Mystery Bags Engaging Secondary Lesson for Identifying and Applying Main Idea and Cause and Effect

 Hey guys! Here is a lesson I used last semester that seemed to be pretty engaging and really successful! I admit ChatGPT came up with the concept. I taught the lesson on a day I got a surprise observation, and the students did such an amazing job with it. While this was created for a high school ESOL classroom to review how to identify a main idea as well as causes and effects, you could tailor it for any secondary classroom and really use any terms. 

Here's how it works: The cause and effect bags each had a few objects. Students worked in teams and at each station discussed, then wrote on sticky notes what they interpreted a possible cause might be and might be be an effect. This was in preparation for ACCESS testing. For example, a bag with candy erasers and a sick face might be that somebody ate too much candy and sugar (cause), so they felt sick (effect). Or that they felt sick from not eating (cause) so they ate candy they found (effect) (they could get creative with these). 

The main idea bags all had objects tied by a topic, and students had to figure out what they all had in common and might all be used for. 

I had a total of 12-25 bags (I forget how many), and students worked in groups of 2s or 3s. I may have set a timer for the whole activity, but I think I let them go bag to bag at their own pace. 

Another activity we did prior to this was practicing using very vivid, descriptive vocabulary. In larger teams, they had to feel a mystery object inside of paper bag full of related objects (I think we used the same main idea bags). They each closed their eyes, felt an object and described it using sensory language. After everyone described something in the bag, they had to come up with what the topic of the bag might be by guessing what the objects were and how they were related. I think I gave them about 8 minutes to write their answer on a whiteboard and complete this activity. 

I hope you find this handy! Thank you for visiting! 

-Lauryn 

Camp Classroom Set Up & Poetry Reading/Analysis

 Hello, happy Memorial Day again! I have yet another post to share today, this one about a classroom transformation and poetry lesson. 

The Goals:

-Learn and poetry elements. 

-Practice the ACCESS speaking domain/speaking and reading skills.

-Explore various poetry genres.

-Appreciate the beauty of poetry!

The set up included:

-The campfire itself, made of orange pumpkin Dollar Tree lights, and a light I owned from Walmart that moves at various speeds and allows you to select colors (creating a red, rotating, ambient light effect), construction paper flames (taped to the light), and sticks that I had turned into torches for drama props a long time back using recycled bottles and tissue paper.

-My ceiling light covers (magnetic) from Amazon. 

-A blanket to sit on.

-Plants that were already in my classroom. 

-A Youtube campfire background with sound effects. 

-Marshmallows and skewers.

The last thing is a variety of poems printed out to read/analyze. 

The Lesson:

To start off the lesson, I read a famous poem (such as "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost). Then we all read it together. Prior to sitting around the campfire, students had around 10 minutes to choose a favorite poem or choose one of many I printed to read aloud, giving them time to choose and practice reading them. We went around the campfire, each reading a selected poem. Next, students took their poems to their seats and I used a document camera to walk everyone through how to label their poetry, and the definitions of each poetry element (though many of them had the definitions from a prior assignment called "Poetry Toolboxes" I would like to share in the future). They labeled stanzas, line breaks, metaphors, similes, alliteration, repetition, onomatopoeia, hyperboles, rhythm, etc. The first times I did this lesson I made a lot of mistakes and did not have a clear order of reading/annotating, and all of my students hand wrote their poems to label them. If I could redo it, I would have more extra copies printed to directly label and maybe have everyone choose a poem in advance so they were all printed and ready. They did a beautiful job writing and labeling, though, and some students went the extra mile to beautifully illustrate their poetry as well. Another mistake I made was having everyone read the first poem together from the screen. Individual copies of the poem would probably have been much easier to follow along with, although it would be more paper. 

Despite my mistakes experimenting with this, my students did a phenomenal job and I am proud of their labeled poems, as well as of their reading performances and engagement during the lesson. 

I hope you enjoyed, thank you for stopping by!

-Lauryn

Character Mindmap Book Review Project (& "When Stars Are Scattered" Activity)

This amazing lesson came from a book given to me by a co-worker called "100% Engagement" (Grades 6-12) by Brian Sztabnik and Susan Barber. This project is called a "character mindmap", where students chose a character from our class book ("When Stars Are Scattered" by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed), draw them, then identify and label the following to show they truly read the book and understood the character: 

-A thought bubble. What would this character be thinking about?

