48 Hours in Amsterdam: Fun things to do and where to stay. Join me as I run down Amsterdam highlights and the top 10 things to do during your weekend break

Printable poster in 11X17 inches in size highlighting what children learn and experience when engaging in the ARTS. Great to hang in a classroom, studio, an office, or even in your home to showcase to others why arts and leadership education is important! *****************************************...

Smithographic: Logo Designer & Brand Identity Digital Design Studio; over 30 Years Experience in: Logo Design, Digital & Graphic Design.

Smooth out the resin learning curve with these TOP 10 RESIN TIPS. They cover everything that a resin beginner needs to know to get great results every time. Even the experts follow these resin tips to make sure that their resin projects work.

Being able to run a 5k in under 25 minutes is a goal for many runners who are wanting to achieve their next PB or improve their race times.

Are you looking to explode your blog traffic with Pinterest? I reveal the best Pinterest strategies to grow your audience and your tribe.

Get a complete city guide & blog for what to do in 24 hours, or a weekend, in the city Den Bosch. Which is also named 's-Hertogenbosch. Plus insider tips!

Teachers around the world are picking up the pieces and filling in learning gaps caused by school closures, distance learning, and concurrent teaching. Students haven’t had a normal school year in 3 years. Sadly, this means a loss of learning time for many and teachers are having to fill in those gaps and address those needs. Despite planning stellar lessons to teach your grade-level standards we must not forget about checking for student understanding. This simple act of checking up on learning throughout your teaching will make a huge difference in your students getting it. Let me say it now...Do NOT worry about your pacing. Instead, worry about making sure that your students understand what you are teaching. It’ll all pay off in the end, I promise. Let’s dive into different ways on HOW to check for student understanding. Turn and Talk - Turn and talks are so powerful because they can be used with any subject in so many different ways. You can pose a question to students such as "share with your partner what you think the main idea of this paragraph is and why". You can have them solve a problem independently then share with their partner how they solved it and why. You can have them explain a concept that was just taught. As students are sharing with their peers, you can walk around the room to listen to their conversations. You may pop into some of them to ask follow-up or clarifying questions. Depending on how students respond, this gives you an idea of their level of understanding. While walking around, be sure to jot down quick notes about what you're observing! Click here to get this observation sheet. Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down- Teach students to put their heads down for this one (to avoid them looking around and copying others) OR have them place their thumbs by their heart so only you can see them. Pose different questions to your kids and have them give you thumbs up or down. You could also use this one to get a gauge of student understanding after introducing new concepts. Thumbs up if this is making sense and you feel confident. Thumbs sideways if it kind of makes sense and you need a little extra practice. Thumbs down if you are confused and need more help. *This of course will take talking to your students beforehand. Let your students know that it is OKAY if they don't understand and give you a thumbs down. If they aren't honest with you (and themselves) you won't be able to help them. Let them know that nobody else knows what they're showing you. Teach your kiddos to keep their thumbs showing until you tell them (to give you enough time to write down who needs extra help). Whiteboard Checks- Whiteboard checks are great to use for math. Have students solve problems (teach them to hold their boards down while they write), then have them hold it towards their chest with the back of the board facing out. This is your cue that they are done. When most of your students have their answers completed, you can have them flip their boards and hold it above their heads. You can do a quick scan to see who got the answer correct and who didn't. Jot down notes about how students are doing. Again, you can use a checklist like the one shown for student observations to mark how kids are doing with