Changing Earth Landforms Mini Unit–Just posted

Landforms

Plate Tectonics Mini-Internet-Research Unit

 

 

This unit is designed to engage students’ interest in learning about landforms and plate tectonics. This unit focuses on the way the earth changes over longer periods of time, versus short-term changes caused by weathering and erosion. Students are engaged in thinking about whether or not they believe:

-mountains can be under the ocean
-oceans can shrink
-an island can form by lava piling up
-mountains can form by land masses colliding into one another
-over time, cities can switch places geographically

 

….click on NC Science to read more….

NC Science Materials

I am currently working on my NC science materials page. Here you can find some of my science lesson materials and a ton of vocabulary strategies and materials. Eventually this page will also include materials from 4th grade science. Content for 5th grade science in NC includes: ecosystems–the interdependence of plants, animals, and humans; weather and climate–forecasting, instruments, water cycle, fronts; landforms–weathering and erosion; force and motion–including simple machines.

Character Change Analysis–My Favorite Unit

Have you ever stopped to ask your students how the main character in their book changed by the end of the story? You might be surprised when they tell you “He/She didn’t really change.” Once I realized students were not closely analyzing their books for character change, or even realizing that they should be, I began teaching a 2-3 week unit on character change.

My favorite books for this study are The Memory String by Eve Bunting and Albert by Jo Donna Napoli.

I usually launch these minilessons at the same time I launch Jerry Spinelli book clubs. The characters in Jerry Spinelli’s books (Stargirl, Crash, Eggs, Loser, etc) change so much throughout the text, I want to make sure students are really prepared to analyze how they have changed when they finish reading the books.

Check out my entire unit, including 8 read aloud/picture book summaries and tips and 4 novels that fit with this unit of study on teacherspayteachers. I also included a bonus of character adjective sheets for students to research and illustrate. Last year, I found this strategy gave students more sophisticated vocabulary for explaining their characters.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Reading-Minilesson-Character-Change-Analysis-read-alouds

Hello world!

Welcome to PAPERPAGES, my blog for teachers. Here I hope to share minilessons, reading units, writing units, vocabulary strategies for science and social studies, and throw in a little math from time to time. My main goal for this blog is to catalog and document some of my most effective, favorite units, activities, and strategies from my teaching career. After4 years of teaching, I changed grade levels (from 5th to 4th) and found myself feeling like a 1st year teacher all over again. Now that I am back in 5th and considering a move back to 4th to have the looping experience again, I have found the need to invest more time in creating high-quality units that I want to use year after year so that I feel more competent teaching students for a 2 year span.