All New September Holidays and Celebrations Free Resources, Poems, and Activities

There are many special days in September and of course the beginning of school that I've revised updated some some of my old posts to bring you these great websites with free resources and activities that you may like to check out. I've also included other resources that you may find useful.

First of all there is Labor Day which is celebrated on the 1st Monday in September. It is a great time to talk about the different jobs that people do. You can find some great free resources and free printables about Labor Day at Apples4theTeacher and thematic books about workers. You can find more free resources at Education World which would be great for grades 2-5.

Grandparents Day which is celebrated on the Sunday following Labor Day is a special day for children and their grandparents. Many teachers in the younger grades invite grandparents to their classrooms. I found this great website with a fun song at National Grandparents Day.com You will also find other teacher resources and free lesson plans. If you are looking for some fun crafts to make then you will want to visit dltk.

For those of you who want free resources about September 11th you may want to check out these at TeacherHub. I have a great bog post with lots of free resources that can fine HERE.  For younger students you may want to do a lesson about Heroes. I also have a Heroes unit which you might like to check out which is for Grades K-2. It has been revised and updated and includes a S'more Hero Book that students can make. Just click on the image below to check it out.

I have just added a new freebie for September 11th for K-2. You can download your free Hero Poetry Packet by clicking on the image below. I hope you will leave feedback.

September 17th is Constitution Day. Many 2nd and 3rd graders learn about the constitution. I found a website that offers teaching units about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights which you can access by clicking here You can also find free resources at Scholastic and apples4the teacher. You may also want to check out my "Celebrating Constitution Day" which has been my best seller since 2012. It has been revised updated twice so if you had purchased the original or first revision please be sure to go to your purchase page and download this latest one. When you download the Preview file you will see sample pages of all the reading activities and many of the other activities in this packet.

Of course fall begins in September although it may still feel like summer in many places in the Unites States. It is my favorite season of the year. I have not only written a few Fall Poems but a fun Fall Play called "How Will I Know When It Is Fall?" There are character cards for students to wear as they act out their parts. Some teachers used the play as Readers Theater. There are poems about School, Labor Day, Grandparents Day, Fall, and more. You can see all of these poems and activities in my new and revised September Poetry Unit by clicking on the picture below. The Preview file has sample pages of all the poems and many of the activities that go with each poem.

If you are interested in just my Fall Play and a new Readers theater Script called "The Signs of Fall" you may want to check out my revised and updated Fall Plays and Readers Theater Packet by clicking on the image below.

Did you know that September 19th is Talk like a Pirate Day? I have put together this free "Talk like a Pirate Day" Literacy Activities Packet.

You can download this freebie by clicking on the image below.

Wow, that's a lot of September resources. I hope you find something useful for your students. 

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Thanks for all you do to make a difference for your students. I hope you have a wonderful start to the new school year.

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September 11th Free Resources and Activities

A few years ago I wrote a post about September 11th. It is not an easy topic to talk to young children about.  I think about all the heroes of that day that risked their lives to save others. A great way to honor them is to talk about Heroes.

September 11th is very personal to me as I grew up 18 miles north of NYC and several of my relatives worked in the city and were there that day and could see the towers burning from their offices. My sister-in-laws brother was the first fireman to go into the Twin Towers. On that day we were in Anchorage, Alaska and my daughter called and woke us up at 5:00 am because we were 4 hours behind east coast time. My cousin, who lived in New Jersey, described all the cars in the parking lot at the train station that were there for days after the attack of those that didn't survive. Whatever grade you teach it is important to remember that day each year. There are so many wonderful resources that I have put together some great websites with free resources, activities, and lessons which you can check out. They are great for all grade levels and parents, too.

To start with you may want to have your students read books about September 11th or do a Read Aloud. I found a list of books at TeachHub. There is also a great list at Amazon which you can check out by clicking on the picture below. This one is for K-2.

If you are looking for some free lessons plans for all grades K-12 then click on the picture below. There are Foundational Lesson Plans for K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 

9-12. You will also find Videos and Tips for talking to Children about 9/11.

You can also find lots of resources at Scholastic which you can access by clicking on the picture below.

If you are still looking for more you can check out Edutopia which is geared more for intermediate students and older.

To honor the memories of the fallen I wrote a unit called "Heroes" for grades K-2. I have revised and updated the original one last year and it is one of my best sellers. It has a Shared Reading Book, Mini Books at each grade level , Hero Word and Adjective Webs, Writing Activities and a Word Wall. . If you would like to see more of my unit you can click on the picture below.

Heroes is a Great Unit to teach Anytime of the Year! Not just on Patriots' Day.

Students will love making a S'more Hero Sandwich Book that they can make.

I have put together a free Hero Poems and Writing Packet for Grades 1-3 that There are 2 poems, 2 Adjective Word Webs and a 2 Writing Activity to choose from. 