the concept. You can choose to make 5-6 kids at a time for each problem. Whiteboard checks also pair well with task cards. This helps you to not have to think up of the problems. It can also be utilized well with multiple choice questions for longer answers like ELA. Pinch Cards- Pinch cards are great to get quick snapshots of student learning. You can use double-sided pinch cards so that you have a variety of question types that you can use. True/False, ABCD, Yes/NO, Agree/Disagree. If you're interested in the pinch cards shown above, click here. Quick Checks/Exit Passes- Assign quick exit passes to your students to check for understanding of the day's lesson. Use these quick checks to determine what you will cover in tomorrow's lesson and/or to determine your small groups. Utilizing Exit Passes like this will truly help you to avoid serious intervention issues later on. Your pacing may get slowed down, but it's better than keeping up with pacing and then later finding out that half your class do not understand what was taught in the last month! I am currently in the process of creating these Quick Check Assessments for every single Grade 3 Math Standard. You can pick up what I have completed so far here. Be sure that you are following me on Instagram and TPT so that you can be notified when I post new resources (and Quick Checks). Any time I post something new, I will ALWAYS mark it down 50% off for the first 24 hours! Graphic Organizers- Graphic Organizers are a great way to assess reading comprehension! It's a quick snapshot to see if students are understanding the various comprehension strategies. I have a ton of Comprehension Graphic Organizers readily available for you. The best thing about them is that there are both printable and digital options available. Frayer Model- Yes, I know. Technically the Frayer model is a graphic organizer, but I felt this one needed to be a stand alone option. This is great because you can have students show their understanding in a variety of ways. You can truly see the understanding or lack of understanding through the various ways of representing something. DLIQ- This is another great Exit Pass. This comes in the form of a Graphic Organizer. Students fill out each section below: To get a copy of this DLIQ sheet, click here. Whip Around- Whip Around and Pass works well for anything that can be answered with a quick response. You can decide if you want to allow students the opportunity to pass or not. This works great with math facts, phonics practice, reading of sight words, etc. You can have a list on display, whip around the room and point to a different word, problem, or sound. Students must quickly respond then it's on to the next student. This is a fun one that students often feel like it's a game. I used to time how long it would take us, and they would set goals to beat their previous records! Hashtag it- Hand out sticky notes to students have them come up with hashtags for certain concepts. For example, you might ask them to hashtag multiplication. They might come up with #equalgroups #repeatedaddition #arrays #rowsandcolumns As they exit the room, they can submit their sticky note (be sure to include names) so that you can quickly and easily see if they understand the concept. Observations- Similar to the turn and talks, you would want to have some type of checklist to use while observing students. You could conduct observations while students are working independently (watch how their solving problems), listen in on conversations, observe them working on the computer, etc and take notes of what you notice. Share Out- Have students share their thinking! This gives you so much insight into their own understanding of certain concepts. You can ask follow up questions to really dig deeper at student understanding. This is so much more powerful than a paper pencil test because you can truly see conceptual understanding through students sharing aloud their thinking and reasonings. Regardless of how you choose to formatively assess your students, make sure you are doing it on a daily basis! In addition, make sure it's quick and easy so that you're actually able to check those assignments and use it to inform instruction for the following day. If you use any of these ideas, freebies or resources offered in this post, I would LOVE for you to share it and tag me on Instagram @teachinginparadise .. It would truly make my day :) Save for Later! Don't want to forget about these tips? Pin the image below to save for later. Until Next Time...Aloha!

