I’ve gotten a few questions recently about how to use a KWL chart and wanting an explanation for it. I loved using KWL charts in my classroom in all subjects! You’ll find I also use KWL charts frequently as anchor charts in units I created in my store. You can use these charts in a […]
Do you use Elkonin boxes with your students? Using Elkonin boxes (also called sound boxes) in the classroom helps build the foundation of phonemic awareness for students. They are a set of boxes where each box represents a phoneme to model segmenting words into individual phonemes. While they seem so simple, they are a powerful […]
Friends, summer is here! This is the perfect time to take learning outside. Whether you are a mom of littles, a homeschooling mom, or a teacher looking for some new ideas, changing the scenery always freshens up learning! Hands-on alphabet activities help reach kinesthetic learners and reinforce skills. Helping our kids keep learning all summer […]
Can you guys believe that summer is just around the corner? I know the feeling that the year is slowly ticking by, and all of a sudden, it’s over! I’m sure you’ve been thinking about what you can do to help your little friends retain what they’ve learned this year. Without a structured time and […]
Managing word work for 22 (or more!) students can be a handful. Add in accounting for differentiation and it can make your head spin! I found a program I loved to use with my kindergarten students that helped me meet each learner where they were and organize their progress. Let’s explore word work in kindergarten! […]
Summer reading is so important for our students! The dreaded summer slide is real. Did you know that research suggests that kids will lose an average of one month of learning over the summer? For reading, students can drop two reading levels. Low-income students tend to decline even more. Yikes! I know that sounds like […]
When it comes to classroom parties, I am all about keeping them simple, making them easy to manage, and letting parents help as much as possible. I put together the top 11 minute to win it games for classrooms that you can use for any classroom party throughout the year. If you have parents willing […]
With Earth Day around the corner, I thought it was the perfect time to share this DIY Earth Day Necklace. I got this idea from a great teaching colleague. You know the kind. The kind that you would team teach with any day, go to when you have an idea, but just aren’t quite sure […]
If you have been able to catch any of my Facebook lives last summer or even heard me present, you will always hear me talk honestly about book shopping. When I was in the classroom, I was always SO fearful of letting all of those little hands touch my books. After all, I had spent […]
We primary grade teachers know that kids come to school with a variety of letter knowledge. Some kinder, and even first grade, students are still working on letter identification. This was the case for most of the schools I taught in. In her book, The Next Step in Guided Reading, Jan Richardson says that students who […]
Do you struggle to get to science every day? Do you find your students needing more support to master science content and vocabulary? One way I love to tackle science concepts is through read alouds. There are so many beautifully illustrated and well-written nonfiction and fiction books out there to help teach our students many […]
Word walls can be used no matter what grade you teach. Between anchor charts and students’ products, I know classroom real estate is valuable! So let’s talk about word walls and how to make them worth the room they take up. What is a Word Wall? Word walls in the primary classroom are the centerpiece! It’s […]
The 100th day of school is a pretty big deal when you are in kindergarten and first grade! Growing up, I never remember celebrating this day in elementary school. Now, it’s totally a “thing”! For my first graders, our day was filled with making 10 sets of 10 as we counted to 100 and celebrated […]
As classroom teachers, we need all the help we can get, amen? Wouldn’t an assistant be nice? Someone to remind you of things, tell you the weather before you run outside for recess, set the timer for you even when you are on the other side of the classroom? Well, there’s something for that, friend. […]
My first year of teaching, I had a fabulous science instructional coach at my school. He was really great at pushing me, which just made me a better teacher. He encouraged me to do individual science journals with my kindergarten kids. I wasn’t sure if my kids were ready to write in their own journals […]
It’s here! Seeing a solar eclipse is not something that happens every day! Years ago we were able to catch a solar eclipse at 100% totality here across America. How awesome was it to see something like this? The science nerd in me just loves it! You may be wondering, “How can I explain this […]
“What are your best sight word tips to help my readers learn them quickly?” is one question I get asked often. Well friends, I think it all comes down to how you introduce high-frequency words and how you keep reinforcing them. Once students understand how to orthographically map a word, it helps their brains learn […]
Guided reading has several tiny bits and pieces that come together to make your time at the table successful. I feel like the more I taught guided reading, the more aware I became of each puzzle piece. One of the pieces that I don’t think I fully grasped the power of until years later was […]
