I remember when my daughter was just a toddler that she could already identify some literary elements such as character. She knew who the “bad guy” was even at age three. Now that she’s in middle school, we are leaving behind oversimplified terms like “bad guy” or even “villain” to talk about protagonists and antagonists. [...]
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Research shows that students who do prewriting exercises write better essays. While many children can make their own mind maps and outlines on blank paper, other students find the framework of a graphic organizer helpful. I created three different layouts for prewriting an essay. Each one assumes the standard structure of three main ideas (three [...]
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I recently bought tickets to a performance of The Tempest by the Tennessee Shakespeare Company and realized that some theater notebooking pages would be great for after the field trip. Although we are going to see a play, these pages could work for any kind of performance in a theater – plays, ballet, opera, or other shows. Included [...]
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In looking for a printable reading log online, I was rather discouraged to find very few attractive options that would work for a middle schooler. There are some cutesy ones well suited for elementary aged readers, but a twelve year old doesn’t want a silly dinosaur on her reading log. So I created my own reading logs [...]
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Thanks to Nicole (@crookedriverhs) for this excellent idea for a notebooking page. I put out a Tweet on Twitter asking for requests, and she came back with quite a few suggestions, one of which was idioms. Great language arts topic, Nicole! I made four different layouts so that you could choose from more lines for [...]
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These free ballad notebooking pages finish up the poetic forms series. In all there are 10 sets of pages, each covering a different poetic form. A great spine for a study of poetic forms is the book A Child’s Introduction to Poetry. Use the notebooking pages to copy examples of the various forms or to take [...]
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I’ve got just one more free printable notebooking page left in this series, and it will be posted this week. For today, I’m sharing two new poetic forms that we’ve studied in A Child’s Introduction to Poetry — the pastoral and the sonnet. A pastoral poem is about nature — fields, farms, the sky, and [...]
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Today I am sharing notebooking pages for both lyric verse and free verse. Although they are very different forms, they seemed to fit together well in a single post. Each set has three different layouts in three line styles for a total of nine free printable pages. A Child’s Introduction to Poetry is the inspiration for these poetic [...]
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Today’s free printable is another booklet. Print the pages front-back and fold in the center for a convenient reading journal that you can use to record things from a biography. There is room for characterization, events on a timeline, geography, and vocabulary. As always, I love to hear when you use the free printables from [...]
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