It can be challenging to come up with ideas for great word work activities that meet the needs of all your students, and it may be even harder to

Take your word work reading center to the next level with these low prep and engaging word work centers! Plus, learn how to organize and run the word work center!

We are headed quickly for Back to School! Summer seems to go by faster every year, don't you think? This year for one of my goals in reading as we start back to school, I

These fun, engaging, NO PREP word work activities help students practice their words effectively and are the perfect option for your 1st or 2nd grade class!

Dive into the world of literacy centers and unleash their full potential with insights from the science of reading!

Need to help your students get more hands on practice for their vocabulary words? I've got 5 fun vocabulary games you can use right away!

Back to School is right around the corner for us and I am SUPER excited to kick of this school year with some fun, hands-on and engaging resources for The

Boggle is such a great game for pattern recognition and spelling. You can even get a little math in there with the scoring. Kids (and adults) love it! Here is a template you can use with your class. The color version is for using with your document camera, while the grayscale version is perfect for ... Read More about Boggle Template: Make a New Game Each Time!

Do you reinvent the wheel every single week when it comes to centers, word work, stations.....whatever you happen to call them? Yeah, me too! I know better, I swear I do but it just never fails. I am here today to tell you that there IS A BETTER WAY! Let me begin by saying I am a big fan of Daily 5. I run my room about as closely to the Daily 5 model as possible but this is one area I just never could give in on. The sisters suggest having out materials for students to build words, write words, and work with words during this choice. It is that simple. It is called word work after all right? I have always felt the need for my work work choices to be very specific so that students could be working on what I wanted them to be working on. Wait a minute.....that's the opposite of Daily 5 philosophy. It's all about CHOICE and becoming a BETTER READER so why am I making all of the choices? So here is what I did. I put as many random materials as I could find in my classroom and made them available to students. THAT'S IT! Along with a sight word list to use as a reference and one fun morning of showing them what it was all about and I haven't looked back since. They are working SO HARD during our word work time because they are truly using materials they love and making good choices to become better readers and writers. It has been amazing! Here are a few simple, simple examples. Again...simple! I did not go out of my way for any of these! #1 Magnets I have a couple of really organized sets of magnets and then these just thrown in a clear shoe box. Guess which one gets picked the most? You guessed it! Maybe it's the bright colors or maybe kids are just drawn to chaos. Either way it's a win! #2 Wiki Sticks I lied. I did go out of my way for this one just because I've always wanted to use them. My students think they are really fun! One of my kiddos who struggles the most during word work time (and refuses to use a sight word list) spelled out "tatr tot" last week using these. He was pretty impressed with himself and I was too! I got these from Amazon. You can see them through my affiliate link HERE. #3 Pom poms I've used these for fine motor before but I've never just included them in word work. They get picked every round! I didn't originally tell them to use a cookie sheet to build on but I like how it keeps everything in one space. They came up with that idea. #4 Beads I had these from the Dollar Tree for my fine motor bins too so I just included them in word work for now. They are REALLY interesting to build with because you have to pick up each bead and set it on its side so it won't roll away. The cookie sheet came in really handy for this one. #5 Plain OLD white boards I have really old yucky white boards. Guess what? They don't care! I set them all on the shelf and they pick one, a marker, and a sock (they are baby socks) and write their sight words. Marker dry? DON'T COME GET ME! Just throw it out and get a new one! I put an old assortment of markers in here so we could weed out the bad ones. TIP! Put your sight word list in a sheet protector and students can cross off words as they write them. My students figured out that organization tip too. I love when they help me figure things out! #6 Letter Tiles These came with our Reading Street materials and they are really fun for building CVC words because there are so many vowels included. I encouraged them to work on sight words but I noticed one student building CVC words, blending them together, and then sorting them into real words and make believe words.You better believe I had him share out at the end of word work to show his classmates and now everyone is doing it too. Instant center.....no prep! #7 Scrabble Tiles Seriously though. I have been collecting these forever and I NEVER use them because well.....honestly I didn't know what to do with them. It bothered me a little that they were all capitals but guess what? My kids don't care! They love using the little stand to build words with and it does not matter one little bit that they are all capitals. #8 Letter Stamps I had these already and they are always a part of our word work so this was a station that just stayed the same. I do like that they have to focus on our new words of the week for this one. I have to be in a (little) bit of control sometimes! But my 2nd grade colleague just has blank paper at this station and they stamp any word they want. I'm sure my kiddos would love that too! I might switch it out and have them do that next week. You can get the STAMPS HERE and the STAMP PAD HERE. These are affiliate links which means I get a small amount if purchase through the link at no additional cost to you. Seriously love these though and they have lasted a long time! #9 Paper Centers Yes....I still need a little bit of control and my theory is that some kids will totally love using all of the hands on stuff but some kids still want to complete a paper like a cut and glue, word search, or write the room. I didn't do away with all centers, I just added all of the fun word work centers into what we already had going. BUT! This has already saved me a ton of time in the planning department. I put out 4 papers for the week and that's it. All my centers are planned for! You can see the centers I have available that are aligned with Reading Street stories HERE. This week our story is The Little Engine That Could. You can see the four paper choices on top and then all of the materials stored below. I love these containers from Walmart because the handles on the sides lock the lids down tight and keep beads, wiki sticks, tiles, and pom poms from flying everywhere. I have reflected a little bit on whether these were just working so well because my students are UBER independent right now or because this is just a great fit. I mean really, they are almost 1st graders after all! But I think that these would have worked great at the beginning of the year with some alphabet options just as nicely as they are working now. I put out similar items at the beginning of the year anyway, this would just be some added options. Would I overwhelm my students with all of this in one day. NO WAY! My students have been exposed to all of these items in one way or another (through fine motor stations, word work, or in small group with me) except for the wiki sticks. Those were brand new. I waited a couple of days to add those in to make a BIG deal about them. If this was the beginning of the year I would put out 2 choices until we were really solid with those choices and then add more in. Get the sight word list shown in the pictures that aligns with Reading Street Kindergarten words HERE. These types of centers work great with these Rainbow Word Sight Word lists too! Want to save this post for later? Pin it here! P.S. Get a FREE ALPHABET ACTIVITY when you sign up for my newsletter HERE!