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Thanks for all you do to make a difference for your students. Let's remember all the heroes of that day and all who are still fighting for our country overseas.

What activities do you do with your students on September 11th?

Teacher Tips: The Importance of Poetry to Improve Reading

I love poetry and those who follow me know how much I love writing poetry, chants, and plays. It is so easy to incorporate into your classroom reading activities at any grade level and it is a great way to get 100% participation. Over the years of teaching, what I loved about using poetry is that whether your students are good readers, struggling readers, ESL students, and even non-readers everyone can participate.

This past year my grand daughter's pre-kindergarten teacher was doing a thematic unit on apples. I mentioned that I had some Apple Poems and I shared them with her. She loved them and more importantly so did her class. It was so fun to hear Ella recite my poem. I never thought about pre-kinders being able to enjoy them. Here's a sample of one of them.

There are many other benefits of using poetry and plays in your classroom. There are so many ways to use poems for teaching the 5 components of a balance literacy program. When students read aloud they develop expression, phrasing, and most of all fluency. Teachers should always model reading poems first so that students hear the rhythm and expression. Have you ever tried Echo reading? This a great way to get all your students to participate. First you read a line or stanza and then they read it. You can start by having students echo a line and then a stanza. You can Choral read poems by having the whole class read with you. Poems can be added to your literacy centers for repeated readings. Repeated reading help build fluency.

This was another of my Apple Poems. Think of all the possibilities of ELA activities you can teach with this poem. Look at all the questions and verbs in this poem. For many students verbs like peel, and core many be words they don't know. How about bringing in apples and show the students how to peel, core, and slice an apple. Of course they get to eat them too. After learning the poem, students can then add the actions to it. You can read more about these Apple Poems and download some freebies by clicking on the poem below.

Yesterday I was thinking about writing some alphabet poems and I wrote this Letter A Poem, "Ant and Alligator." This would be great for teaching the sounds of letter "a", rhyming words, the vocabulary word, "slipped", and even comprehension. 

There are some wonderful poetry books like the 2 below that I used all the time in my classroom. You can find out more about them by clicking on each picture below.

Last week I decided to bundle up all my poetry units. There are 9 Thematic Poetry Units all together. There are 3 for the Fall months, 3 for the Winter months, and 3 for the Spring months of the year. You can check out this bundle and read all about each poetry unit by clicking on the image below.

Here's a free Poetry Packet to start off your new school year. It's part of my September Poems, Chants, and Activities Unit called "Where's the Teacher?" There are 2 differentiated Punctuation activities for Grades 1 and 2-3. 

You can download your free packet by clicking on the image below.

Thanks for all you do to make a difference for your students. Hope you have a great start to the new school year. 

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The Importance of Graphic Organizers as Learning Tools

One of the best teaching and writing learning tools that I used with my struggling writers and ESL students were graphic organizers. This summer I have been tutoring 3 soon to be 5th grade Korean girls and have been working on Compare and Contrasting, Sequencing, and Main Idea and Details. When they started school this past January they were Non-English Speaking and have come such a long way. In the first picture below they are comparing and contrasting two stories.

Here is a sample of a story sequence.

In an article by Dr. Katherine McKnight she states, " Graphic organizers are teaching and learning tools; when they are integrated into classroom experiences, students are better able to understand new material. Creating a strong visual picture, graphic organizers support students by enabling them to literally see connections and relationships between facts, information, and terms."     


Click on the video to listen to Dr. McKnight. You can read more from Dr. McKnight by clicking HERE

For young or beginning writers I liked to use retelling the story with different types of graphic organizers such as the one below: Beginning-Middle -End. Students draw a picture and write a sentence about what happened at the Beginning, Middle and End, of the story.

For students learning to sequence a story I made the graphic organizer below. I put transition words at the left so that students will eventually be able to use this organizer to help them write a paragraph or narrative which is an ELA Common Core Writing Standard.

For young or beginning writers learning to write informative texts I designed this 4 Bubble Web. In the middle students will put the Main Idea and then draw and label 4 different details. For example, if they read a book about Community Helpers that would be the main idea and a policeman, fire fighter, school crossing guard, and teacher might be the 4 details from the book.

These are just 3 of the Writing graphic organizers I have put together in my revised Free Writing Graphic Organizers packet. There are 3 differentiated Sequence Graphic Organizers to meet the needs of all the students in your classroom. 

You can download this freebie by clicking on the picture below. I hope these will help your students improve their writing throughout the school year.

Looking for some more Great Stuff for Teachers? Then follow me on Pinterest. I have lots of Educational boards. Here are a few below you may want to check out. 

                                 

Thanks for all you do to make a difference for your students. Hope you will find these useful. I would truly appreciate your feedback.

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What kinds of writing graphic organizers do you use in your classroom?