Last week when my students walked in the classroom and saw the escape boxes set-up, they started bubbling with excitement. I was asked no less than 100 times, “Are we going to do an escape today?”. I let the suspense build until they just about couldn’t take it anymore, and then I affirmed that we […]
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Combining information from multiple texts is not a skill that can be quickly taught. There is definitely a lot involved! Students must first be able to read and comprehend an individual informative text before they can apply those skills to combine information. Then integrating information takes that comprehension to a whole new level. The good
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I never imagined I’d worry about test prep for 3rd graders or test prep for 4th graders. Every year I start the school year with good intentions. I’m going to use best practices all year, and I’d not going to stress about test prep and scores. We’ll work hard all year and let the scores
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As a teacher, brain research absolutely fascinates me so much that I went back to school for a graduate degree in brain research. There have been so many new developments over the past several years and the implications for teachers are so powerful. However, it’s incredibly easy to get lost in the technical details, so
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Teaching students how to explain their answers in math is not an easy task. At the beginning of the year a student’s typical math explanation looks something like this, “I added 120+230 and got 350.” Sometimes I even have students write, “I did it in my head.” I’ve even seen, “I just knew it” as
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It’s hard to think of a math concept more important to upper elementary students than teaching fractions. Unfortunately, many students, even adults, have a difficult time understanding fractions. For many students, fractions are where they begin to struggle with math. The concept of fractions seem strange and contradictory when compared to their early work with
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One of the more challenging reading standards is explaining events in informational text. “Explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text, including what happened and why, based on specific information in the text.” This can be challenging to teach AND for students to master. In this post, I’ve shared some
The only thing more fun than a math project is a Christmas math project! It combines two of my favorite things. You can find this Christmas math project here. You can read about my Christmas Fraction Project here. In this activity, students are invited to enter a house in a holiday decorating contest. Some students
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Several years ago, I used my Christmas Geometry Project as a multi-day math project before Christmas break. When I changed grade levels, I wasn’t been able to use the activity, because I hadn’t taught geometry. I LOVED the math project so much that I turned the Geometry Project into a new Christmas Fraction Project. After I
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These Thanksgiving math activities include options for differentiation and opportunities with math tasks and projects. These differentiated pages are included in my Thanksgiving resource. Thanksgiving Math Activities-The Cost of Cooking Two-step word problems are always a challenge for students. They require students to read carefully and think about what the problem as asking, which is
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