Inside Mathematics - Resources for the Common Core

Inside Mathematics provides a way for educators to share strong practices via:

• tested demonstration lessons
• guided tours of reflective mathematics practice
• tools & resources to support daily practice
• a professional learning community

The great (and amazing) thing about this project is that it doesn't just talk about the CCSS, it actually provides performance tasks and assessment resources that are aligned to the standards. AND they can be searched by either grade level or mathematical progression.

Here's an example for 2nd Grade - Incredible Equations:

"The task challenges a student to demonstrate understanding of concepts involved in addition and subtraction. A student must be able to understand addition and subtraction as inverse operations and apply this understanding to problems where the unknown is in different positions...must make sense of the equals sign as a balance point between the two sides of an equation in order to find a missing addend on one side of an equation...must be able to justify a solution."

Common Core State Standards Math - Content:

Operations and Algebraic Thinking
2.OA.1 Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.
2.OA.2 Add and subtract within 20.

Common Core State Standards Math – Standards of Mathematical Practice:

MP.1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
MP.3 Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.

Included are the task itself, which consists of eight addition and subtraction equations with one number missing, and a task rubric.

The MOST valuable part of this piece? An extremely detailed evaluation and reflection guide, including examples of student work. Identified are 

• what students knew and were able to do
• areas of difficulty for the students
• strategies used by successful students
• a frequency distribution for the example students
• a table of understandings and misunderstandings for each equation arrangement
• the Implications for Instruction and Action Research in narrative form

What a fabulous tool for reflective practice! Click over to the site and look at all of the excellent performance tasks available there for FREE.

Anchor Charts - Making Them Your Own

With the popularity of my first post on Anchor Charts, I've been busy researching for you, trying to find more great examples.

If you're on Pinterest, you can view many excellent charts on my learning twice: Teaching Resources board. If you aren't, send me an email at nancymcneal@gmail.com, and I'll send you an invite. Teachers are pinning good ideas every day, and I think all teachers should be able to see and use them!

Today, let's look at how you and your students can make charts from other teachers your own. Remember that co-constructing them with your students and making sure that they match your kiddos' developmental level are two of the key features that make anchor charts relevant for their ongoing learning.

While looking for Active Literacy resources (a future post), I found the Reading Resources wiki page of Pender County Schools in North Carolina. The number of links there will no doubt lead to other posts, but Iet's look at six posters that you can download, adapt, and turn into great anchor charts.

The posters all address signal words, and give good information. The best part? They are editable! Once you download a poster, you can change font and pics, cut, paste, and do whatever you like to give yourself the starting point you need. Here is the original poster for cause and effect:

And here's what I did to create the "bones" of a cause and effect anchor chart:

You choose how much to have on the chart when you begin working with your students. I titled it, chose seven signal words, included the traffic signal clipart, and color-coded the Cause (Action) and Effect (Outcome) so you could see what I was imagining for perhaps a 3rd grade class. If I were making this chart with students, we would write sentences using these words (writing the cause in each sentence in blue and the effect in red, underlining the signal words).

You might not want to begin with this much information, depending on where your students are in understanding signal words. And of course, you'll only use the document you create as a mini-template, since you'll be writing on a poster board or chart paper as you and your kiddos co-create the actual anchor chart. You will make it yours!

The other five posters on the page depict the following categories of signal words:

• Compare and contrast
• Description or list
• Problem and solution
• Question and answer
• Sequence or order

The compare and contrast poster is shown below. What would you do with it to adapt it as an anchor chart for your class? Narrow it down to only a few signal words? Change the graphics? Divide it into two charts - one for comparing and one for contrasting?

Whatever you decide to do, enjoy making great signal word anchor charts with your kiddos starting with these ideas. And once your chart is finished, don't forget to take a photo, put it in a binder, and add it to your ongoing slide collection so you can project it if your entire class needs to revisit it, as suggested in an earlier post, Anchor Charts - Another Blogger's Ideas, and by Jodi at The Clutter-Free Classroom, in Anchor Chart Planning and Management!

Common Core Practice | Medical Manga, a Family Grocery and a Restaurant Review

Drum roll, please! I told you earlier this week about The Learning Network's plan to publish a Common Core Practice Feature each Friday, and I'm thrilled to say that it is here!

The series is being done in collaboration with two teachers in New Jersey, Jonathan Olsen and Sarah Gross, and the premiere post includes two argumentative writing tasks and one that is informative. All reference the Common Core Standards that they address.