-A belief under their feet. What beliefs do they hold?

-Something in their hands to represent what they give, their responsibilities, and/or burdens they carry. 

-A challenge they overcame or way they grew in the story written by their leg to represent the difficulties they walked through. 

-A heart labeled with their deepest desires. What do they most want?

Below is a checklist I used as the rubric from the book mentioned above. This assignment aligns with the high school ESOL WIDA standards, though I did not include the standards it meets. 

I loved the result of this assignment. I was so proud of my students' creativity and hard work! I hope if you are an educator you find this helpful to implement in some form in your classroom. I also highly recommend both of those books. Thank you for visiting! 

Blessings,

Lauryn

How I Celebrate Birthdays In My Classroom

 Good afternoon! Today I'd like to share how I celebrate birthdays in my classroom. Disclaimer: it takes a lot of prep, and admittedly cost quite a bit. That said, I feel it successfully meets my goal. My goal: I love to recognize people's birthdays and make them feel seen, valued, and bring them joy on their special day. 

In my classroom, I hand-draw (since the banners I bought would disappear due to some misunderstandings about recycling them rather than taking them home each birthday, and I could not afford to buy one for every birthday) a birthday banner that reads "Feliz Cumpleaños, [Student's Name]!" with markers on construction paper. I tape that to their desk along with a gift. The gift is a coffee-looking cup filled with confetti or grass, a desert sticker, and a special lava pen. I tie a ribbon to the top of the pen, which sticks out like a straw. I try to make the ribbon, pen, and sticker all the student's favorite color (which I know from a form they fill out on the first day of school). I buy the supplies in bulk from Amazon. After the initial work it takes to prepare the cups, it is really simple to set this up each birthday.

I also use Google Slides each day, so on the warm up slide they all see at the start of class, I feature a cat throwing confetti on the right side where I list reminders, and write "Today is [student's name] birthday!" 

Lastly, at the end of the month, I celebrate all of the birthdays from that month by putting their names on the board with their favorite colors (and maybe even characters), put up a balloon arch with their favorite colors combined, and set out treats. The Google Slides on the board might say something like "In honor of our January birthdays (name, name, name, and name) you can help yourself to a treat on the table!" We do Friday prizes each week anyway where students have the option of choosing food, so this falls on a Friday and basically is our regular prize day with an extra treat, or treats in place of non-edible prizes, along with that extra recognition. 

If you are an educator, I hope you find this inspiring or helpful in some way!

Blessings,

Lauryn 

Halloween English Lessons & Classroom Halloween Party, 2025

 Hello, here is yet another class party I would like to share from last semester. Halloween fell on a school day, so I celebrated with a class Halloween party that incorporated their class projects from the week. 

One project, which I saw on TPT, is making synonym/antonym gravestones and ghosts. I found some free gravestones to print. They had to write their choice word with five synonyms on the front, followed by five antonyms on the back. They could research synonyms and antonyms on Google. That was completed after an introduction to synonyms and antonyms on the Monday prior, so I drew grass and made a graveyard/ghost display.

The other assignment that ended up taking all week or longer was a symbolism mask assignment. Students were to draw ten images on one side of their mask designs that each symbolized something about them (what they believe, love, the hobbies they do, their personality, anything). On the other side, they were to write out ten "I am..." statements to describe themselves, applying repetition and more specifically, anaphora. On Halloween day they all got to 'dress up' and we did a class photo in each class featuring everyone in their masks. 

I planned several Halloween-inspired English games as well. One was to design a pumpkin on paper that clearly included symbolism and was themed around a particular book, character, or movie. Another used charts and involved rolling die to prompt a scary creative story. My favorite was where they worked in pairs with whiteboards. One partner had to describe a monster with as many adjectives as possible while the other partner had to draw it. They had five minutes and had to face away from each other until the drawing was done, then everyone revealed their masterpieces and partners swapped roles. Examples of some of these activities are shown below.

As far as the decorations go, I got the spiderwebs, spider dish, and balloons from Dollar Tree. I cut some paper plates into hexagons to look more web-like, too. The treats came from Aldi and a dollar store. 

Thank you for visiting, I hope you find this helpful! 

-Lauryn