Hooking students at the beginning of a lesson can be a make or break moment. It’s the time that you truly create buy in for the topic you are teaching. I would do my best every day to make the hook of my lesson engaging and to truly capture the attention of every child. Here […]
Teaching children to read is truly a more difficult task than I feel like any primary teacher receives credit for. Let’s be honest–if you handed the right tools to just anyone do you think they could get the job done? I remember my first year in kindergarten and just how overwhelmed I was by the responsibility […]
It happens to many of us in teaching. We get that email or call to our principals office and they want us to switch grade levels. Sometimes we smile and are thrilled about the change. Other times we go kicking and screaming, it seems. That was me my first year of teaching. It was October […]
A step-by-step guide to getting started with guided reading to grow strong readers. Guided reading. Those two simple words bring either happiness or fear to you. They bring happiness because you are able to reach each and every student, differentiate learning, meet each student where they are, and provide coaching as you see them blossom […]
If you hang out here often, you know how much I love guided reading. If you are on my email list, you have read about my guided reading journey. I jumped in during my first year of teaching and often felt like I was drowning. I wasn’t really sure what to think of the whole […]
We all know the drill. We often times are sent to PD sessions that don’t keep our attention or that don’t quite meet our needs. This is why, as teachers, most of us are readers. We are life-long learners. We take our learning into our own hands. We own it! Often times with balanced literacy, […]
Interactive read alouds are one of my favorite parts of our day! It’s a time for us to gather close, emulate the bedtime story time that so many kids do not get at home, and recreate that intimate time. It’s the time that I get to model how to think like a reader. I also […]
Mastering phonemic awareness is a key factor in reading readiness for little learners. No matter what reading level a child is on – pre-readers to high readers, they ALL have or need a strong foundation of phonemic awareness. Sometimes we just don’t know where to begin to help our students build the foundation of reading and other […]
Classroom time is so precious, and somehow things seem to just slip away sometimes. The floor is a mess. I lost time to re-test those sight words. The stack of papers to pass back is literally falling off of my table. I desperately needed some classroom time savers. I decided there had to be some […]
RTI–those 3 letters that just make you want to pull your hair out sometimes. As elementary teachers, we already prep for so many content areas. Sometimes adding RTI to the plate is just too much. At least this is how I felt at times. Managing RTI was just going to send me to the looney […]
I have a brand new, updated post about Reading Small Groups with Pre-Readers with the Science of Reading in Mind that you may also find helpful! One question I get more than any other is, “What do I do for guided reading with non-readers?” It’s a very common question and a very realistic question. We […]
Spring in the classroom means tons of fun is in store for science! Clouds and water, living and nonliving, insects, and plants are all topics that we cover as we teach our spring science standards. I wanted to show you just what I have up my sleeve for spring science for March! What I love […]
There are a few traits that most teachers have, which truly just make us even better at our jobs-we are teachable, we are helpful, and we like organization. I truly cannot think of one co-worker I have had over the years that was not teachable, helpful, and organized in some manner. But despite these traits, […]
January was always a fun time in our little classroom! The little learners come back and are so refreshed, they have somehow magically grown so much over the two week break, we are reading well, writing well, nailing math concepts, and it’s the perfect time to begin to dig deeper into science concepts as we […]
There is something special about the holiday spirit that lends itself naturally to teaching our little ones about kindness. While I think this is something that should be taught all year, the holiday season makes it easier. It also is a stressful time of year for parents, co-workers, and everyone. It can be a tough […]
Bringing science to life in hands-on ways is so important for our little learners. When it comes to teaching about weather and seasons, my students are always glued. I think that’s mostly because we don’t have all types of weather where we live. It’s mostly hot and hotter! Doing science experiments, like this snowstorm activity, […]
I have said before how teaching writing was never something I automatically loved. In all honesty, I was asked to be in charge of writing plans during my second year of teaching and again during my third year. It grew me. It stretched me. I became a teacher who loved to teach writing and use […]
Writing is a time of our day that often gets squished to the end of the day, especially in kindergarten. So often we think, “Well, they aren’t reading yet so they aren’t ready to write much. They can just draw pictures.” You’re right, they can draw pictures, but have you ever thought about how that is […]
