Guest Post: Collaboration Cuties, How to Use Mentor Texts

Hey there!!  This is Amanda from Collaboration Cuties and I am so excited to be guest blogging here today!!Today, I wanted to share with you how we use mentor texts in our classroom!  If you follow our blog at all, you know that we loooooove mentor texts!  We have a linky each week devoted to it!  If you haven't stopped by to see all of the amazing texts linked up, start HERE  (after reading this post!) to check out...

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We Are Thankful!

Here at All Things Upper Elementary, we are so very THANKFUL for all of our loyal readers who have become our friends. Today on this day of Thanksgiving (in the US) we want to take the time to share what we are thankful for with you. Check out our posts on each of our blogs as we share the many things that we are thankful for this year. If you feel like posting as well, leave your blog link in the comments so that we can check you out as well....

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Practicing Long Division with Money

Do you find that the topics that you struggled with the most in school are the ones that you love teaching the most?  That's how I feel about math, and in fourth grade the math topic I remember struggling with the MOST was long division.I remember when I was a kid, it would take me FOREVER to solve a page of 10 long division problems.  I was one of the last ones done, sitting off to the side to finish up.  I'd stare blankly at 658...

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Tis' the Season for Freebies!

Hello everyone! It's Jennifer from Teaching to Inspire in 5th. I am fortunate to be off this entire week for Thanksgiving..yay! Unfortunately, my boys are sick, so we are on quarantine over at my household.I know everyone is super busy in the holiday mode...or is the trying to survive another day or two of work before the break, so I wanted to share some quick, fun freebies. Hopefully these freebies will help get you through the rest of the holiday...

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The Power of Popsicle Sticks!

It's Deb back with you today...What's the last professional book that you read that truly impacted your students’ experiences in your classroom?  The answer to that question for me is Embedded Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliam.Not a cover that really grabs you and shouts “READ ME!”, huh?  When I found it in my school mailbox, I was quite tempted to set it aside.  However, we had a new ESL director at the time, and she was the one...

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Grading Vs. Noticing

My post today is going to be about something that hit me several years ago, and it is very timely because these days schools are hounded about assessments, teachers are hounded about assessments, students are hounded about assessments, and parents are hounded about assessments. I agree that we over-assess our students, but I do feel that assessments have a special place in the classroom. Used the right way, assessments can allow teachers to see what...

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Interactive Notebooks and the Common Core

Hello friends!  Jen Bengel here from Out of This World Literacy.  I hope everyone is having a wonderful November with their students!  As teachers, we all know that one of the best ways to learn is through active involvement.  Students learn best through creating, making connections, and thinking critically.Interactive lessons and activities are great ways to keep students actively engaged in their learning.Most of us are accountable...

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Free Thanksgiving Parts of Speech Cards!

Happy November, friends! It's Blair from One Lesson at a Time, here to bring you a fun Thanksgiving freebie!Like many teacher-bloggers out there, I am officially a clip art ADDICT. Can't get enough. I love JC Sweetpea's clip art and when I saw her option to "buy the store" - I pounced. A girl can never have TOO much clip art! I wanted to get to work using her beautiful art  right away so I created this fun little set of Thanksgiving word cards....

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Dabbling With Informational Texts

We are getting started with our big unit on informational texts (you know--what USED to be called "nonfiction"!), and I thought I'd share a misconception that I noticed many students had when we first started talking about this genre.We started by brainstorming what we knew about informational texts and I got lots of what you would expect..."true stuff"photographscaptionstables of contentsan index and glossaryYou get the picture.So...as someone who...

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Abstract Noun Poetry- Making It Concrete!

 Howdy Friends!     Mr. Hughes here from Created by MrHughes and An Educator's Life blog. As many of know, I am the writing/language arts teacher for the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students of my school (I also teach science to each of those grades...phew...).     This is the second year of do rotations with our students and so I have been working with a majority of my students for two years now. Can I just tell...

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