I’ve always prided myself on classroom management, but as my class size increases, so does the difficulty in keeping students focused and on task. Math centers (or centers of any kind) are no exception. I find that we start strong at the beginning of the school year. However, after we get into the swing of […]
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My teaching partner had the great idea of having our students complete a literacy based pumpkin project. Our students decorated a pumpkin to represent one of their favorite book characters, and then they created a written presentation to describe the character traits of the character they chose. Our students turned in their pumpkins today, and
I never thought I had a jealous streak until I started seeing all of these amazing anchor charts pop up online. Oh my goodness! There are some seriously amazing artists out there, and I am not one of them! I’ve always tried to make nice looking charts, but I found that it was taking me
Geography worksheets aren’t always fun, but turn them into stations to make learning geography terms fun! Geography stations can make an often challenging concept or skill fun and meaningful for students. These nine geography stations can be used for a whole group lesson or for centers during social studies. I have to say it was
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Tomorrow is open house for me, which means it has been crunch time in getting my classroom ready to go. It shouldn’t have been that difficult, because I decided to keep the same look from last year. I still really liked the bright colors, and to be quite honest, I didn’t feel like reinventing the
For your math workshop or guided math class to run smoothly, it is essential to explicitly teach your students the procedures you will use within your math instruction. However, before you begin teaching content area procedures, I recommend teaching general classroom procedures first. The very first day or two of school, I focus on more
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One of the questions I’m most frequently asked is about planning for the school year. That’s a big question without a quick or easy answer. It depends on the situation you’re in at the moment. Planning For New Teachers Don’t rush out and try to do all the things. It’s not feasible, and you’ll likely
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I love teaching with hands-on perimeter activities! It is one of my tip, top favorite things to teach because the possibilities are endless, and it’s so easy to make hands-on and engaging for students. It’s one of those concepts that I have to force myself to limit the amount of time I spend teaching, because
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I love the end of year countdown, and the lower the number gets, the more excited I am about summer vacation! I wanted to make something that would incorporate that end of year countdown into our daily routine. Since I already do a Number of the Day, I thought that it would be fun to
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I like to start the year off with hands-on place value activities, because place value is the foundation for number sense. My students usually come to me with a pretty good foundation, but I still like to focus on it for a bit to ensure their understanding for more challenging concepts. Hands-On Place Value Activities
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