To introduce reading workshop, it is essential to start the year with procedural lessons, rather than jumping right in to your curriculum. This may initially seem a little time consuming, but this will make reading workshop flow smoothly throughout the year. This post shares my first five procedural lessons for intorducing reading workshop and the […]
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I absolutely LOVE using escape lessons or breakout activities to make my instruction fun and engaging for my students. Earlier, I shared a blog post on how I’ve started using escape rooms in my fourth grade classroom. The post gives step-by-step directions in how to implement and organize a physical or digital escape room or
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I recently wrote about my favorite back to school resources, but I consider this post my most important back to school post, as it covers what I feel is the most essential classroom management strategy: The power of relationships. While I know that technically our job is to teach academics, but teaching is so much bigger
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Whenever I talk to other upper elementary teachers I find that math centers are something teachers either love or hate. There is rarely ever any middle ground when it comes to math centers. When I first started teaching, I tried centers and failed miserably. I didn’t use them at all for a few years, and
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I want to share with you my favorite back to school game. However, before I share the game, I need to give a little background… My husband and I went on a cruise where there was a game showed called The Quest. We had no clue what we were getting into, but everyone told us
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This post shares some of my favorite strategies for teaching vocabulary. As a reading teacher, the quote below certainly hits home. These are such powerful words concerning the importance of upper elementary vocabulary instruction, which is often neglected in today’s classroom. “Vocabulary is the best single indicator of intellectual ability and an accurate predictor of
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Grammar worksheets and activities don’t have to be miserable and boring for students-or for you! Teaching grammar appears to be a something teachers either love or hate. There are a lot of polarizing opinions on how to teach grammar, punctuation, and parts of speech. Some say it should only be taught in the context of
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Classroom organization plays an enormous role in classroom management and ultimately saves you time and energy. This post shares a few classroom organization tricks of the trade that I’ve picked up over the years that makes your classroom run smoothly. I don’t pretend to be an excellent classroom decorator, but this that’s not the purpose
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These elementary lesson plan templates can be a huge help! Writing lesson plans and prepping for the week doesn’t have to be an incredibly time consuming process. A little organization and efficient lesson plan templates can go a long way when it comes to saving time writing lesson plans and prepping for the week. In
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Before going into any detail on elementary STEM activities, I feel like I need to add a disclaimer. I like crafts. I have nothing against crafts. I’m only trying to clarify the difference between elementary STEM activities or STEAM activities and craft projects, as well as share ways to implement STEM lessons effectively in the
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