These Christmas literacy activities should make the days leading up to Christmas vacation a little easier for you and fun for your students! No matter how crazy it is, the week before Christmas vacation is one of my favorite weeks of the school year. I have more flexibility to
3rd Grade Halloween Math Centers
There is something about this time of year when I start getting excited about Halloween, Thanksgiving, and even Christmas! I love, love, love all of the fun and craziness that the holidays bring. In this post, I've shared some of my 3rd Grade Halloween Math Centers. I may have
Activities to Teach Nouns
I never thought writing a post on noun lessons and activities would be exciting. To be perfectly honest, I've always dreaded teaching parts of speech. I know that if I was bored teaching it, my students had to be extremely bored studying it! I integrate parts of speech and
Homophone Lessons & Activities
Homophone lessons are not exactly my favorite thing to teach, but homophone instruction and practice is so necessary. Homophones are a concept that students can usually grasp in isolation, but are frequently misused in student writing. This blog post shares five lessons and
Standards Based Math Assessments
It can be quite challenging to find high quality standards based math assessments. Many times the assessments include more than what I need for authentic standards based assessments, or they're not a just right match to the standards. Plus, there are multiple types of math
Morning Work for 3rd and 4th Grade
Morning work plays a crucial role in my 3rd and 4th grade classroom. It's what I use for a daily spiral review in math and language arts. Since I've been implementing my morning work routine, I've seen a significant improvement in students' overall retention of skills. That
Heat Experiments
This heat unit includes some of my favorite heat experiments. The heat experiments are easy to prep, and the activities really helps students understand the concept of insulators and conductors (which almost always gives my students trouble). All you need is a glass cup, plastic
Elapsed Time
Do any of you have one of those topics that you just dread teaching? You know, that topic that you try to put out of your mind as much as possible. For me, that would be elapsed time. It's the one topic that I wish I could skip. Since that's not going to happen, I do try to make
How to Organize Math Centers
In this post I've shared how to organize math centers to help you save time and keep organized. Centers can be a great addition to the classroom, but it's not always easy to organize your center activities. And then once they're organized, it can be a challenge to KEEP them that
Magnet Activities
Magnet activities are the best, because there are so many to choose from. My students have some magnet background knowledge from first grade, and the third grade content isn't too difficult. Plus, I get to do really fun hands-on activities with my class. I used my Magnet