Giving Thanks in Middle School

In my district, we have to come to school on the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  I know that many of my students will be absent due to holiday travel plans.  So I know I can't teach anything new.  So instead, I'm going to use the time to review main idea with a twist!

My idea is to read The Important Book to them using this video I made:

We will discuss how it relates to main idea in that main idea is the very important part!

Then, I will ask them to brainstorm all the words they would use to tell why they are important by describing themselves and their friends.  I will record these on the Smartboard.


Next, I will hand out turkeys and ask each student to write their name on it.


Last, students will pass their turkey to the left and each person will write one word from the Smartboard on another student's turkey and then pass it again.  When each person gets their own turkey back, we will look at all the reasons why each student is important and give thanks for these important words.  :)

This activity meets the need for a middle school student to be valued and helps to create a community of learners where everyone is important.  

And that is how we will Give Thanks in Middle School!  :)

Get a free copy of some "Thankful Turkeys" that are ready to go by clicking here.

Thanks for stopping by!

GO Paperless Test Review

Hey all!  This is Lyndsey from Lit with Lyns, and I'm going to share how I prepare for state testing without making the dreadful copies.  Our district is currently out on spring break (yay!).  Once we go back to school, we only have a week before testing begins.  Before the break started, I was trying to plan for how my students would review and decided that this year, we were going to do it online.  At my school, we use Google Classroom, but there are many programs that can be used if you don't have this (Edmodo, Canvas, Schoology, etc.).

There were several areas I want to review with my ELA students, so I decided I would use task cards that cover the following:  main idea, story elements, figurative language, point of view, and certain areas of grammar.  In order to ensure that each student gets an adequate opportunity to cover each of these areas, I'm going to put the kids in groups.  Within their groups, they will "virtually rotate" through stations (they won't physically rotate, but once their group completes the activity/station, then they will move on to the next activity/station).  I uploaded each activity to Google Slides (which you can do too, if you create a Google account).  Once I have created each group activity, I will "share" it with the students by clicking on the blue "share" button at the top, right side of the screen.  Again, if you use other programs, such as Edmodo, you can do the same sort of practice.

I have also created a similar activity for the Google Drive that I recently posted on Teachers Pay Teachers.  My ELA Test Prep Task Cards for Google Drive can be found here.  See a preview of this below:

I would love to hear what you're doing to get your students ready for the end of year testing!  Please share in the comments!