The one that grabbed my attention is the first, Science: “Manga as Medical Tool,” which refers to a Times news article about Dr. Ian Roberts of London.

To paraphrase from the task description: No pharmaceutical company is willing to devote money to an advertising campaign for a new drug that promotes clotting and should reduce death in trauma patients, so Dr. Roberts has turned to unorthodox means such as cartoons and manga comics to share the information with doctors around the world.

Here is the student task: "Do you think it is a good idea to share research findings through visual media, like manga comics and cartoons? Write a paragraph in which you use information from this article to support your views. Provide at least one example where visual media could be helpful — or harmful — in sharing this kind of information." Students can view the manga comic (the first frame is shown)

and watch the cartoon below before writing. The CRASH-2 comic was created by Dr. Roberts's nephew, and should contribute much to your students' interest in the article!

I want to say "Thank you!" to the writers of this great new feature, so I'm leaving a comment on the post. If you use any of the three tasks proposed this week, I hope you will, too.

Have a fabulous fall weekend! The weather here in Middle Tennessee couldn't be better, and I plan to enjoy it!

Jim Burke & The English Teacher's Companion

Jim Burke is the author of almost twenty books on the art of teaching, including The English Teacher's Companion: A Complete Guide to Classroom, Curriculum, and the Profession. He won the NCTE's Exemplary English Leadership Award in 2000 and was inducted into the California Reading Association's Hall of Fame. Burke serves on the College Board's Advanced Placement Course & Exam Review Commission for the English Literature & Language courses. 

Oh, and he teaches high school English every day. I can't imagine a more connected expert than one who remains in the trenches, where Burke has been for more than 25 years. Today let's take a tour of the FREE resources he offers through his website, English Companion.com:

• Handouts from his workshops - These are detailed and fabulous! He provides them even if you haven't attended one of the workshops, saying: "You are...welcome to download and use the materials if they will help you do your work better." Wow.
• Links to Industry Research and Reports - Are you in grad school? Writing papers? These are super resources for you!
• Tools and Techniques - Includes Burke's Academic Essentials Matrix and a short video on using graphic organizers
• Documents and Resources for Teaching AP

And here are my favorites:

• Digital Textbook - From NPR's This I Believe to Time magazine's Pictures of the Week to Peace Corps Stories, these amazing sites allow you to move away from dry textbooks to dynamic resources that you can use to teach your students "how to read an image or how to write about one; how to analyze a website or how to craft a particular type of sentence or organize a paragraph a certain way." Simply fantastic!
• Tools for Teachers - Templates for notes of every kind, including episodic, hierarchical, and inference. Below is his Vocabulary Squares template, which can be used to "help readers process the word in different ways, all proven useful through...research." It is sophisticated, therefore more useful for high school students than are simpler ones. 

Want to read his blog? Go to Jim Burke: The English Teacher's Companion. You can also see Mr. Burke's homepage at Burlingame High School. If you're interested in purchasing his books, they are available on his website, as well as on Amazon.com.

For those of you who teach secondary reading (including reading in the content area) or English/Language Arts, I hope you'll have fun finding what you can use from the work of the amazing Jim Burke!

Library of Congress - Resources for the Common Core

 

The Library of Congress is a truly amazing resource for teachers, with collections that boggle the mind. Click on Digital Collections and have a look!

I'll write about various collections and their usefulness for you later, but today's post is about the Teaching with Primary Sources Program at the Library, and specifically, the current issue of The Teaching with Primary Sources Journal: Primary Sources and the Common Core State Standards, Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 2012. You can download the entire journal in PDF and print it if you would like to have a hard copy.

Rich Cairn's feature article, Primary Sources: At the Heart of the Common Core State Standards, describes what using primary sources to achieve the CCSS looks like in practice. It concludes: "Primary sources can provide the raw materials teachers need to support student achievement in the CCSS. Primary source-based learning is at the heart of the standards. Using photographs, maps, manuscripts, and other primary sources to engage students in learning and building critical thinking and constructing knowledge will help prepare students for success in school and beyond."

