Lauren Crowley, Author at The Teachers' Library

Writing Topic Sentences about Theme

Lauren Crowley — Sun, 12 Mar 2017 15:17:26 +0000

I wish I could take credit for this idea below, but it’s a great idea I’ve seen others do, so I decided to make this handout for myself, changing a thing or two to fit the needs of my students. Below is a handout that models a formula for creating powerful and coherent topic sentences to introduce a particular literary theme.

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The post Writing Topic Sentences about Theme appeared first on The Teachers' Library.

Interpreting Imagery with Harlem by Langston Hughes

Lauren Crowley — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 16:20:21 +0000

My students of all ages have a difficult time incorporating textual evidence into their writing. Once we get past the punctuation hurdles, not to mention choosing evidence that actually works as such towards their claims, I have had real trouble getting them to make the step from paraphrasing to gritty analysis and interpretation.

For example, I get a lot of:

The author states, “The sun beat down like a heavy burden on her shoulders.” This shows that the sun was hot.

Or if we’re lucky:

The author states, “The sun beat down like a heavy burden on her shoulders.” This use of personification shows that the sun was hot.

I realized many of them didn’t even understand that difference between paraphrasing and interpretation. Determined to get my students to think a little deeper, I have them work in pairs to paraphrase the literal meaning of the imagery in Langston Hughes’s poem Harlem. I then model for them the what analysis and interpretation looks like in comparison. Because the learning objectives are specifically set around textual evidence, I only give a few points of historical context.

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We take the notes into a foldable that separates the poem’s pieces of imagery so the students can focus on them one at a time. They think-pair-share to paraphrase each piece of imagery and then compare it to the rest of the class’s efforts and then to the PowerPoint. With a more able group of students, they could try to interpret each piece of imagery before comparing it to the PowerPoint. With a less experienced group of literary analysts, we will take the notes directly into our foldables while discussing each one.

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Students next use the P.E.E.L. format to answer the directed writing question, incorporating textual evidence and interpreting that textual evidence to go beyond literal restatements of quotes. It’s not an immediate fix, but the students keep their foldable in their binders for reference, and the depth of their analysis is making quicker improvements.

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array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/harlem-foldable.pub”,”Download Harlem imagery foldable graphic organizer as Publisher doc”,”pub”,”115kb”),
array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/harlem-foldable.pdf”,”Download Harlem foldable graphic organizer as PDF”,”pdf”,”165kb”)
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The post Interpreting Imagery with Harlem by Langston Hughes appeared first on The Teachers' Library.

Make a Metaphor Task Cards

Lauren Crowley — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 13:58:34 +0000

When teaching students about metaphor, simile, and personification, I try to encourage them to incorporate these descriptive tools into their own writing, not just to identify them in a poem. This takes constant reminding and reinforcing, as it’s not something that most students do naturally until they become more confident and proficient writers.

Below is a beginner set of make-a-metaphor task cards and a graphic organizer for students to practice distinguishing between the three literary devices, as well as identifying the tone of each one. I remind students that accurately identifying a literary device is not much help, unless they can also infer the tone that the writer is attempting to convey. This is what makes writing truly effective. The third task is to use the mentor sentences, or sentence frames, to create their own version of the literary device while conveying the tone identified.

These task cards can be used as an application activity in pairs or groups; as a timed activity during a stations rotation; or ask exit tickets (without the graphic organizer).

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// INSTRUCTIONS: array(“url”,”title”,”type”,”size”),
// AND only the last array() line does NOT have a comma at the end
$downloads = array(
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array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/make-a-metaphor-graphic-org.pdf”,”Download make a metaphor graphic organizer”,”pdf”,”469kb”),
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The post Make a Metaphor Task Cards appeared first on The Teachers' Library.

Using Participles to Describe

Lauren Crowley — Sat, 04 Mar 2017 14:35:57 +0000

When teaching students to write descriptively, I make sure to model for them different grammatical constructions for them to implement in their own writing. I try to limit the amount of grammar jargon I throw at them, but sometimes it’s just not possible to discuss certain sentence structures without certain academic vocabulary.

I use this PowerPoint to introduce them to the specifics of grammatical structures that most of them are in habit of reading all the time, but need an explicit push to incorporate into their own writing. Having miniature white boards makes checking their work a bit more engaging and interactive, as well as giving other students the benefit of seeing and editing others’ work.

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We finish the lesson by making a participle foldable to add into their interactive notebooks.

