The 9 fun and low prep classroom team building games are the perfect addition to your class and will have your students asking for more!
Color Puzzles: Fun math and logic puzzles for kids. Build critical thinking and spatial skills! | teachmama.com
Read for my favorite Amazon finds for classroom management. There's something for managing groups, getting students' attention, keeping management tools organized, and more!
LOTS of FREE Printable worksheets for kids to practice math, literacy, science, & history with kids of all ages from 123Homeschool4Me.
This doctor classroom transformation is perfect for elementary students to practice math skills while having fun.
Are you looking for a fun way to reinforce teaching similes to students? Making simile monsters is always a huge hit! Students will create a fictitious monster and use similes to describe the 5 senses about their monsters. To hook students, I love to read the text Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood (affiliate […]
Want to change up your classroom management style? Check out my post about the Call and Response Classroom Management technique for all ages!
Squiggle challenges are a fun way to enjoy the end of the year or any time of the year to be honest! Your students will love this.
Create a solid math foundation with these tips for teaching place value in 1st grade. Use these ideas to avoid place value mistakes!
Using Math Journals. Student created math journals for the entire year! These interactive math notebooks are a great way for Kinder, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade to practice math skills in an interactive way. They cover number sense, addition and subtraction, graphing, shapes, money, word problems and so much more!
This doctor classroom transformation is perfect for elementary students to practice math skills while having fun.
Teaching Light & Sound from the Next Generation Science Standards CAN be fun and easy! Simple experiments make it simple to teach these key concepts!
This marks our fifth year of homeschooling, using Memoria Press for our curriculum. We use this classical approach to homeschooling, shifting things around just a bit to meet our needs. This year, I'm going to have 4 official students. Maeve will be doing preschool, Adam and Thomas will be in first grade, and Rachel will
Kids will have fun learning about the bones in the human body with these FREE Skeletal System Worksheets and printables!
I don't know about you, but sometimes something that seems like it would be so easy to teach seems a little daunting. How can I make sc...
Cooperative learning. Find out what it's all about and get some great resources to help you use this strategy well in your classroom.
Teach! Okay! is a fabulous way to reinforce concepts and ideas throughout the lesson. This practice combines seeing, saying, hearing, and doing. It gets students involved and talking. One thing I've noticed is that teachers TALK A LOT! If we can transfer some of that speech to our students, they can take more control of their learning. Plus, it sticks in their little brains better.
Capturing your students’ interest and curiosity during the first few minutes of class is the key to keeping them engaged for your entire lesson. But not all math warm up activities are created equally. Math teachers miss out on activating their students’ critical thinking and reasoning skills when
Tips for the first six weeks of school. Click & check our freebie!!
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Discover hands-on beginning of the year science activities that will excite your students and build the foundation for future science lessons!
Each Monday we collaborate with our building's new and Dual Language staff members for a professional development session based on what they highlight as their needs and/or desires for learning! This week we focused on Daily 5 ideas as all of our staff are currently working hard to get their stations and guided reading up and running! The teachers who attending the session came up with a variety of wonderful ideas and activities that could potentially be used throughout the year in these work stations. I thought some of you may enjoy taking a gander at what they came up with as well! Just a little background... we utilized a strategy many of you may be familiar with called "Round Robin" to gather ideas during our meeting. The staff were given the anchor charts with only the titles and asked to add any activity ideas they were doing, would like to do, etc. based on the title on their paper. We gave each group 1 minute to brainstorm and write their ideas, and then they were asked to pass the poster to the next group. We continued to do this until all posters had made it to all groups. This is a great strategy that you could use with your students as well to assess their background knowledge and/or learning of concepts. You could even do it at the beginning of the year to see what activities they already know and enjoy doing during Daily 5 if they are familiar with it from the year past! This may give you some insight as to what they may want to do in your classroom as well! Alright now onto the posters...keep in mind these were quickly written by our staff and we discussed them a bit after as well, so not everything may make perfect sense! But feel free to ask questions in the comments if you have any and I would be happy to try my best to answer! After our meeting, I also took some time to type up all of their ideas onto one page for them to hold on to and refer to throughout the year. You are welcome to a copy if you'd like- just click on the image below :)! (Graphics: Scrappin Doodles, Priscilla Concepcion)
Here are 13 fun classroom games to keep students to loves learning . Click here:
