After I finish my place value remediation lessons, I begin my lessons for subtraction and addition remediation. I always begin with addition, but I do intermix fact families as I teach addition. This allows subtraction to become a more natural form of computation for students. These lessons begin very easy, but they build a conceptual […]
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Place value interventions are essential for students with difficulty in math. There is a very big difference between getting place value questions correct on a quiz or being able to identify the place value of value of a digit in a number and truly understanding place value. When I begin remediating students in math, I
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Finding a high quality math intervention program is a bit like finding a magical unicorn. It’s not an easy task! In almost any elementary classroom, there will be at least one student that needs math remediation. Remediation is the process of providing assistance to students who are experiencing difficulties so that they can understand the
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I don’t know if this is true everywhere, but in the two schools where I’ve taught, I’ve found that things start to get a little crazy in October. My personal life is busier. My school calendar is bursting. And my students get oh-so excited about every single holiday that will occur in the next few
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I cannot tell you how much my students and I LOVE completing math escape rooms. These escape lessons are some of my favorite activities of the entire school year. Now that I have a little experience and practice, it’s a cinch for me to prep and set-up, even when using the activity with three groups
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Reading comprehension strategies are the focus of my first reading unit. Even though not all of these reading comprehension strategies are specifically mentioned in state standards, they’re still an essential component to reading instruction. It doesn’t matter how good of job we do teaching complex skills such as main idea and integrating information from multiple
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To introduce reading workshop, it is essential to start the year with procedural lessons, rather than jumping right in to your curriculum. This may initially seem a little time consuming, but this will make reading workshop flow smoothly throughout the year. This post shares my first five procedural lessons for intorducing reading workshop and the
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I absolutely LOVE using escape lessons or breakout activities to make my instruction fun and engaging for my students. Earlier, I shared a blog post on how I’ve started using escape rooms in my fourth grade classroom. The post gives step-by-step directions in how to implement and organize a physical or digital escape room or
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I recently wrote about my favorite back to school resources, but I consider this post my most important back to school post, as it covers what I feel is the most essential classroom management strategy: The power of relationships. While I know that technically our job is to teach academics, but teaching is so much bigger
Essential Classroom Management Read More »
Whenever I talk to other upper elementary teachers I find that math centers are something teachers either love or hate. There is rarely ever any middle ground when it comes to math centers. When I first started teaching, I tried centers and failed miserably. I didn’t use them at all for a few years, and
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