teacher ideas

Easy Teacher Valentine Idea

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Even in 6th grade, the students are still at an age where they decorate a bag or shoebox and make Valentine deliveries to classmates in honor of Valentine’s Day. Many of my sweet students bring me a card or piece of chocolate along with the Valentines they share with classmates. I like to reciprocate and give my students a cute teacher Valentine too. This year, my teammate and I are wrapping erasers with white tissue paper to look like a piece of taffy.

easy valentines to make for students

At this point in the school year, the students have rubbed, chewed, or picked away every pencil eraser they own and desperately need a way to cleanly fix writing mistakes or remove stray marks from their papers, so this little teacher Valentine is actually more of a gift for the teachers!

eraser valentine supplies

Valentine Materials:

  • rectangular erasers (I used PaperMate “Expressions” erasers, but you could also choose something like the classic “Pink Pearl”)
  • white tissue paper, ~6″ x 3 1/2″ (wrap a test piece of tissue around your eraser to determine the best size)
  • small stickers (I used Avery 5195, 2/3″ x 1 3/4″, 60 labels per sheet)

Valentine Directions:

  • Determine the tissue paper size you will need. I wrapped the tissue around one eraser, so the tissue covered the wide flat side two times. I had about 2 inches on either end of the eraser for twisting. Cut all of the tissue paper rectangles that you need first, so you can create an assembly line for wrapping the erasers.
Wrap erasers in tissue paper for an easy Valentine

  • Wrap a tissue rectangle around each eraser and twist both ends.
Wrap erasers in tissue paper to look like candy pieces

  • Put a sticker with your name and/or Valentine message on the side of the eraser with the edge of the tissue paper to keep the tissue from unwrapping. I had a tiny glitch with my labels. If you choose to print with a return address sized label like I did (Avery 5195), make sure your words or any images are not up against the edges of the label in the document. The labels are so small that if the printer does not grab the label sheet at exactly the right starting point, the labels print into the label below (see my cut off hearts in the pictures). Yes, the mis-alignment makes me CRAZY, but I ran out of labels, and I am trying not to let the OCD side of me take over on this. I think little heart or Valentine themed stickers would be a good option too.
  • Cut the edge of the twisted ends off a little if they seem too long and flappy.
eraser valentines with label

Teacher Valentine Notes:

  • I tried parchment paper and wax paper before settling on the white tissue paper. The stickers don’t adhere, and the twisted ends with the parchment and wax paper do not stay twisted together as well.
  • If you need a more advanced Valentine’s Day idea, try these mini prescription bottles for HEART MEDICINE filled with the tiny M&Ms.

Jelly Bean Valentines

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jelly bean envelopes

Yes, we start planning class Valentines early at our house. I am sure that is no surprise to the readers who have been with me for awhile. I always need a Valentine of some kind for my students, and Miss Priss and Mr. Star Wars are still at ages where they bring in Valentines to distribute to their whole class. While it would be the most efficient to think of one type of card and mass produce it, the three of us usually make different kinds of Valentines for each of our classes.

This year, Miss Priss is filling small colored paper sacks with assorted jelly beans. We closed the little bags with a label that says, “Keep Calm and Eat a Jelly Bean.” To finish, Miss Priss signed her name at the bottom of each label.

jelly bean envelopes materials

Materials

  • Celebrate It Mini Paper Sacks, 2 1/2″ x 4″ (coin envelopes or other mini bag would work too)
  • assorted jelly beans in Valentine colors (we picked our own at the fill-a-bag Jelly Belly station at the grocery store)
  • Avery 8161 labels (1″ x 4″)

Directions

jelly bean envelopes labels

  • Fill each sack with ~one tablespoon of jelly beans (don’t overfill the little bags).
  • Fold over the top flap and close with the sticker label.

jelly bean envelopes with label

Notes

jelly bean envelopes pile

Hooking the Reader

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topic sentences activity

Writing the first sentence

Starting a writing assignment is the hardest part

Sometimes, the first sentence is the hardest part of writing for me. Most of my students feel the same way. To cope, they revert to the default starter sentence, “This is my story about _____.” Or, if I am lucky, I get the alternate topic sentence, “I am going to tell you about _____.” Both of these options pain me. I am working hard this year to banish bad topic sentences.

Students can write catchy topic sentences if they see lots of examples that grab their attention. Recently, my students researched one aspect of a Native American tribe and wrote an article about their topic. After they researched but before they began drafting their articles, I had the students flip through my magazine collection. To complete the Magazine Hook Sample Activity, the kids looked for 3 feature articles in different magazines and copied the first sentence only.

sample hook sentences from magazinesAfter collecting a big list of first sentences, we shared and discussed. When we compared the topic sentences, we looked at sentence structure and word choice. We made predictions about the content of the article based on the first sentence. We made a chart that listed conventions the writers used that we liked. We also generated a list of things published writers did NOT do. After the students reviewed lots of examples of good starter sentences, they were let loose to write their own topic sentences for their feature articles. The first sentences were not all publisher ready, but students did create sentences with a little sizzle to them.

