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 reading and grammar.
Cereal. Like serial...
Students engage with Classroom Cereal stories serial style, or one piece at a time. Each story builds throughout the week, and the larger saga of life at Fairview Middle School unfolds throughout the year.
Short stories + grammar
Classroom Cereal is short story reading and grammar practice in one.
Stories
First and foremost, Classroom Cereal is a series of short stories. There are 30 total stories, divided into Seasons 1, 2, and 3. Each story is comprised of five parts.
And they're all totally free.
Story 1: "Watergate"
Story 2: "Instascam"
Story 3: "The Speech"
Story 4: "Squirm Worms"
Story 5: "The Spice Cabinet"
Story 6: "Snow Angels"
Story 7: "The Skills Test"
Story 8: "Duck Hunt Detention"
Story 9: "Project Principal"
Story 10: "The FMS Student Cook Off"
For Cooper, Malina, and Rodgers, seventh grade at Fairview Middle School is one disaster after another. By the end of Season 1, will they learn enough about the school, and its principal, to fight to keep FMS the way it is?
Story 21: "Fabled Places"
Story 22: "The Legend of the Lone Candle"
Story 23: "Inferno Snacks"
Story 24: "Kettle Cross Christmas"
Story 25: "Locker Frog"
Story 26: "The Man and Ms. Martinez"
Story 27: "Fairview Heights Luxury Condominiums"
Story 28: "The Little Magician"
Story 29: "Operation Romeo Treehouse"
Story 30: "Your Friend, Jamie"
Cooper, Malina, and Rodgers are on to high school, but Season 3 sees a new crew ready to step in at FMS. Before the year is out, they'll have to work together to understand their town's magical past and save Fairview as they know it.
Story 11: "Daybreak"
Story 12: "The Coin"
Story 13: "The Harvest Dance"
Story 14: "Ultimate Holiday Baking Championship"
Story 15: "People of Fairview"
Story 16: "The Corn Muffin Incident of 1997"
Story 17: "Finding Mrs. Comstock"
Story 18: "Washington's Lost Treasure"
Story 19: "The Hunt"
Story 20: "Fairview Farewell"
The secrets of Fairview, NJ are slowly revealed throughout Season 2. When they learn that one of history's lost treasures could be buried beneath their feet, Fairview Middle School students and staff race to find it first.
Grammar
Within every story are grammatical mistakes for students to find and edit as they read. There are 25 total errors per story (five errors per part) and they're all from one of these six categories.
Spelling
Rodgers was opening his locker when Principal Mellon appeered behind him.
Word Usage
Enraged, Malina raced to the front office.
She have a plan.
Capitalization
He knew his key to catching Mr. Nitman
was eric Fincher.
Punctuation
"Wait a second," said Malina "Did your mom comment on this?"
Cooper, of course, was the only won who
got lunch detention for it.
Homophones
Rodgers (The next day,) stood on the
auditorium stage with Orn.
Sentence Structure
Structured grammar practice
Each story's errors are organized to help students learn. Half of a story's 25 errors are random, but the other half address four specific grammatical concepts. Here are the concepts for Story 1.
Story 1: "Watergate"
Category
Concept
# of errors
Homophones
No and Know
3
Punctuation
Question mark (?) at the end of questions
3
Spelling
"wr" and "r" making the R sound at the beginning of words
3
Word Usage
Appropriate times to use the infinitive verb form
3
This means students will have three or four opportunities to practice each concept throughout the course of a story. Also, there's a question to assess mastery of each concept in every story's Quiz.
Did you say Quiz?
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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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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.
Who's responsible for this?
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.
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 Silver Spring, Maryland 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. 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?