When I started at my new school last year, I came into a new reading program. I was used to doing almost all of my reading instruction WHOLE CLASS, but my school uses a guided reading model all the way up to 5th grade. I definitely had to rethink my reading block! I had done centers in the past, but wanted a really clear way to maximize the time and make the transitions clear for the students. Here's how I do my guided reading block! ROTATIONS We have Guided Reading/Centers Monday-Thursday from about 1:10-2:00 and I rotate through four groups. This means each center is 12 minutes long, with about 30 seconds for a transition. 12 minutes can fly by, so the students have to work on getting those transitions DOWN. I found a FANTASTIC resource by my friend Kristen of Chalk & Apples, and it has made centers SO easy. There are tons of different icons that can be easily swapped out on different days or weeks. I change mine up all the time! In a typical week, I do guided reading with leveled passages on Monday and Wednesday, and we do literature circles on Tuesdays and Thursdays. GROUPS My students are grouped according to DRA levels, because that is what my school uses. You might use AR, Lexile, or another measure. I have four groups: Low, Low-Mid, High-Mid, and High. Each group has a number, but I assign the number randomly so it doesn't match up to skill level in any way. I have 24 students in my class this year, so there will be 6 kids in each group. If you have a larger class, you can still make it work by having your higher groups work on their own while you work with a lower group and just check in! GUIDED READING I LOVE this close reading resource from Fifth in the Middle. I bought the entire bundle so I have TONS of options. Each reading comes in four reading levels, but they are on the same topic and look the same so students don't notice. There is also a paired text that I try to use for morning work toward the end of the week. There are several pages of activities for each passage, and I often have the students start these at the table with me after we've read the passage out loud. When it is their turn for guided reading, the students come to me at our back table with a pencil and a highlighter. I give them their sheets for that day and discuss what we will be looking for while we read (unfamiliar words usually) and we begin reading. I like to make sure each child reads, so however I have to break it up to make that happen. After reading through, I ask them to scan through again to find specific information. This changes week to week, so one time it might be looking for transition phrases, and another it might be looking for dates to create a timeline. Then, we talk about what everyone found and work on putting together the information on the worksheet. I, of course, provide a lot more scaffolding and support to my lower readers, while my high readers are able to do the activity on their own. LIT CIRCLES On the days that we have literature circles, the students still come to the back table with me, but this time they bring their lit circle book (which varies) and their lit circle binder. In their binder, they keep all of their jobs and their reading schedule. I have used about a GAZILLION resources for lit circles (including online blogs), but this one from Pocketful of Primary is my absolute FAVORITE: It is SOO easy to adapt to groups of different sizes and I found it very user-friendly for both the kiddos and for myself! I organize the jobs using a hanging file I found on Amazon. You can find it here: THE OTHER CENTERS So what do the kiddos do during their other blocks of time? Here's some options I cycle through: STAPLES: Partner Reading Each student has a partner from their reading group that they meet up with for this activity. I typically use "I Survived" books or similar short chapter books. I stock up through Scholastic! I have 6 shared books for the entire class, and I place a sheet inside the front cover so the students can write their names and where they ended each day they read. I always have new books ready to go for the students who finish. I do this strictly for fluency, so I don't do quizzes or worksheets. Silent Reading (KBAR) In my class, we call silent reading KBAR- Kick Back and Read. When we do a whole class KBAR, I sometimes take it outside. Spelling (Spelling City) I typically use Spelling City for centers, but sometimes do a worksheet instead. Vocabulary (Quizlet)Quizlet is AMAZING. I love using this for vocabulary! The students really enjoy it as well. Keyboarding (KWT) This is a tough one since monitoring the students' finger placement is so important. I don't do this OFTEN as a center, but throw it in now and again. Writing If we are working on a longer project (such as the state report), I have the students use this chunk of time for that. Otherwise, I sometimes provide a prompt or allow them to free write. Here's one of the resources I use: NoRedInk If you've never used this site, CHECK IT OUT! It's one of the best ways to get some extra grammar practice into your day! Be aware that the initial set up takes a bit of time because the students have to select a bunch of their favorites from different categories: books, tv shows, movies. What's neat is the site uses their preferences and their name + their friends' names when building the practice sentences. The kids get a kick out of it! Task Cards (small group) Students work with their reading group and record their answers on individual answer sheets. I have a huge selection of task cards that I keep in one of these bad boys from Michael's: Cursive (Can Do) I love that my school teaches cursive, but in fifth grade, we don't have a lot of specific time for it. To keep the kid's practicing, I assign pages from our cursive book during centers. Reading Comprehension (Reading Plus) We use Reading Plus, but there are many online reading comprehension sites. Use whatever your district provides or what works for your class! Games I will occasionally throw in a review game for the kids to play with their small group. The key is they have to be short and not too loud! Comment below if you have other questions or want to add some advice on running smooth ELA centers with Guided Reading!
Nearly 400 teachers weighed in on their favorite back-to-school activities and ice breakers - and here are their top picks! The most popular, practical, and unique back-to-school activities loved by teachers around the world!
If you're tired of teaching parts of speech lessons only to have kids forget all about it the next day, try these easy ideas and activities!
A collection of FREE grammar resources for teachers & homeschooling parents. These grammar activities come in printable and digital versions.
Hi Friends… I hope this post finds you well and enjoying your summer break. I just returned home from a relaxing vacation in Punta Cana! It was a ton of fun and I really needed the R & R 🙂 I actually wrote this blog post on the plane there…BUT… the flight didn’t have any … Science FUN with Interactive Notebooks! Read More »
This Scientist Classroom Transformation is perfect for elementary students. They get to practice math problems in a scientist-themed classroom.
Engage students with exciting trashketball games! Discover fun back to school games for icebreakers, reviews, and learning classroom rules.
Do you hate lugging around your HMH Teacher's Manual? These easy to navigate interactive PowerPoint slides are all you need for all of HMH Into Reading First Grade MODULE 1 Week 2 lessons! Slides are sorted by the day in which that skill is to be covered. Each slide can be annotated on top of w...
