Free Printable: Interview a Classmate

Last week, I posted a free printable to give your class at the start of school to help them get to know you (the teacher). This week’s printable will help you in the equally important task of helping your students get to know each other!

Interview a Classmate Worksheet

There are tons of ways to do this, but if you’re swamped and don’t have the time to plan an elaborate activity, use this!

1.  Make copies of this page (one for each student).
2. Pair up your students (preferably so the partners don’t know each other very well).
3. Instruct the partnerships to talk and fill out the “Interview Your Classmate” printable.
4. Have each student write a paragraph using the new information about their classmate.
5. Have students share with the class one interesting thing about their partner.
6. Use this as a writing sample if you’d like to see where your students are at with their language arts skills.

This can be a good exercise to repeat if there are lots of students in your class who don’t know each other. If you’re short on time, consider only using the top portion of the page to get students talking. Best wishes for a successful launch of the new school year!

Free Printable: Compare and Contrast Worksheets

When you ask kids what the differences and similarities are between cows and horses, they might start with the obvious things like “cows give milk [that humans drink] and horses don’t” and “both have 4 legs.” But upon further exploration of the idea, you’ll get to some more creative answers like “people use horses to herd other animals, but we don’t use cows to herd other animals” and “neither can juggle.”

Compare and Contrast Worksheets

This is the kind of creative, mind-stretching thought we want our students to develop. There are tons of ways to teach comparing and contrasting, but if you’re looking for a simple, pre-made set of practice pages, look no further! Here’s a six-page collection of Venn diagram pages for you, all for free! The first five pages have the object already assigned, and the last page is blank so you can choose what you want to compare and contrast.

Free Printable: Learning Style Survey

Every learner is different. Some students like bright lights (that’s me!), others work well standing up and some work better with music on.

At the start of the year, it’s helpful to understand the learning and working preferences of your students so you can create the environment that’s most conducive to learning. Hand out this simple survey at the beginning of the year to get a better feel for how your students work and learn best.

How Do You Work Best? Worksheet

Free Printable: Tattling vs. Reporting

Tattling. It’s the bane of my existence!  … And if you’re a teacher, you probably feel the same. But no matter how much tattling drives you crazy, you’ll always be dealing with it.

At the beginning of the year (and most likely throughout the year too), it’s helpful to remind students what the difference is between tattling and reporting. Reporting is helpful, and tattling is not. (If only the discussion could stop there!)

Reporting or Tattling? Worksheet

This week’s free back-to-school printable is a page you can go through as a class to discuss your classroom policy on tattling. This page will be most helpful when accompanied by a discussion of what’s helpful to tell the teacher and what isn’t.

Infographic: Why Career and Technical Education Matters

Brought to you by Odysseyware

With over 80 Career Technical Education (CTE) courses and growing, Odysseyware has you covered with the largest collection of online CTE courses in the industry. 

 

“Understanding the realities of the workplace and learning how to apply skills can only improve a student’s chance of success after high school.”— CTE teacher, New York

“CTE classes are a wonderful way to incorporate the core classes into real-life applications that the students can relate to and get excited about.” — CTE teacher, Illinois

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Educator Infographic: The Path to 21st Century Learning Starts With IT Planning

Brought to you by HP & Intel®

Brought to you by HP & Intel®

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

By now, 21st-century skills such as communication, creativity, and collaboration are on everyone’s radar. Your school may even have an ambitious plan for instilling 21st-century skills in your students. But the reality is these plans don’t get too far if your computers don’t work and you can’t access the sites and services you need.

This education infographic, created by HP and Intel, explores the crucial steps all IT departments need to take in order to truly become a 21st-century school. See how your school can plan for Big Data, Mobility, Security, and the Cloud—download the infographic below.

Teaching Students to Be Better Annotators Poster and Infographic

Brought to you by Accelerated Reader 360

The biggest advancement ever in the nation’s most widely used K12 reading program, Accelerated Reader 360 helps teachers meet key educational shifts with new tools they can use within their existing literacy blocks. The program continues to do what educators love. It motivates students to grow as goal-focused readers and enables teachers to set and monitor personalized goals. Yet, it adds new capabilities by layering instructional skills practice into leveled nonfiction articles. Learn more here.

We asked teachers to share the hardest part of teaching good highlighting and annotation skills. They said:

• “Teaching kids that highlighting is not painting the barn.” —Patricia B.
• “Getting students to understand the different aspects of text worthy of notation—main idea, significant detail, theme, etc.” —Melissa W.
• “Convincing them it’s necessary.” —Amy S.

With these comments in mind, we’ve created a brand-new classroom poster to help you teach kids smart highlighting skills. Plus, don’t forget to save and pin the exclusive educator infographic, which has more ideas for teaching annotation in the classroom.

Student Posters

Teacher Infographic