The issue includes links to Research and Current Thinking and a Teacher Spotlight, both important and read-worthy. Perhaps the most useful, however, are two complete Learning Activities:

• Determining Point of View: Paul Revere and the Boston Massacre is suggested for 5th and 6th grades. The CCSS targeted are RI.5.6., RI.6.6., RI.6.7., and RI.6.8. Download the entire activity here.
• Teaching Speaking & Listening Skills with Primary Sources is recommended for grades 9 though 12 and targets the College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Speaking and Listening. Download it in its entirety here.

If you'd like to view previous issues of the TPS Journal, which was formerly known as the Teaching with Primary Sources Quarterly, go to the archive page. These are devoted to topics such as Critical Thinking, Differentiated Instruction, English Language Learners, Inquiry Learning, Literacy Integration, Project-Based Learning, and Science. 

What fantastic resources, for you and your implementation of the Common Core. Hurry over to see what you can use!

Weekly Common Core Practice Prompts at The New York Times

Four days ago, The Learning Network at The New York Times announced what they are calling an experiment: "Beginning Sept. 21, each Friday you’ll find three quick, classroom-tested tasks that ask students to do Common Core-focused work with that week’s Times."

The picture below shows teachers Jonathan Olsen and Sarah Gross, with their freshman humanities classes at High Technology High School in Lincroft, N.J. According to TLN blogger Katherine Schulten, Jonathan and Sarah, who co-teach history and English, last year began creating "short daily reading and writing prompts for their students to use with that day’s Times." 

In June, Sarah wrote in her blog The Reading Zone about TLN's Summer Reading Contest, saying that she and Jonathan believed that using The Times in their classes had "revolutionized" the way they taught.

"By reading the newspaper daily and writing in response to the paper’s content, our students greatly improved both their critical thinking and writing ability. Using The Times to teach history and literacy this past year forever changed our approach to education. We are now able to meet all Common Core State Standards for writing and reading informational text, while preserving the literature curriculum already studied in English class. As a result of our daily inclusion of The Times, our redesigned classroom is now filled with topical writing, lively debate and students making connections between what they are learning in their classrooms (and) what is happening throughout the world around them."

Starting next week, Sarah and Jonathan will send the prompts they create, and that they and their students believe worked best, to TLN bloggers, former teachers themselves, who will "add some scaffolding or other kinds of small changes to help make the questions more accessible for a range of learners."

The plan is that each Friday, you will find at least one of the prompts aligned to the Common Core standards for reading and writing about informational text appropriate to use with YOUR students. Please try them, and let the writers at The Times (and me) know how it goes!

Reading Rockets

Reading Rockets is a national multimedia literacy initiative offering information and resources on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help.               

What does this website offer you and your students? Honestly, it should become one of your go-to sites for all things reading! It's jam-packed with a vast library of information for the most discriminating educator among us!

Selecting the For Teachers tab, here's an overview of SOME of the resources, with links intact:

Children's books & authors

• Author video interviews
• Author study toolkit
• Writing prompts inspired by children's authors and illustrators
• Themed booklists
• Poetry
• Multicultural books
• Award-winning books

How to...

• Do an effective read-aloud
• Find the right book level
• Find great informational books
• Set up a classroom library
• Find free or low-cost books

Professional development resources

• Professional development webcasts
• Reading 101: First Year Teacher 
• Launching Young Readers series

Struggling readers

• Reading Rocks! 
• Target the Problem!
• Put Downs & Comebacks
• LD resources
• ELL resources
• Tutoring
• More resources to help struggling readers

Impressed? I thought so. But that's just a taste of what's in store for you. Let's look specifically at Classroom Strategies, 54 of them in the areas of:

• Print awareness
• Phonological awareness
• Phonics
• Fluency
• Vocabulary
• Comprehension
• Writing

Each includes:

• Instructions on how to use the strategy
• Downloadable templates
• Examples
• Recommended children's books to use with the strategy
• Differentiation for second language learners, students of varying reading skill, students with learning disabilities, and younger learners
• Supporting research

There's even a chart that tells you when to use each strategy - before, during, or after reading.

My favorite thing about the strategies? That each one has recommended books to be used when teaching the strategy. Not dull, low-level textbook stories. Not excerpts. Not paraphrased sections of a piece that is age or reading level inappropriate. Real books that your kiddos can hold in their hands, read for themselves, and understand. I couldn't ask for more, and I don't believe you could, either!

So. Bookmark Reading Rockets (or just go ahead and put a link on your desktop!) Read a section every chance you get. Choose resources that fit your needs in making your class the best it can be for your students. Enjoy this fabulous, FREE site and all that you can find within it! 