Engaging word work activities for upper elementary grades can be hard to find. On this post, I will share three free word work activities to use with Jenga

Explaining how my middle school students create one word goals in my class using my One Word Goal Activity!

Welcome (or welcome back) to another installment of my series on teaching vocabulary to gifted students. In previous posts, I wrote about steps to take before staring vocabulary instruction, including assessing what students already know using a quick and easy self-ratings scale. Next, I wrote about strategies for introducing new words and putting a gifted twist on vocabulary instruction. The whole reason I started researching best practices in vocabulary started when I realized a few things. One, I had gifted students to teach and it was obvious that the regular, run-of-the-mill vocabulary materials handed to me by the district would not be sufficient. Two, had the curriculum been challenging enough for my students, I found it dreadfully boring. If I found it boring, my students would have positively died. And I'm not into creating that kind of emergency in my classroom. And three, I knew the importance of vocabulary instruction and it's far-reaching effects, so it was something I felt I couldn't afford to get wrong. Thus began my own journey into deeper learning so that I could really make an impact in our classroom, while also injecting some FUN! This post goes into a little more depth on the components of quality vocabulary instruction, as well as some of the activities that I used with students to engage them in meaningful word learning and purposeful practice. Just as a quick reminder, a child's vocabulary is a huuuuuuge predictor of academic success in ALL areas. What the Research Says One of the best-known researchers in the field of vocabulary instruction is Robert Marzano. In his studies, he found six key steps were the key to better vocabulary instruction. The first three steps are done with the help of the teacher: Teachers should give students an example, description, and/or explanation of the new term. Students need to restate the explanation, description, or example using their own language. Students should construct a picture, pictograph, or symbolic representation of the term. (If you hop back to my previous blog post, you will find a free download of a graphic organizer on which students can engage in steps two and three). 4. Periodically, students should engage in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks. 5. Students should be asked to discuss the terms with one another sometimes. 6. Students are periodically involved in playing games that enable them to play with terms. In studies conducted with classrooms using these strategies, it became clear that when teachers engaged their students in alllll of these six practices, students usually showed significant gains in vocabulary learning. Other well-known vocabulary researchers, Dr. Kate Kinsella and Dr. Kevin Feldman, point out three things that don't work in their article, Narrowing the Language Gap: The Case for Explicit Vocabulary Instruction: "looking up words in the dictionary, using written context to determine word meaning, unplanned, extemporaneous vocabulary teaching." Instead, teachers should focus on four important ideas: wide reading, direct teaching of important individual words, teaching word learning strategies, and fostering word conscientiousness through various activities that encourage language play, and choice in writing (Graves, 2000) and (Nagy and Scott, 2000). My General Flow of Vocabulary Instruction and Assessment Now that I've shown you some research, and told you a little about how I preassess and introduce the words, as well as how I accommodate gifted learners, I'm thinking you might be curious about how it all fit together for me. A typical vocabulary cycle flows like this for me: Pre-test students on new words by having students complete a self-ratings-scale prior to starting a new list Introduction of new words. If they already know any of the words well enough to define and use in a sentence, they don’t have to study those words. You can find more about how I pre-assess for vocabulary in this blog post. Students add their words to our “Map It Out” cards. We discuss the definitions of the vocabulary words together. Students continue to work on these throughout the entire cycle, starting with the synonyms and antonyms (you can even do this part together) and reserving the sentence writing portion until near the end. The “Map It Out” cards are great for students to keep with them when they are working on the other learning activities throughout the cycle, too! They can always go back to the cards and add to or revise them as they learn more about their words. You can read more about introducing the words and find a free download of the Map It Out cards here. Students add their words to a catalog or make word wall cards for each root or affix. The “Map It Out” cards themselves are sized to fit on a 5 x 7 notecard or in a composition notebook. I like students to keep a record of all of their words for the year to use for reference and as evidence of all the learning they’ve accomplished! Students choose one to three (or more) learning activities (like the ones outlined below) to complete. *The number of activities chosen should be a reflection of how much time students have and the number of activities you think each student needs. Gifted students may require much less repetition than “typical” peers or students with other learning differences so the activities that go more in-depth may be a better fit for them!