Teacher Clip Art, Literary Resources, Classroom Ideas
One of the most engaging activities in my classroom over the last 20+ year has been Secret Sentences. Students LOVE to solve a secret mystery, and even better when they are practicing their letter sound knowledge at the same time!
WHERE TO BEGIN: SIMPLE WORDS
We begin with simple words. We use word tiles, scrabble tiles, or homemade tiles with n
As shown, student place tiles to match the FIRST SOUND of each little picture. They can also use dry erase marker on [Read More…]
How do you celebrate the end of the school year? Are you always collecting new ideas?
I’ve tried many different ideas over the last 20+ years, and today I’m sharing some of my favorite and most successful ideas.
END OF YEAR MEMORY SHIRTS
Students bring an older t-shirt to take part in this activity. (I usually grab a few extras at the dollar store for students who forget.) Slide some cardboard inside the shirts and ask students to write their name using Sharpies or [Read More…]
Welcome to the Social Skills Ideas Bank!
The Social Skills Idea Bank is a series of related posts, each dedicated to sharing strategies for teaching a particular social skill.
As teachers, our strength lies in sharing our ideas, experiences and strategies!
This is a growing list, and you are invited to contribute in the comments section. We hope you will, because there’s nothing like a good idea shared between teachers to make our jobs easier.
This post is about simple ways to guide students to growth [Read More…]
Do your students love animal research projects?
It’s a great way to introduce non-fiction writing, and it can be a source of pride for students who feel very “grown up” because they are doing research! However, this enthusiasm can be dampened if emergent writers are not supported with reading materials at their level, and so long as the information sources are not too overwhelming.
This is why differentiating your non-fiction materials for emergent writers is so important.
Here are some tips for implementing your [Read More…]
We reserve time each day for story writing.
There are so many ways to encourage students to write, even when they are just at the emergent level.
Two things that I focus on the most in my primary classroom are:
-Students feel confident in their ability to express ideas through writing.
-Students have the opportunity to share their written ideas in a supportive environment.
Explore Different Kinds of Writing
Many students have no strategies for finding a topic, so we spend time discussing different forms of writing and [Read More…]
SEASONAL ART IDEAS
Our classroom is always full of bright and colorful art work!
My student are so proud to see their work displayed, and how they pull their parents into the class to see what they completed today.
This year, I took my art lessons to another level by making them independent!
In the last 20+ years of teaching, I’ve often looped with groups of students for more than one year, so I am always having to come up with NEW projects so as not to repeat [Read More…]
Hi Everyone!
Here’s some real talk about my experience using STEM in the classroom.
When I am coordinating S.T.E.M. curriculum for grades 1-5, I observe many students exploring the STEM process who are truly engaged with hands-on learning.
For the most part, students LOVE it!
However…
Sometimes I also see students who are not yet comfortable with taking risks.
Some students are not emotionally equipped for dealing with the disappointment that arises when their great idea doesn’t quite work out the way they wanted.
Other students feel threatened by other [Read More…]
I am constantly trying to find new ways to integrate different subject areas in my classroom. We have LOTS of activities that integrate math, art and writing, but because it’s that time of year to start studying life cycles, we’ve now incorporated science into the mix! Here’s how we do it:
Our caterpillars arrived last week and my students are completely engaged in learning about their life cycle. We used color by numbers templates to create the round life cycle pictures [Read More…]
This will be my 22nd year searching for cute new Mother’s and Father’s Day ideas! Because I often have siblings of my students from previous years, I don’t want to repeat those ideas too often.
I’ve collected a big list of ideas, most of which I’ve tried in my classroom to see how well they work out in real life!
The links to the original posts are included so you can find more information.
Circle Flowers
We tried it and they were so cute! [Read More…]
My students LOVE building sentences with hands-on materials. We are also expected to use activities that can show progress, that are rigorous and that cover many differentiate skills at one time.
During center time, we use lots of different word tiles, word blocks and word puzzles to build sentences.
Hands-On Practice
In addition to this manipulative word work task each day, here are some of the sentence building printables we’ve been doing in class to develop our skills through the school year.
I want my [Read More…]