And have a great week!

Science NetLinks - Lessons for the Common Core

Science Netlinks is a project of the Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Like EDSITEment!, it is a member of the Thinkfinity Consortium. You can find plenty of good information and links galore here. Unfortunately, I didn't find that the lessons and activities supported a high level of inquiry. Most were didactic, though thorough.  

I am, however, excited that one of the lessons led me to a real discovery: the work of Vicki Cobb, the Education World Science Editor. You can read her philosophy of teaching science and find her Show-Biz Science activities archive on EW's website. They are great!

Vicki is the winner of the 2012 AAAS/Subaru Science Books and Films’s Lifetime Achievement Award for more than 85 nonfiction books for children. Her books would be wonderful to add to your classroom library, in light of the emphasis on reading informational text in addition to literature in the CCSS. The added benefit? Many are books that contain embedded investigations for your kiddos to carry out.

BTW, the SB&F Best Books of 2011 special issue is available for download for a limited time with full text of reviews. Included in this guide are all of the finalists and winners of the 2012 AAAS/Subaru Book Prizes - great guidance for books to use DURING your reading/language block for both science and reading instruction!

I also discovered a link to more than thirty first-person accounts of the 1906 Fan Francisco Earthquake and Fire, located at the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco. These accounts would be perfect primary sources to use for developing close reading skills as per the CCSS.

The Science NetLinks site is divided into five sections:

• Afterschool - informal, often hands-on, science activities. Each one includes a facilitator page, as well as online and printable pages for kids. 
• Collections - groupings of lessons, tools, Science Updates, and other resources relating to a single topic
• Lessons - can be filtered and searched by grade and theme: astronomy, biology, careers, chemistry, earth science, engineering, health/medicine, math/statistics, nature of science, physics, social sciences, and technology
• Science News - up-to-date science Facts, Updates, and Educator Blog. Includes a monthly newsletter. 
• Tools - provide descriptions of online resources in four categories—hands-on activities, interactives, teaching aids, and websites— with tips to integrate them into your classroom.

I urge you to go look around. You will, no doubt, discover other gems available to help you align your teaching of science with inquiry and with the literacy goals of the Common Core.

The Common Core - Fine Arts (AND Science, History, & Geography) Connection - Part 2

After writing this morning's post about The Common Core - Fine Arts Connection, I read the final entry in the ARTSblog "Blog Salon" that marked National Arts in Education Week. In that post, Kristen Engebretsen referenced a panel discussion that was hosted in March by Common Core, an organization that is actually older than the CCSS, but supports them. 

The panel, titled Truant From School: History, Science, and Art, was composed of "experts who discussed the implications of curriculum narrowing and explored how the new Common Core State Standards might serve as a vehicle for addressing the problem."

The experts included:

David Coleman* - Founding partner of Student Achievement Partners and a lead writer of the CCSS in ELA. He will become president and chief executive officer of the College Board  in October. 

Lewis Huffman - Education Associate for Social Studies at the South Carolina Department of Education.

Carol Jago - A 32-year veteran teacher of English in middle and high school and director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA. She is past president of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Lynne Munson - President and Executive Director of Common Core

If you are a teacher, a principal, a curriculum specialist, or a instructional supervisor, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you watch the video below. Implementation of the Common Core State Standards MUST be done with the understanding that their intent is NOT to narrow the public school curriculum.

 

*David Coleman forcefully says, "It is utterly clear if there is not an equal balance of high quality informational and literary text in kindergarten through fifth grade, with the specific declaration that informational text richly covers science, history/social studies, and the arts, it does not meet the requirements of the core standards, either in assessment or curricular terms. Period."  And: "There is no such thing as doing the nuts and bolts of reading in kindergarten through fifth grade without coherently developing knowledge in science and history and the arts. Period. It is false. It is a fiction."

If you only have ten minutes, PLEASE at least watch this clip of David Coleman's address:

Having knowledge of the intent of CCSS ELA writers is invaluable, in my opinion. Watching the entire video has been mind-changing for me, and I hope you will find it just as beneficial. 

Have a wonderful September weekend!

The Common Core - Fine Arts Connection

"I will let you in on a secret: CCSS presents a teaching philosophy closely aligned with most fine arts classrooms. The methods of CCSS rely on teachers working as facilitators as opposed to lecturers, stress the value of modeling over telling, and emphasizes valuable learning occurs when subjects are interrelated and meaningful connections are made."

