All resources in Arkansas: SPELL Common Core

Postcard Creator

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The Postcard Creator helps students learn to identify all the typical parts of a postcard, and then generate their own postcard messages by typing information into letter templates. After printing their texts, students can illustrate the front of their postcards in a variety of ways, including drawing, collage, and stickers.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive

Line Break Explorer

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The interactive explores the ways that poets choose line breaks in their writing. After viewing the demonstration, students are invited to experiment with line breaks themselves.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive

Animal Inquiry

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Supporting inquiry-based research projects, the Animal Inquiry interactive invites elementary students to explore animal facts and habitats using writing prompts to guide and record their findings.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive

Into the Book

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The "Into the Book" web site is designed to help elementary students practice eight reading comprehension strategies through playful interactive activities. The site focuses on eight research-based strategies: Using Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating and Synthesizing. "Behind the Lesson," the teacher area of the site, provides information, lesson plans and other resources for teachers.

Material Type: Assessment, Interactive, Lesson Plan, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Wisconsin Media Lab

Teaching About Story Structure Using Fairy Tales

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Stories and poems that have a familiar structure can create a supportive context for learning about the writing process, building students' background knowledge, and scaffolding their creation of original stories. In this lesson for students in second or late first grade, teachers help students explore the concepts of beginning, middle, and ending by reading a variety of stories and charting the events on storyboards. As they retell the stories, students are encouraged to make use of sequencing words (first, so, then, next, after that, finally). A read-aloud of Once Upon a Golden Apple by Jean Little and Maggie De Vries introduces a discussion of the choices made by an author in constructing a plot. Starting with prewriting questions and a storyboard, students construct original stories, progressing from shared writing to guided writing; independent writing is also encouraged.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Author: Deborah Kozdras, Ph.D.

Using Folk Tales: Vowel Influences on the Letter G

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Folk tales and fairy tales are of interest to and part of the language arts curriculum for young learners. This lesson supports the study of this genre and the study of irregular patterns and letter-sound relationships related to decoding and spelling. After reading the folk tale Jack and the Beanstalk, students discuss the word giant and its beginning sound. Students then create their own lists of words that begin with the same sound. Then, students are introduced to words with the soft g sound and create a new list of words with this beginning sound. As a culminating activity, students work individually or in groups to categorize animal names into groups according to their beginning g sound.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Author: Rebecca L. Olness

Games to Practice Multiplication Facts

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Students must think about the factors of each number as they play this game. Students quickly learn the value of selecting prime numbers as a strategy. The beauty of the game design is that students will review the factors of many numbers and mentally add the sum of these factors together in search of the "best move."

Material Type: Game

Author: Terry Kawas

Eye on Idioms

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The activity includes a series of exercises, in which students view the literal representations of idioms and then examine the metaphorical meanings of the idioms.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive

Causes of the American Revolution

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This kit provides teachers and other educators with the materials and guidance to help fourth grade students understand the reasons that the British colonists elected to declare their independence from King George III between the years 1763-1776. As a part of these lessons students will be encouraged to consider the intent and impact of media documents from a variety of points of view including those of the colonists, King George, patriots, loyalists, slaves and Native Americans.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Diagram/Illustration, Homework/Assignment, Lesson Plan, Primary Source, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study

Authors: Amy Eckley, Andrea Volckmar, Chris Sperry, Karen Griffin, Lynn VanDeWeert, Rachel Coates, Sox Sperry, Whitney Bong