* Use a quick-check strategy every couple of days to measure progress on learning. I do not use this as a graded quiz. It is meant to be a low-stakes, low-risk tool that students can use to quiz themselves as they are progressing toward mastery. This is a research-based strategy that has been shown to increase retention. Assess student learning following the completion of the activities. This cycle is flexible, but I found it generally took about 7 school days to get everything accomplished. Yours might take more or less time, depending on how much class time you can dedicate to it, and of course, on your students' needs. How I Encouraged Word Play in My Classroom While I definitely engaged students in the super important pre-assessment and direct instruction activities, my FAVORITE part of the vocabulary learning process was definitely allowing students to engage in different activities that helped students achieve deep learning and understanding of their words. This was definitely the part my students enjoyed the most, too. I'll outline a few of my favorite activities here, and maybe even provide a *free* download for you at the end. "WordTube" This activity is a play on the popular YouTube website. Students write each assigned vocabulary word and draw a picture of it on a “WordTube” screen. Then they use the “Up Next” boxes to write the part of speech, identify the roots/affixes contained in the word or the origin if the word does not appear to have Greek or Latin roots or any affixes, and define the word. Students should paraphrase the definition, as this strategy requires more critical thinking and will ultimately help them remember the meaning of the words better. Word Analogies Students create their own analogies for vocabulary words. Creating and using analogies when learning new material is a research-based strategy that requires students to have a deeper understanding of vocabulary words, activates prior knowledge, and helps students bridge the gap between their schema and new learning. There are two ways students can use this strategy-- students can create their own analogies for vocabulary words and complete the entire analogy. Or, students can create partial analogies that they can trade with a partner to solve. For this option, they must also make up an answer key (I suggest they create the answer key first). You'll want to be sure to teach children the different kinds of relationships you can create with analogies--for example, analogies can show part to whole relationships, the can reflect synonyms, antonyms, time sequences, increasing or decreasing intensity, etc. Shades of Meaning For this activity, students generate semantic gradients for their vocabulary words. This requires them to think of or find words that are semantically similar to their vocabulary words and then to arrange the words in order. This activity helps students make meaningful connections between words they already know and their new term. There are, again, two variations of this activity that are fun and useful. For one variation, students would either think of, find (or be provided with) a list of synonyms that align with the original vocabulary word. They would then arrange the terms in order from the strongest expression of the term to words that express the term to a lesser degree. For the second variation of the activity, students think of or look up 5 synonyms and 5 antonyms for the vocabulary word. They place the vocabulary term in the center of the continuum and then arrange the synonyms and antonyms so that they get stronger as they move away from the center. When students are finished, they should discuss with someone why they chose to put their words in order. They could write their rationale instead if no-one is available to discuss. I like to allow students access to both options because some terms don’t really have opposites. Further, I always allow some flexibility with the number of synonyms and antonyms students have to find, as some words—particularly words from content area studies—don’t have many synonyms or antonyms. Also, since these are fairly subjective and there is lots of “grey” area in terms of how the words are arranged, grading these should either be avoided, aside from completion, or rely heavily on the child’s explanations. I highly suggest this activity be completed with pairs or small groups of children to encourage the rich conversations that can occur as they are determining the order in which to place the words. Making Connections Making connections between words really encourages students to think deeply about the meaning of words, and how they relate to other words. This activity is well-suited for small groups of students, as well as the entire class at once if you’re all studying the same words at