Amen, Amy Johnson!

Amy teaches in Austell, GA, and blogs at Artful Artsy Amy. Today, I want to point you to her post on the Arts Education section of ARTSblog: Common Core Collaboration Key for Fine Arts and Classroom Teachers. 

Here's a shot of Amy's classroom, with her students engaged in, yes, collaborative learning:

I'm SO impressed at the way Amy and the teachers at her middle school have collaborated to create meaningful cross-curricular connections! She offers an editable collaborative framework for FREE, and provides this example of her work with a seventh grade Math teacher for a unit on tessellations:

Amy says, "Instead of demanding core subject teachers to make connections to the arts, we should ask them to share their units and work together to make meaningful connections. In this manner, both teachers are able to rely on their strengths."

Again, amen!

Amy is only one contributor to the conversation about arts education and the common core on ARTSblog. I found fifteen posts in the past five days (National Arts in Education Week) that discuss many aspects of the impact each has on the other. Please look them over and check out the links each provides. Some are cautionary, but others provide concrete curriculum links that you can use in your classroom, whether you teach art or a core subject.

A great example: Lynne Munson, in her post How Vincent van Gogh Can Help You Teach to the Common Core Standards, says that "the CCSS present an exciting opportunity for elementary school teachers (who teach all subjects), grades 6-12 ELA teachers, and arts teachers to utilize the arts to teach the literacy skills outlined by the new standards." She links to The Arts and the Common Core Curriculum Mapping Project and its 179 arts activities.

You can also follow the related Twitter discussion. (And if you're a Twitter newbie, here's a great intro from Allison Boyer’s article on Blog World: A Beginner’s Guide to Twitter Basics)

If you fear, as I do, the loss of funding for arts education with a misguided implementation of the CCSS, you can demonstrate its necessity by developing a robust collaboration in your school. Here's to your efforts, and to your enjoyment of connecting and collaborating!

UPDATE: Please go to The Common Core - Fine Arts (AND Science, History, & Geography) Connection - Part 2 for more information.

Hispanic Heritage Month - Resources for Every Content Area

Hispanic Heritage Month is September 15 - October 15, and the resources available for you to integrate its celebration into your curriculum are MANY!

The official web portal for the month-long observance is a collaborative project of the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The site is chock-full of links to Exhibits and Collections in these categories:

                

                        

           Art and Architecture                         The Era of Exploration                           Culture and Ethnography

                              

                           Economics                                      Government, Politics, and Law            Poetry and Literature

  

                                                          History                                                                          Music

Are you a science teacher? Here's a great site for you: Latinos in Math & Science: Resources for kids, young adults and teachers. Check out the hotlinks for biographies of Hispanic scientists, etc.

Do you teach math? Go to the Smithsonian's Hispanic Heritage Cultural Tour and choose Resources. Select NMAH’s “Sports: Breaking Records, Breaking Barriers” website article on Roberto Clemente as a "hook" for a lesson on mean, median, mode, and range. Or graph his hits over a span of years. Or...

The Smithsonian's HHCT is amazing in so many other ways. Click over and check out all of the Objects, the Timeline, and the Quizzes and Activities there. 

Enjoy all the possibilities of the next month. November is American Indian Heritage Month, so I'll be searching out good resources for your observance of the First People's heritage!

EDSITEment! - Lessons for the Common Core

Close reading. Citing evidence. Making logical inferences. Analyzing. Summarizing. Interpreting. Evaluating and differentiating primary and secondary sources. Where does a busy teacher find appropriate lessons and activities to guide students in developing these required CCSS English Language Arts skills?

In this first post of a series about the fantastic Thinkfinity Consortium gateway, we're looking at EDSITEment, a partnership among the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Verizon Foundation, and the National Trust for the Humanities.

"All websites linked to EDSITEment have been reviewed for content, design, and educational impact in the classroom. They cover a wide range of humanities subjects, from American history to literature, world history and culture, language, art, and archaeology, and have been judged by humanities specialists to be of high intellectual quality."

EDSITEment truly is a treasure trove, with lesson plans searchable by subject, theme, and grade level. As examples, I want to point you to two of these: Anne Frank: One of Hundreds of Thousands and Anne Frank: Writer. These lessons provide a means for you to "supplement your students' reading of The Diary of a Young Girl by connecting the diary to the study of history and to honor the legacy of Anne Frank, the writer, as she inspires your students to use writing to deepen their insights into their own experiences and the experiences of others."

