February always sneaks up fast, and suddenly you’re trying to plan meaningful lessons that go beyond a quick read-aloud and a worksheet. This Black History Month resource was created for…
Labor Day honors the contributions of American workers. This Labor Day reading comprehension unit helps students understand the holiday’s history and significance, from the Industrial Revolution to the first Labor…
Black History Month is celebrated every February, but the resources below work year-round. This post brings together everything you need for a full elementary unit: a reading passage on how…
These two nonfiction reading passages give elementary students a closer look at Halloween and Día de los Muertos—two fall holidays often grouped together but with very different histories and traditions….
There’s something truly magical about watching a young mind grasp a new concept, and one of my absolute favorite units to deliver this magic is the Long Ago and Today…
FREE Martin Luther King Jr. Ideas for the elementary classroom! I love teaching about Martin Luther King Jr.: I get to introduce my students to a great person in our nation’s history, and it kicks off our biography units. I always model reading and writing a biography by writing one about Martin Luther King Jr.
This elementary Thanksgiving unit helps students understand the events leading up to the first Thanksgiving and gives them tools to make connections between those events. By the end of the…
Describe the connections between historical events is a Common Core Standard that is hard to teach! Here is how I taught this standard with the events leading up to the first Thanksgiving. Through this unit, students asked and answered questions, we made a timeline, we read great books, AND we figured out the connection between historical events.
Asking and answering questions can be hard for students! We set up a routine where students would write 6 questions and other students would answer those six questions. This was the perfect way for me to monitor whether students could ask and answer questions about any topic! Here is how we applied it to Thanksgiving.