This Division Escape Room Lesson (you can find it here) is one of my favorite culminating activities to my 4th grade division unit. It incorporates so many skills and concepts into a fun and exciting format for students. I consider any lesson where students are so engaged and motivated that they don’t realize just how […]
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In this post, I share five common reasons for student misbehavior. No matter how strong our classroom management is or how positive our relationships with our students are, we are bound to encounter student misbehavior. As I’ve said before, I firmly believe the most important part of classroom management is our relationships with students. You
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Multiplying by multiples of ten and hundred sounds like it should be an easy concept to teach, but it’s not. In fact, many students struggle with this standard. It’s such an important concept for students to understand, because students will apply this concept in their multiplication and division standards. In this post, I share some
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Main idea worksheets and activities don’t have to be boring and full or rote learning. This challenging concept is often difficult for students to understand, so they need meaningful lessons. Over the years, I’ve learned that my main idea worksheets and activities need to be highly scaffolded in order for students to grasp this tricky
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Teaching character traits and characterization through mentor texts is always fun. After I teach basic comprehension strategies, I begin teaching story elements. You can read my post on teaching setting here. Upper elementary students are typically familiar with story elements, so they already know the basics. That greatest challenging is typically explaining their thoughts with
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Over the years, as I’ve refined my math instruction, I’ve tried to share as much as a can through blogging and videos. However it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to unpack everything through blogging and casual videos. This is the primary reason I developed Math Masterminds. I wanted to help teachers streamline their math professional
As a teacher, I felt like one of my weakest areas was dealing with what is often called “girl drama.” When I saw this as a teacher, I struggled to find the root of the issue, to have time to deal with the problem, and to know what to do about it. I was also
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I’ve worked on A LOT of resource updates this summer, so I wanted to share my corresponding pacing guides with you. You can read more about how I develop these pacing guides here. As always, it’s important to remember that this is just a guide. I try to never let the pacing guide dictate my
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Teachers agree that memorizing multiplication facts is such a challenging part of elementary school. In fact, I surveyed more than 20,000 teachers about their biggest challenge in math instruction. The most overwhelming response was that their students don’t know their math facts. This issue is a not a new trend. Math facts, especially memorizing multiplication
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Teaching setting is one of those reading topics that is so much fun. It’s relatively easy for students to understand, and there is so much great literature that can be tied into upper elementary setting instruction. My greatest challenge in teaching setting is having students use text evidence to support their ideas about the setting
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