the same time. Students are each assigned one or two unique words, and then they spend time interacting with others in an effort to find a word that they feel connects with their words. Eventually, students settle on a connection or match. Then, students explain either in writing, to the class, or just to the rest of their group members how their terms are connected. You will want to spend some time with your students discussing the difference between surface-level and deeper connections. For example, students need to look past words having the same number of letters, starting or ending with the same letters or sounds, being in the same chapter in their science book, etc. The activity (and related research) suggest that making deeper connections between words and concepts are really what will help cement the vocabulary into children’s learning, creating long-lasting, authentic learning experiences. Interview a Word This activity is great for helping deepen students’ understanding of words and their possible connotations. One student “becomes” one of the words, and the other student is the interviewer. It is fun to encourage the “words” to show their personality and act as though they were truly embodying their word. My students really enjoy acting things out like this! I suggest doing this activity in pairs or small groups, however, if a child is working independently, he or she can just write down the answers to the interview questions on paper instead of posing the questions for someone else to answer. For this activity, you may find it useful to allow students access to websites such as visualthesaurus.com and www.etymonline.com so they can research some possible answers to the interview questions. As a fun aside, having students make and wear nametags for this activity is a fun way to boost engagement! Create a Menu Students get full creative license over designing a menu for a new restaurant and using their vocabulary words in the descriptions. Students start by deciding on a theme and name for the restaurant. Then they decide the names of dishes to include on the menu, all fitting in with the designated theme. Next, students use all of their vocabulary words to create a restaurant menu. In my opinion, it is not necessary that each menu item use a vocabulary word, as long as they have managed to include all of their words on the menu somehow, using them properly in context. Creating a themed restaurant and sticking to only including dishes that fit the theme definitely requires higher level thinking skills. If you find this to be too challenging for some of your students, you could allow them to include dishes on the menu that do not fit into a particular theme, as long as they are still using their vocabulary words to write the descriptions. If you want to take this to the next level, you could do something like have students design and create an actual (miniature) restaurant storefront, or allow students time to visit each other’s restaurants and “order” something off of the menu. Sound like fun? There are SO many other great ideas for helping your students engage independently with their vocabulary word study. I put three of the above ideas together for you in a free exclusive download if you're ready to give them a try. This freebie is available ONLY to my subscribers and can be found among many other free resources in my free resource library. Click the image below to gain access to your free copy! *Just to be clear, by clicking to get these freebies (and instant access to the growing collection of free resources in my library of subscriber exclusives), you're also agreeing to be added to my email list, where I'll send occasional messages with fresh ideas, tips, and other resources straight to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time.* If you're ready to save TONS of time, you can find these three activities and many more in my store by clicking on the images below. So far, I have FIVE separate volumes of nine activities created and ready to download and print. Each volume includes a table of contents and full-page student-friendly directions for each of the activities. They also include a choice menu for each volume, which allows students to make choices about which activities they work on to learn their vocabulary words each week. It is also a good tool to track completion of menu options depending on how long or how many options you allow students to complete. All three volumes also include a rubric, the "Map It Out" graphic organizer and nine vocabulary activities that can be used with any of your own vocabulary lists. Each volume of my Word Study Activities also has one or two FREE bonuses, from a formative assessment tool to a student activity proposal form to a pre-assessment and self-ratings scale. I also bundled these activities together for big savings. You'll get all five volumes (45 activities!) and the corresponding bonus resources for the price of four volumes! If students complete one different activity a week, there are enough activities in the pack to last the entire year (or longer)! You can access the bundle by clicking the picture below. Let me know if you have any questions! I love hearing from my readers!