Many young learners struggle with linguistic cues and following both written and oral directions can be difficult. They are required to learn vocabulary as well as strengthen cognitive processing areas such as auditory processing, visual processing, sequencing and more. Come download some free sample activities on my blog that you can use to help your students ... Read More about Fun Following Directions Activities Freebie

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Use this outline to teach students in upper elementary, middle

Facebook Pinterest Twitter Mom blogs are taking over the blogging world with full force and the biggest reason for this is for moms to work from home while also raising their children. I mean who wouldn’t jump at the chance to work from home on your own schedule (or your child’s schedule that is) while […]

Are you struggling with how to write your first blog post? If your blog is up and running and you're ready to start writing your first blog post, here're 6 tips you can follow to create your blog posts for more readers.

Super simple Hack to give your kids an awesome vertical LEGO surface.

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Learn 3 ways to strike the ball with more power! HOW to use your abs, WHERE to strike the ball and WHAT to do with your feet before and as you strike.

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middle school chorus

Let me preface this post by saying I am NOT an expert in gifted education by any means. I do hold my three part specialist qualifications in Special Education (including the gifted elective) and I have been teaching in a gifted intensive support program for the past six (going on seven) years. I am also the mother of a beautiful daughter who was identified as profoundly gifted by her paediatrician when she was only 16 months old. She attends a gifted ISP class in another school in my district. I am learning about teaching gifted students the same way I have learned about teaching ALL students, by listening, by observing, by trying new things, by differentiating, by talking to parents, to other staff, to experts in the field, by reading about and researching best practices, and by remaining open minded to all the things I don't know. When I started this blog, it was my intention to blog about teaching gifted students. And I have. But it might not look like it to someone outside looking in. What is it that you do that is different I am often asked? Usually I want to say NOTHING...good teaching is good teaching...but that is too simplistic a response. Why? Because gifted students do have different needs, they have different strengths and they do need different programming. This series of posts will not about whether or not gifted programs are a good thing or a bad thing, they will not meant as debate about funding or resources. These posts are going to be straight up about what I do in my school board, in my school working with my colleagues and in my classroom with my students. Well let's start off with what is a gifted child? I am asked this all the time by other teachers and non-eductors alike. I bet you have all seen this before: Click on the image above to download your own copy. As an educator of the gifted and as a parent of a gifted child, first off let me say that neither column encompasses the whole child. Many bright children possess gifted characteristics and many gifted students possess the characteristics of bright children. Some children are bright and gifted. Other children have been identified as "gifted" but may not present as "bright". Some gifted students have multiple diagnoses and can be gifted/learning disabled. I have students in my class who run the whole gamut of the continuum. In the Toronto District Public School board students are "tested" for the gifted program in the third grade. Students are usually nominated by their teachers, but they can also be nominated for screening by their parents/guardians. I won't get into the specifics of the testing/screening. This is formally conducted by trained psychologists. On the overall scoring a student needs to be in the 98th percentile in one area - either perceptual or reasoning. Parent and teacher observations and checklists are taken into account and a IPRC (Individual Placement and Review Committee) meeting is called to decide what would be the best placement for the student. The IPRC will meet with the parents and: decide whether or not the student should be identified as exceptional identify the areas of the student’s exceptionality, according to the categories and definitions of exceptionalities provided by the Ministry of Education decide an appropriate placement for the student review the identification and placement at least once in each school year Students traditionally start in the gifted progam in the fourth grade, although TDSB does have some gifted programs for primary students. You can click HERE to read my earlier post about the Top 10 Myths About Gifted Learners. In the upcoming instalments of this Gifted 101 series I will delve into how teachers in my school work to meet the identified needs of gifted students. Stay tuned!

Supetar is such an amazing town to visit on the island of Brac! Here's everything to know and how to get from Split to Supetar Croatia.

For us--and for our clients, one of the best things in the world is a quick breakfast that we can grab on-the-go -and that's healthy and satiating! One of the most popular recipes from our book, The Nutrition Twins' Veggie Cure, was our Veggie Frittata Bites. These are super

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Are you ready to try a Humpty Dumpty classroom crime scene with your special education students? I'm sure you've heard of the rhyme of Humpty Dumpty.. But have you heard the alternative version? Where somebody PUSHED Humpty Dumpty off the wall!?! Have your students put on their detective hats and come solve this hands-on and

Nature walks can be a fun way to get outdoors to learn and begin a simple nature study habit. Getting outdoors and exploring God’s creation is a very important part of our homeschool. It has many benefits that should not be missed, both health-wise and education-wise. We can’t always get out every day, but we...

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A blank novel outline template for use with Google Docs, Google Keep, and Scrivener. The One Page Novel is a simple, memorable structure for novelists.

The Color Monster is the story of a monster who, with the help from a little girl, learns about his emotions through different colors. This book companion is the perfect cross-curricular addition to your classroom for teaching your students about their emotions. What is included? • Visual craft with step-by-step real picture sequencing • Writing activity (to go along with the craft - great for bulletin board displays!) • STEM emotion activity • Visual recipe to make monster cookies • 7 differentiated cut/paste worksheets (errorless included) • Task box emotion clip cards When do you use book companions? Book companions are a great addition to any reading or language arts block. They also serve as a great print-and-go lesson for any substitute binder. PLEASE NOTE * 1. You will need to purchase the book The Color Monster - A Story About Emotions by Anna Llenas to go along with the book companion and craftivity. 2. Part of this book companion is included in the January Mini Lesson Plan Pack. Connect with me: • Newsletter • Blog • Facebook • Instagram • Pinterest • Don't forget about the green ★ to follow my store to get notifications of new resources and freebies! Thanks for Looking and Happy Teaching!

If like me you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, New Zealand is probably pretty high up on your travel bucket list. Or if you’re not as big a nerd as me you might

All you need to know about visiting Båstad, the tennis capital of Sweden (that isn’t watching or playing tennis!) including the Bjäre Peninsula.

I'm going to show you how to make a smart and fabulous pillow cover with a truly invisible zipper! Few things bring me more satisfaction than a well done invisible zipper. I see lots of tutorials for

On one of my recent trips across the country, I got to thinking about different kinds of air travelers. There’s the organized lot that packs in advance, checks and double-check their bags the…