library, I felt inspired to label my book bins with genres and titles familiar to my middle school students. The genre labels include three young adult exemplars of each genre. The product contains the following genres: Nonfiction Fiction Fantasy Science Fiction Historical Fiction Realistic Fiction Mystery Poetry Mythology Horror Autobiography/Biography

Use this Star Wars themed handout to help students with the basics for formatting documents. I usually require my students format all assignments using APA and MLA basics (12 pt. font, Times or Arial, etc.) This handout includes screenshots that help students with alignment and indenting paragraphs using the TAB key. Check my blog for more on how this handout works in my classroom. http://valeriescoreclassrm.wixsite.com/coreclassroom

This PDF handout includes live, active links to the various Google Chrome extensions and applications listed. This is the perfect handout to start the year with Chromebooks. Some of the apps and extensions listed include Google Drive, Grammarly, NoRedInk, Padlet, and Evernote. I distribute this to my students digitally (so they can access the links) as well as on paper to glue in their interactive notebooks and reference throughout the year.

Restorative conferences are a very effective in guiding student to reflect on their behaviors and learn how to repair harmed relationships. We've all witnessed students having disagreements in our classrooms. Too often, students lack the skills (or simply don't know it's possible) to repair the damage done. Restorative conferences help to "restore" the relationship by focusing on the actions taking and the impact of those actions. I also like to ask students to revise their actions and think abo

This graphic organizer is Common Core State Standards aligned. The printable is designed to use with W.A.C. (Word Structure, Apposition, and Context Clues) vocabulary strategies. Using the graphic organizer, students will have to cite evidence, and use vocabulary strategies to determine the meaning. This is a great resource to use with word lists provided by teachers, but also works with independent student word study lists.