The skills listed for the lessons are:

• Critical analysis
• Critical thinking
• Historical analysis
• Textual analysis
• Using primary sources

Here are two of the learning objectives:

• Use specific examples from first-hand accounts to draw conclusions about one aspect of human behavior.
• Students will read the diary in search of quotes that indicate Anne's reflections on different feelings, relationships and behaviors that she noted while her family was in hiding. 

Below is the first page of The Diary of Anne Frank: A Changing Record, which you can use as a guide for close reading. Students are asked to cite entry date and quote for emotions, relationships, and behaviors they find in Anne's diary.

There are hundreds more wonderful lessons in EDSITEment's library - lessons for the Common Core, at your service from this amazing resource, for FREE. Enjoy!

Zygote Body™ & 3D Science - Check it out, Biology teachers!

Teachers of Life Science and Biology, today's post is for you!

Zygote Body™, the new incarnation of Google Body, is gorgeous, three-dimensional human anatomy at your fingertips. Just choose gender and go! By manipulating the controls, you can reveal layers, rotate the image vertically and horizontally, change systems, select for labels...it is phenomenal! And FREE!

Here's a screenshot that shows the controls on the left:

And that's not all that's available from Zygote: 3D Science provides a selection of beautiful clipart from its commercial images that can be used in presentations and educational handouts. How about this image of a constellation of neuron cells?

Go over to their site and look around to see everything. What an incredible resource from a classy company, all FREE for you!

Teaching About September 11

I have to share this blog post with you today, from the The Learning Network at The New York Times. It is the first post of the 2012-2013 school year in their series Great Ideas from Readers. 

You'll find two lesson plans there, one by teachers Bev Berns, Shaelynn Farnsworth, Shawn Hyer, Erin Olson and Todd Vogts from schools in Iowa and Kansas, and another by Rachelle Lamoureux of North Dakota. Please read the post, and then watch the video.

Shannon Doyne, who wrote the post, says: "Shaelynn Farnsworth and Erin Olson, along with other teachers...used our collection of 9/11 resources as the foundation for research for the video (below), which was created by students at multiple high schools."

Ms. Doyne continues, "Rachelle Lamoureux...used front-page Times articles from the first 10 days after the attacks as readings to which her “current generation” students responded, then contributed a word for a group collage that captured their reactions." (Lamoureux is a middle school teacher.)

In addition to these two lesson plans, you will find many links to additional teacher resources on the website.

Flashcards, Flashcards, Flashcards!

Five of my best friends and I left early the morning after Labor Day for North Myrtle Beach, SC, to spend the rest of the week relaxing! It was absolutely fabulous, but I did miss you, and I'm ready to get back in the swing of researching and sharing.

Today's post is about a site whose name is a little deceptive. Free ESL Flashcards has 968 images, each of which is available for download in three different sizes! Why three sizes? Here's their answer: "The Big set is great for vocabulary presentation, the Medium set is good for teaching small groups of students and playing language learning games. The Small sets of pictures are great for ESL games..."

But who says they're only great for ESL? You be the judge - categories include:

• Actions (3 sets, one is shown to the right)
• Adjectives (opposites)
• Adjectives (2 sets)
• Alphabet (2 sets)
• Animals
• Body parts (3 sets)
• Christmas
• Clothes
• Colors (2 sets)
• Daily Activities (2 sets)
• Emotions (3 sets)
• Family
• Food (plurals)
• Food (uncountable)
• Halloween
• Health (2 sets)
• Numbers
• Occupations and jobs (3 sets)
• Places (2 sets)
• Prepositions
• Rooms in a house
• School objects
• Seasons and Weather
• Sports
• Sports actions
• Sports equipment
• Sports vocabulary
• St. Patrick's Day
• Thanksgiving
• Time
• Valentine's Day

There are also coloring picture sets for Christmas, Easter, St. Patrick's Day, and Thanksgiving that your kiddos could use to make greeting cards or to decorate the classroom.

All of these could be printed on card stock and laminated to be used over and over. My teaching partner and I often printed manipulatives like this on plain paper and mounted them on construction paper before laminating. It's a little more time-consuming, but cheaper.

Which ones can YOU use, and how can you use them? I'm sure you'll find great ways!