To reinforce what may be new information, especially for ELLs, I have two worksheets that separate the present from past participles, and show how both kinds of participles can be used as modifiers, either as adjectives or phrases.

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[insert_php]
// INSTRUCTIONS: array(“url”,”title”,”type”,”size”),
// AND only the last array() line does NOT have a comma at the end
$downloads = array(
array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/present-participles-modifiers.pdf”,”Download present participle worksheet”,”pdf”,”1mb”),
array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/present-participles-modifiers.docx”,”Download present participle worksheet”,”docx”,”192kb”),
array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/past-participles-modifers.pdf”,”Download past participle worksheet”,”pdf”,”1mb”),
array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/past-participles-modifiers.docx”,”Download past participle worksheet”,”docx”,”192kb”),
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The post Using Participles to Describe appeared first on The Teachers' Library.

Combing Sentences With Present Participles

Lauren Crowley — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 15:27:46 +0000

Always encouraging my students to write in more concise sentences, I find it helpful to show them various ways to combine sentences while maintaining clarity. One way to do this is by using participle phrases. Many of the pre-made worksheets I find combine present and past participles into one exercise, and my students, many of whom are ELL, find this confusing and overwhelming. I like to teach them about present participles first, as they are easy and regular. I show them how participles can not only be used in verb phrases, but also as modifiers, either as adjectives or participles phrases.

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Get the PowerPoint and accompanying participle foldable for interactive notebooks here!

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// INSTRUCTIONS: array(“url”,”title”,”type”,”size”),
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$downloads = array(
array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/combining-sentences-present-participle.pdf”,”Download Combining Sentences with Present Participles Worksheet”,”pdf”,”843kb”)
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insertDownloads($downloads);
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The post Combing Sentences With Present Participles appeared first on The Teachers' Library.

Keep Track of Independent Reading

Lauren Crowley — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 14:49:27 +0000

If your school requires that you keep track of students’ independent reading, if you want to encourage budding new readers with choice reading, or you want to reward students for doing copious amounts of reading outside of the required homework, I’ve mostly found the whole thing to be super onerous to keep track of. I’ve struggled with reconciling the need to hold students accountable without taxing them too much and ruining an experience that’s supposed to be fun and encourage a lifelong love of books.

I’ve slowly ebbed and flowed between different amounts of paperwork attached to independent reading, hoping to find a sweet spot that made the activity meaningful, but not tedious. This year’s competition has been the most successful yet.

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[insert_php]
// INSTRUCTIONS: array(“url”,”title”,”type”,”size”),
// AND only the last array() line does NOT have a comma at the end
$downloads = array(
array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/weekly-reading-log.pdf”,”Download Independent Reading Logs”,”pdf”,”1mb”)
);
insertDownloads($downloads);
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I’m sure that I will continue to search for perfection, and agonize over all the words students have claimed to have read, but may have possibly gotten away with not reading, but the attitude toward reading has so far been the most positive in all my ten years of assigning independent reading.

Here’s what I did:

I chose a theme based on one of my all time favorite books, The City of Dreaming Books (The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books is actually the sequal, but it fit the theme better), by Walter Moers.
I created a huge maze on my bulletin board for students to keep track of the pages they read.
During the first week of school, one of the ice-breaker activities we did was to make a “monster” for the independent reading competition. Each students made his or hers and I laminated them to use as game pieces to move along the labyrinth each week.
I check their independent reading logs once a week while they are working on bellwork or another independent activity.
Then we take a few minutes to move our monsters along the labyrinth!

I have to admit, it’s really a re-packaged independent reading competition, but my students seem to be reading more than previous years, and they have a positive attitude about it too!

If you’re not averse to materials rewards, you can attach certain prizes to special benchmarks in the maze. My favorite is free printable bookmarks; you can even personalize them!

The post Keep Track of Independent Reading appeared first on The Teachers' Library.

How to Use Mentor Sentences in a Secondary ELA Classroom

Lauren Crowley — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 07:36:11 +0000

When teaching grammar, I have often been guilty of teaching concepts in isolation and then drilling students with worksheets and the occasional game. Or I will have students do a quick warm up or exit ticket that requires editing inaccurate writing. Mentor sentences have been the most effective way that I have found to teach sophisticated grammar structures, the intention and effect of those structures, and then encourage students to actually incorporate those structures into their own writing.

The methods of how to use mentor sentences translate across writing lessons, whether it’s writing for clarity, concision, cohesion, or creativity. This post is an introduction to mentor sentences, and specifically how to use them in the secondary ELA classroom.

