Fabulous Freebies: Fun April Fools Ideas for the Classroom

Here are some fun and free April Fool ideas for the classroom!



Following Directions Test - I'm sure we have all seen a test like this that asks readers to read through the test before starting. Not many students actually do this though! This is a fun one.


Squarehead's No Prep Pranks - I loved this list of no prep pranks of funny things you could tell your students! There is also a list of short prep items as well.


Printable April Fools Pranks - This list of printable April Fools pranks are great ideas as well and pretty quick to pull together!


April Fool Poems - Here are two poems with a funny and cute April Fools twist.

Wednesday Websites: Sites for the Emergent Reader

A second one is Fun Brain.  This site has games for students in grades K-8.  Again, students do not have to register to play.  They simply identify their gender and grade level.  The site is designed to be highly engaging, using games to teach math and graphic novels to engage them in reading.  The book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney is posted on it.  The Lost Side of Suburbia, a slightly scary graphic novel by Kory Merritt, is also on there.  There are also a variety of madlibs.  This site has done its research and uses activities that are highly engaging to encourage students to play and learn at the same time.  My nephew in upper elementary gives it two thumbs up!

Finally, there is PBS.  This site has a wide range of educational games for a variety of subjects and topics.  The site is very comprehensive and easy to navigate.  The range of activities is expanding all the time.  And again, all the kids I know like this site, using it at school and home.

Fabulous Freebies: Free Things for Spring

Here is a link to all of our free spring themed lesson lists here at One Less Headache! There is something for every grade level and subject area. Enjoy!

• Free Things for Spring 2015

• Five Egg Experiments to Try

• More Free Spring Lessons

• 15 Spring Themed Writing Prompts

• Even More Free Spring Lessons

• 15 Ways to Grow Plants in Your Classroom

• And More Free Spring Lessons

• Easter Lesson Ideas

Wednesday Websites: Site for English Teachers

I have a pinterest board dedicated to useful teaching websites.  Here is a list of my favorite ones to use with my English classes...

Poem Hunter will provide you with the poems from any number of poets.  I use it all the time.  Whenever I need to find a poem it is the first place I look.  It has short bios on a ton of well known poets along with online texts of their writings.  It is very handy.  The site is super user friendly and comprehensive.  

Prezi.com is a website that allows students to make cooler versions of power points.  It takes them a class period or so to play around with it and figure out how to use all of the tools, but once they know how, they love it.  They can add videos, pictures, objects, colors, themes and pretty much everything else that they can do with powerpoint.  But, the visual effects are unique and fun to play around with.  They can save them online and share them with anyone who has an email address.  It is definitely worth checking out.

Purdue Owl is a great resource with a wide variety of writing tips.  The material is most appropriate for  students in middle school through college age students.  I use it all the time as a reference for how to create bibliographies and citations using MLA formatting rules.  Once my students have shown me they know how to format their bibliographic entries, I let them cheat by using easybib.com.

6 + 1 Writing Traits  is a well known writing, teaching and assessment framework.  The title refers to the traits in writing that we want all of our students to develop over time: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation.  The common language is useful in aligning teachers across contents and grade levels to provide united expectations of students.

Writing Fix and English Companion are websites that have a ton of resources for teaching writing and reading.  They include strategies, graphic organizers, etc.  They have a wealth of information and are worth perusing.

Finally, Grammar Bytes  has a wealth of grammar activities to help reinforce grammar rules with yours students.  The sentences are fun and contemporary.

Fabulous Freebies: Language Arts Freebies for Spring

I think that just about everyone is excited for spring after the cold weather most of the country experienced! Here are some language arts freebies for spring to help you thaw out.

Spring Writing Prompts

     - There are 15 spring themed writing prompts from last year at One Less Headache
     -  Journal Buddies has 53 spring journal topics for elementary and middle school students
     - Minds in Bloom has a list of 20 fun topics.

Spring Poems

     - 11 Spring poem ideas
     - See an extensive list of spring themed poems
     - Print an easy to use spring acrostic poem sheet

Other Spring Language Arts Activities

     - Check out some spring vocabulary puzzles, flash cards and more here. Click to download.
     - Here are some spring themed vocab exercises for online work.
     - More elementary spring worksheets are here and easy to download.

500 Fan Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Certificate Giveaway!

I am so excited to announce that I have reached more than 500 followers on my Lesson Lady Facebook page! In celebration of that, I'm doing a giveaway for all my fans! The giveaway will start on 3/11/15 and go through 3/18/15.

You must be a fan if you want to win so if you haven't 'liked' my page yet please do so. I post fun freebies and classroom ideas there and would love for you to join in! If you are a fan just enter using the rafflecopter below! You can earn up to two entries - one entry for checking out my Facebook page and one entry for following our blog, One Less Headache.

The prize is a $10 gift certificate to Teachers Pay Teachers! Good luck to all!




a Rafflecopter giveaway

Fabulous Freebies: St. Patrick's Day

Since St. Patrick's Day is coming up next week I thought I would share some fun free educational resources for St. Patrick's Day!

St. Patrick's Day Acrostic Poem Printables - This is an easy way to incorporate St. Patrick's Day into your language arts lesson!

 

St. Patrick's Day Journal Prompts - There is a wide variety of prompts here for various types of writing practice. Fun!

St. Patrick's Day Math Worksheets - These sheets are geared towards early elementary age. I liked that they had a variety of printing options such as color or b&w only.

St. Patrick's Day Games - Near the top of this page are direct PDF links to flash cards, bingo games and even a Shamrock and Ladders game! Fun for team building or if you have some down time.

St. Patrick's Day Experiments - There is a huge list here of fun science experiments here and they sound like so much fun! I bet your students will barely realize they are learning.

Wednesday Website: News ELA

News ELA is one on my new favorite websites.  If you teach grammar school it is one free subscription you should sign up for.  The website has a plethora of nonfiction articles to choose from.  There are articles on: war & peace, science, money, law, health, arts and sports.  When you go in you can search by grade level and/or reading goal.  The current events are on topics that are high interest for kids.  For example, I've recently found articles on whether or not whales held in captivity should be released, on whether or not video games are good or bad, and whether or not chimpanzees have their own language.

If you are looking for materials to supplement any unit, this is definitely a site worth mining.  Creating an account is simple and once you have it you will receive regular email updates on their most recent articles.  Check it out today!