Cereal. Like cereal...
Classroom Cereal activities are like a bowl of cereal — quick, simple, comfortable, and nourishing. Cereal gives you a daily dose of fiber and vitamins. Classroom Cereal gives students daily practice with English language skills.
Cereal. Like serial...
Students engage with Classroom Cereal stories serial style, or one piece at a time. The stories build from episode to episode, and the larger sagas of life in Fairview, Dover, and Pale unfold throughout the year.
Welcome to the Cereal-verse
It all started with a story and some errors. In 2017, middle school teacher Chris Slavin had an idea to combine the engaging powers of objective grammar rules and fun short stories into one resource. He had one idea for a story, about a teacher, a student, and a controversial water fountain policy. He wrote "Watergate" and sprinkled in grammatical mistakes for his students to find while they read. His students loved hunting for the errors, but they really got hooked by the story. He now had a setting and some characters, so he wrote more stories and shared them with other teachers. The Classroom Cereal grammar program and the saga of Fairview Middle School grew to three full seasons and became a hit in thousands of classrooms.
The Cereal-verse grew and grew. Chris wrote Cereal Theater, a readers theater series about an abandoned community theater inside the small town of Dover. Next came a series just for reading comprehension, about a mysterious amusement park in a secretive little town called Pale. Classroom Cereal now features not only Chris's stories but the work of other writers within Classroom Cereal Standalone Stories. Classroom Cereal is all about the power human-written stories can have for kids in school, and the library is growing all the time.
Grammar
The original program. A series of short stories that double as editing exercises. Each story has five parts, and each part has five grammatical mistakes for students to find and edit as they read.
Reading
Comprehension
A series of 10 short stories that double as cloze paragraph reading comprehension puzzles. As they read, students fill in the blanks with the missing word.
Readers
Theater
A series of 10 readers theater scripts. Each script has four scenes, with about five to nine parts per scene. Perfect for speaking, listening, acting, and laughing.
Standalone
Stories
A library of solo, original middle grade short stories written by different, human authors. Every story comes with an activity crafted specifically for it.
Activity Sheets
Nine mini ELA puzzles and activities on a single PDF sheet. Students practice skills and concepts like parts of speech, spelling, vocab, and more. Perfect for early finishers, short periods, mini lessons, and more.
Podcast
The first 10 stories from the CC grammar program in audio format. Narrated error-free by their author, Chris Slavin. Perfect as a supplement to the grammar program or as a standalone audio series.
The perfect supplement throughout the school year
Some classrooms enjoy Cereal every single day of the school year. Some teachers use it as a treat once a month or every few weeks. Cereal materials are also clutch in a pinch, when you need an extension activity, sub work, or something for a weird chunk of time or a shortened class period. Whether you use it as your daily warm up routine or to keep things fresh every once in a while, Classroom Cereal is here for you throughout the school year. You and your kids are going to love it.
Get everything with the $30 yearly subscription.
Your subscription gets you...
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Answer Keys
PDF sheets showing where the errors are and how to fix them.
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Quizzes
A 10-question quiz for all 30 stories. Five multiple choice comprehension questions, four grammar questions, and one short answer. Available as a PDF, Google Slide, and auto-grading Google Form.
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Teacher Guides
For every story, a one-page sheet with everything you need in order to teach it: plot summary, themes, explanation of that story's grammatical concepts, and quiz answers.
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Grammar Maps
For all seasons, a one-pager outlining every grammatical concept addressed in that season and the stories that feature them.
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Grammar Growth Assessment
A 48-question, multiple choice grammar assessment, allowing teachers to track grammar progress throughout the year. Available as a PDF, Google Slide, and auto-grading Google Form.
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Google Slides Stories
All 30 stories on their own interactive Google Slide.
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Grammar Mini Lessons
Short, fun, consistent mini lessons on key grammatical concepts. Available as PDFs, Google Slides, and auto-grading Google Forms.
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Escape Rooms
New Classroom Cereal stories in Google Form escape room format.
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Stories
The entire 10-story series. Each story as a PDF and Google Slide.
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Auto-grading Google Form Stories
Every story on an auto-grading Google Form. Students type in the answers, and the story grades itself!
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Quizzes
A 10-question reading comprehension quiz for every story. 9 multiple choice questions, 1 short answer.
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Student Data Tracker
A chart for students to keep track of their scores on every story, available as a PDF, Google Doc, Google Slide, and Google Sheet.
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Answer Keys
The correct answers for all 50 blanks for every story.
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Scripts
All 10 readers theater-style stories. Available as a PDF and Google Slide.
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Quizzes
A 10-question comprehension quiz for each script. Available as a PDF, Google Slide, and auto-grading Google Form.
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Full story transcripts
The full transcript of every audio story. Available as a PDF and Google Slide.
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Listening comprehension questions
10 listening comprehension questions for every audio story. Available as a PDF, Google Slide, and Google Form.
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Activity sheets
Every issue of Cereal Box Activity Sheet, 9 mini language games/puzzles on a single, printable sheet.
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Answer keys
The completed version of every sheet, showing its answers and exemplars.
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Short stories
A library of original middle grade short stories written by independent, human authors.
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An activity for each
For each story, an activity addressing a specific concept or skill fitting for that particular story.
Meet Chris (and Chuck)
Welcome! I'm Chris Slavin and I created Classroom Cereal to make grammar practice fun and easy for teachers and students. During my first year teaching sixth grade English Language Arts, I noticed many of my students needed extra practice with writing fundamentals like spelling, punctuation, and word usage. Since the curriculum didn't address these needs, I created my own grammar exercises and used them as "warm up" activities with my classes. I'd make up goofy paragraphs and include my students' names in them. Each paragraph would have grammatical errors for students to find and correct. I noticed my kids liked reading something short and fun while hunting for the mistakes. Then I decided to take the power of those error-finding grammar exercises and combine it with my own original short stories. Classroom Cereal was born!
I taught 6th, 7th, and 8th grade ELA and Reading for nine years at Dundalk Middle School and General John Stricker Middle School just outside of Baltimore, Maryland. These days I do everything Classroom Cereal, from writing all of the stories to handling every aspect of customer service. Before starting Classroom Cereal, I wrote content for a few other awesome websites, like Membean, Newsela, and NoRedInk. Before that, I was editor in chief of The Cowl, the student newspaper at Providence College. I live in Port Jefferson, New York with my wife Dara, a fellow English major and Cowl alum. In my non-Cereal time, I love reading, playing music, and watching sports, especially Yankees baseball and PC basketball.
Thank you for visiting, and please get in touch with your thoughts about Classroom Cereal. You can reach me at chris@classroomcereal.com. Until then, enjoy!
This is Classroom Cereal's mascot, Chuck. He bears a resemblance to one of the most famous serial writers ever. Do you know who?