Here are some of our favorite topic sentences we found in published articles:

  • Suppose—just suppose—that beings from outer space have landed in your community.
  • Golden lion tamarins grow up fast.
  • Not everyone thinks that prosthetists like Carroll are doing the right things when they meddle in the lives of injured animals.
  • A dark-green fringed leaf frog croaks softly as it sits on a tree branch in a wooded area of Brazil.
  • A small, shy cat peers out from its hiding place of dense cover in thorny shrubs in south Texas.
  • Tucked inside a nest made of moss, two young southern flying squirrels cling to each other.
  • These Halloween treats may be sugar free, but they are still super sweet.
  • Wildfires are unpredictable.
  • On a small street in Philadelphia in the 1920s, there was a factory owned by the Fleer family.

Here are a few tips for writing a good hook courtesy of my fourth graders:

  • Use an unusual sentence structure. Try having a prepositional phrase at the beginning of the sentence. Use a really short sentence to gain attention. Mix up the word order, so it does not follow the subject then verb format.
  • Use key vocabulary words related to the topic.
  • Avoid words like very, nice, good…
  • Use active verbs in the topic sentence. However, if you are trying the short-sentence-for-effect technique, you might use a linking verb like is, was, or are with an interesting adjective choice.
  • Use poetic devices like alliteration or onomatopoeia.

The finished articles were part of a Native American magazine project. As with sooo many of my projects, the magazine assignment became much bigger than I originally intended. However, when I saw the finished products, I was impressed. The final magazines looked like they came from a real printer.

Native American magazine covers

Native American magazine interior

 

 

 

Concrete Poems and Shape Poetry

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I am always surprised how much my students like poetry and even more amazed at the poetry they create during our poetry unit. We start the poetry writing process slowly with an adjective review. The students made a list of adjectives that describe the sneakers on their feet and then wrote simple “adjective” poems using a frame I provide to get warmed up. The poem frame has a fill-in-the-blank structure where students add five adjectives from their sneaker description list. (Grab an adjective brainstorming page on THIS POST.)

adjective poems

Everyone can complete the poem without fear of having to rhyme words or create some great metaphor. After completing the sneaker poem, the students choose another topic like dogs, pie, or books and write a new adjective poem that uses the same structure. This year, we took the completed adjective poems and created concrete or shape poems.

shoe concrete poem

How to Make a Concrete Poem

We searched for black and white clipart in Google images that matched the poem’s topic. The kids pasted the clipart image into a Word document and enlarged the blackline image to fill an 8 1/2″ x 11″ page. We printed the image and lightly traced the main lines with pencil on a blank piece of copy paper. Using black pens, the students wrote their poem over the traced pencil lines. Students left the paper with the clipart image under the paper with the concrete poem while writing to serve as a guideline.

concrete poem and clipart

concrete poems tracing the design

In most cases, the students needed to write their concrete poem multiple times to fill the shape outline. They also added a few details to complete the effect. The finished product elevated the simple poems into something much more sophisticated.

dog concrete poem

pie concrete poem

More ideas for student poetry are available in my poetry unit. Purchase the poetry unit by CLICKING HERE.

concrete poems shape poems student poetry

The Great Author Letter Project Returns

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author letters

What started as an “early finisher” activity for students five years ago has turned into one of my signature projects in the fourth grade. Each year, my students prepare a letter to a favorite book author as one of our first writing assignments. They start by hunting down contact information for the author (research skills!). Then, they brainstorm reasons they like a particular author and his/her book(s). We review business letter format, and the students draft a letter to the author. After editing, the students prepare their final draft, and we mail the first wave of letters.

From that first letter drop, we might receive a reply within a few weeks or wait close to nine months to get a reply. After we walk through the process of creating an author letter, students continue to write letters when they have free time. We send and receive letters all year.

wendy mass author letter reply

I wrote a post a few years ago about this project but since we received our first author reply this afternoon, I got excited and thought I needed to blog about the project again. It is one of the best ways I have found to motivate reading with my students! It is easy to write a book author, but if you want a higher reply success rate, I have some suggestions.

  • Newer authors have websites with an e-mail address and are more likely to send a personal reply.  We e-mailed Jody Feldman, Jonathan Auxier, Tracy Barrett, Erica Kirov, and a few others. In most cases, we received replies within three days.  The replies were unique and specifically responded to the letter written by the students.  Some authors even gave new book suggestions, which built excitement among the students to pick up an unfamiliar book.
  • Other authors provide a snail mail address on their website. These replies take longer– sometimes up to three months, so be patient. Kate Klise has written us back for the past four year and each letter contains different content.
  • Mega authors like J.K. Rowling and Sharon Creech are overloaded with letters and are less likely to reply to fanmail personally.  They will send a generic reply if you include a self-addressed stamped envelope with your letter.
  • If you can’t find contact information on the author website, locate a mailing address for the author’s publishing company.  Mail a letter to the author c/o the publisher.  Publishers will forward all mail to the author.  We mailed a letter to John Christopher via his publisher.  We did not realize that the author had passed away, and his daughter actually replied to our letter several months later!

To download free student materials for this activity from my TpT store, CLICK HERE.

tom angleberger letter