As the school year winds down, I always try to complete a few end of the year projects that will create lasting memories for my students. This year my students are writing letters to their future self, and this has quickly become my absolute favorite end of the year (or anytime of the year activity). […]
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March is here, which means it’s time to introduce all new activities for my math centers. I typically, like to phase in a few stations at a time, rather than introduce 12 activities in one day, but that didn’t work out because of our six recent snow days. I usually phase the stations in, because
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Reading a ruler worksheets and activities can be so much fun for students. This week students have been learning to measure to the nearest 1/4 inch, which can be challenging for students. That’s one of the reasons it’s beneficial to teach reading a ruler after your fraction unit. It’s a great tie-in to teaching fractions
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I’ve always prided myself on classroom management, but as my class size increases, so does the difficulty in keeping students focused and on task. Math centers (or centers of any kind) are no exception. I find that we start strong at the beginning of the school year. However, after we get into the swing of
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My teaching partner had the great idea of having our students complete a literacy based pumpkin project. Our students decorated a pumpkin to represent one of their favorite book characters, and then they created a written presentation to describe the character traits of the character they chose. Our students turned in their pumpkins today, and
I never thought I had a jealous streak until I started seeing all of these amazing anchor charts pop up online. Oh my goodness! There are some seriously amazing artists out there, and I am not one of them! I’ve always tried to make nice looking charts, but I found that it was taking me
Geography worksheets aren’t always fun, but turn them into stations to make learning geography terms fun! Geography stations can make an often challenging concept or skill fun and meaningful for students. These nine geography stations can be used for a whole group lesson or for centers during social studies. I have to say it was
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Tomorrow is open house for me, which means it has been crunch time in getting my classroom ready to go. It shouldn’t have been that difficult, because I decided to keep the same look from last year. I still really liked the bright colors, and to be quite honest, I didn’t feel like reinventing the
For your math workshop or guided math class to run smoothly, it is essential to explicitly teach your students the procedures you will use within your math instruction. However, before you begin teaching content area procedures, I recommend teaching general classroom procedures first. The very first day or two of school, I focus on more
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One of the questions I’m most frequently asked is about planning for the school year. That’s a big question without a quick or easy answer. It depends on the situation you’re in at the moment. Planning For New Teachers Don’t rush out and try to do all the things. It’s not feasible, and you’ll likely
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