What they are:

Mentor sentences are simple. They are excellent, effective examples of well-written sentences. They accomplish what the writer intends to communicate.

How they work in the classroom:

Choose a sentence.
- Choose a sentence that successfully models a grammatical concept that you are teaching that day or week.
  
  OR
- Find an effective sentence that you want students to critically engage with. You can pull them from your class text, from a newspaper article or current events site you want to expose them to, or find a pithy quote from a historical figure. The sentences can come from anywhere.
Ask students what they notice about the sentence. This can be in think-pair-share format, Post-it note response, Popsicle stick cold-call, etc. Below is an example of the kinds of observations students could make:
- Punctuation – There are a lot of commas. I see I semi-colon. There are parentheses.
- Vivid use of adjectives – The word putrid is unusual.
- Length of sentences – The sentence has a lot of clauses. The sentence is super long.
- Capitalization – Death has a capital letter. There are words I don’t know with capital letters.
- Similes – Lots of “like” or “as.” Lots of similes about the wind.
- Dialogue – The comma is in front of the quote. The speaker is angry.
Ask students to consider the effects of what they have already identified. This requires much more critical thinking and students benefit from small group discussion before sharing to the larger group. Your questioning their observations will help them consider the effects.
- Punctuation – Are we declaring, questioning, shouting? How will the punctuation help us read the sentence aloud?
- Vivid use of adjectives – What is being described? What images are conveyed to the reader? What connotations do those words evoke?
- Length of sentences – Is the writer setting a scene and using description or is she conveying an action sequence? Why are different sentence lengths appropriate? Who is the audience?
- Capitalization – What are the proper nouns? Who, what, where, when? Is something personified?
- Similes – What is being compared?
- Dialogue – Who is speaking? What do the words reveal about the speaker? Who is his or her audience?
Ask students, “How would the sentence change if…”
- Respond directly to their observations and use the questioning as a tool to push them to more deeply consider what they have already identified.
- As students become more comfortable with the concept of mentor sentences, encourage them to ask these questions to each other.
Students write their own sentences inspired by the mentor sentence!

Ways to use mentor sentences in your classroom:

Below are some ideas of how to incorporate mentor sentences into your own classroom and grammar lessons.

Pre-teach a grammatical concept or structure, such as dependent clauses, FANBOYS commas, punctuating dialogue, passive voice, or participle phrases. Read ahead in your class text to pull out some effective mentor sentence for students to analyze and emulate.
Have students keep a notebook (I prefer binders with sections) where they keep all their grammar lesson notes and all of their accompanying mentor sentence work.
In groups or literature circles, have students identify a mentor sentence as they read together and present to their peers and explanation of how the sentence models the grammatical concept of the week and why it is effectively written.
Challenge students to identify a mentor sentence in a reading from another class and subject. Ask them to articulate what the grammatical concept achieved in that context.
Eliminate parts of the mentor sentence in a Mad-Libs style fill-in-the-blank and have students re-create their
own creative sentences using complex grammatical structures.

Any ideas you’d like to share? Comment below!

The post How to Use Mentor Sentences in a Secondary ELA Classroom appeared first on The Teachers' Library.

The Sniper: Writing for Pacing

Lauren Crowley — Sun, 19 Feb 2017 07:08:55 +0000

The Sniper, by Liam O’Flaherty, is a great short story to teach the basic elements of a story, including setting, climax, resolution, and plot twist. I also find it an excellent story to introduce students to the idea of pacing. The writing objective for this story and lesson is to use mentor sentences to write compound or complex sentences for description, and to use shorter, declarative sentences for action sequence.

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We read the story together out loud either as a whole group, or in smaller groups. I encourage students to use punctuation to guide them on how to read the story for fluency. The reading handout and PowerPoint has essential vocabulary for comprehension, pre-reading discussion questions to build background and historical context, and post-reading comprehension questions.

Students then use mentor sentences to construct their own sentences of varied lengths. Then they move on to a flash fiction activity where they need to be mindful of the intention behind each sentence, and choose the length accordingly. The flash fiction activity can be as short or as workshopped as time allows, as either a quick paragraph exit ticket, or a longer extension activity.

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array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/The-Sniper.pdf”,”Download short story and reading companion”,”pdf”,”363kb”),
array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/The-Sniper.docx”,”Download short story and reading companion”,”docx”,”18kb”)
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Of Mice and Men Unit Reading Packet and Activities

Lauren Crowley — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 13:43:26 +0000

Of Mice and Men is one novel that I have had consistent success teaching to students of many different backgrounds. I’ve taught this book to ELLs, struggling readers, gifted readers, reluctant readers; it’s one of my favorites. Students are able to grasp the symbolism, over-arching allegory, and get really invested in the story.

The most challenging aspect is that when this novel is commonly taught, most students have not completed U.S. history and have a pretty vague understanding of The Great Depression. As a pre-reading activity, I put students into groups and have them read an informational article about the era and either present an oral summary, or make a poster for a gallery walk.

The summative assessment of the unit is an essay requiring students compare the social stratification so apparent in the novel to our current society. I ask students to provide specific examples from current events to support their claims. This year, we discussed BLM, the Women’s March, marketing of products to extend youth and beauty, assisted suicide and other issues that parallel to the novel.

Included in the packet:

Pre-reading texts to build background and historical context of the time period
Vocabulary charts for pre-teaching key words
Chapter reading questions that include comprehension questions, interpretation questions, and a written response requiring textual evidence
Character graphic organizer
Dialect decoder for reference
Summative assessment prompt and rubric
Cover page in case you want to bind it all into a packet

Here’s an example of Chapter 1 reading questions:

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array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/omam-pdf.zip”,”Download all documents as PDF”,”zip”,”2mb”),
array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/omam-msword.zip”,”Download all documents as MSWord”,”zip”,”6mb”)
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I’ve also had pretty good success with the movie adaptation, even though it’s from 1992. With some classes, I’ve had students enjoy the movie Cool Hand Luke; however, I’ve never had students write an essay analyzing and comparing the two stories. It’s something I’ve always wanted to try, and when I do, I’ll share the results!

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Expanding Sentences with Semicolons, Commas, Parentheses, and Dashes

Lauren Crowley — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 06:44:24 +0000

If your students are anything like mine, they overuse parentheses (where they learned this, I have no idea!) and they view semi-colons to be as about as foreign as hieroglyphics. Although punctuation needs continual revision, reinforcement, and practice throughout the year, I have included a PowerPoint that I use to bring everyone to a baseline of rules for the four common punctuation marks needed to expand sentences concisely and coherently.

If students are unfamiliar with independent and dependent clauses, or compound and complex sentences, I have uploaded another PowerPoint to introduce these grammar concepts.

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A great place to find free, printable worksheets is:

http://www.k12reader.com/subject/grammar/punctuation/semicolon/

The post Expanding Sentences with Semicolons, Commas, Parentheses, and Dashes appeared first on The Teachers' Library.

Lauren Crowley, Author at The Teachers' Library

Writing Topic Sentences about Theme

Interpreting Imagery with Harlem by Langston Hughes

Make a Metaphor Task Cards

Using Participles to Describe

Combing Sentences With Present Participles

Keep Track of Independent Reading

Here’s what I did:

I chose a theme based on one of my all time favorite books, The City of Dreaming Books (The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books is actually the sequal, but it fit the theme better), by Walter Moers.

I created a huge maze on my bulletin board for students to keep track of the pages they read.

During the first week of school, one of the ice-breaker activities we did was to make a “monster” for the independent reading competition. Each students made his or hers and I laminated them to use as game pieces to move along the labyrinth each week.

I check their independent reading logs once a week while they are working on bellwork or another independent activity.

Then we take a few minutes to move our monsters along the labyrinth!

How to Use Mentor Sentences in a Secondary ELA Classroom

What they are:

How they work in the classroom:

Choose a sentence.

OR

Ask students what they notice about the sentence. This can be in think-pair-share format, Post-it note response, Popsicle stick cold-call, etc. Below is an example of the kinds of observations students could make:

Ask students to consider the effects of what they have already identified. This requires much more critical thinking and students benefit from small group discussion before sharing to the larger group. Your questioning their observations will help them consider the effects.

Ask students, “How would the sentence change if…”

Students write their own sentences inspired by the mentor sentence!

Ways to use mentor sentences in your classroom:

The Sniper: Writing for Pacing

Of Mice and Men Unit Reading Packet and Activities

Pre-reading texts to build background and historical context of the time period

Vocabulary charts for pre-teaching key words

Chapter reading questions that include comprehension questions, interpretation questions, and a written response requiring textual evidence

Character graphic organizer

Dialect decoder for reference

Summative assessment prompt and rubric

Cover page in case you want to bind it all into a packet

Expanding Sentences with Semicolons, Commas, Parentheses, and Dashes