I have always struggled with spelling, and how to engage students in meaningful activities to practice their spelling words! I have tried just about everything under the sun, from rotating through teacher-selected word work centers, to a free choice spelling menu where students try to complete different activities throughout the week. Nothing seemed to work!

Stop taking away recess and using other punishments to control your students. Find success with 10 powerful classroom management strategies!

Create a Math Block I can't say this enough. An effective math block will help you tremendously! It creates routine and structure that you need to make sure everyone is on task. This is what I include in my math block: Engaging Mini Lessons Math centers Independent practice visuals throughout the classroom Use A

Are you looking for a way teaching math vocabulary in a more visual and conceptual way? To differentiate for your struggling learners? Every year, it seems we get more and more visual learners coming into our classrooms, learners who benefit from math word walls that show concepts and vocabulary in action. This approach has worked wonders in my classroom and I know it will in yours! Adding a visual math word wall to my classroom completely changed how my students access our math vocabulary and the concepts we learn in class. Our math word walls are covered in examples and visuals that show the math concepts in context along with the vocabulary words we cover in class.

Want an intentional way to increase your students' morphological skills AND vocabulary? Try a morphology word of the day routine!

Vocabulary instruction is so critical in today’s classroom! A vast vocabulary will help students to become better readers and writers. Vocabulary is also essential to their performance on standardized tests. Helping kids to develop their vocabulary is time that is well spent in a busy classroom. I have developed a routine to teach new vocabulary

Grab these NO PREP Spelling Pages your learners can use with ANY list of spelling words. Great for the classroom or at-home learning.

These three icebreakers for teens will make the first class, youth group, or club fun for everyone, even the introverts.

Brain breaks are a great classroom management tool to use regularly in your classroom. Brain breaks are short, 1 to 2 minute, activities that can…

This is one of my favorite ways to transition from one activity to the next or from the carpet to our desks! Students have so much fun picking the word and anxiously waiting for their movement word to be said!!Included: - 4 Code Word sheet options (Black and White, Pastel, Brights, and Boho)- Over 3...

Spending the first week of school teaching classroom expectations and procedures is essential for a successful year. Glue is a tricky school supply for many little learners and there definitely needs to be instruction dedicated to teaching learners how to use this tool.Glue BottlesWhen learners are not taught how to use their glue correctly things

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Massive list of classroom jobs for elementary students in preschool, kindergarten, first grade, or second grade - such great ideas for classroom jobs!

I could never say enough positive things about using a work box system in the classroom-- for any child. I've used them with typically developing peers in the classroom as well and it's an amazing way to in-bed practice and skill maintenance, all while working on attending to a task as well. Over the summer I did a whole post on how I structure this system in my classroom. You can check it out {here}. But one thing I've never done is actually post photos of the activities I have in my boxes. My boxes have grown since I last posted a photo this summer. I have 83 work boxes available in my classroom at all times. I know that sounds like the only thing that make up the shelves in my classroom are work boxes, but I promise it's not. It might be close, but it's not! I don't have a lot of remaining storage in my classroom. So to constantly be changing out activities and finding a storage system for previous activities is a little challenging for me. So I prefer to just have a lot of boxes available. We also need a high number of boxes to complete each day. Let's break it down. I have 10 students total, 8 of whom complete work boxes at some point doing the day. Children complete anywhere between 1-10 boxes a day. Right now, as a class, we are completing 28 boxes a day. We come to school 4 days a week, so that's completing 112 boxes a week. And planning so strategically that a child doesn't repeat a box during the week. It's a huge planning challenge. And my paras are awesome at catching my goofs! I'm hoping to come across some appropriate shelving between now and the end of the year to expand our boxes even more. Sounds crazy I know, but it will make the planning challenge so much easier when there is a larger amount to pick from. So the whole point of this post-- what's in the boxes?! I use a combination of handmade activities, printable activities, and existing manipulatives from my classroom to make up my boxes. Our lowest tasks are simple "put-in" activities and our higher tasks include activities like capital and lowercase matching using clothespins and sight word matching mats. I've been trying to come up with more and more put-in activities so that's what I'm going to share with you today. In another post I'll share another category. For this activity I saved a small peanut can from the grocery store. (Yes I washed it out) I simply cut slits in the lid--these lids are super easy to cut into which is nice. It's the perfect height for dropping these mini popsicle sticks into. This activity is another saved container- an almond one. I have saved a ton of these! They are a great size and again, the lids are easy to cut into. This one has a circle in the middle of the lid and heart erasers to put into the container. This activity I found on pinterest. I simply saved a Parmesan cheese shaker, washed it out and added q-tips. When students open the box the cheese shaker is already open. (It would be too challenging for my little guys to get open independently- it's tough!) This task I clearly didn't make. It is courtesy of Lakeshore Learning. Students simply place the buttons in. This jar is one of three included in the pack and can be purchased by clicking {here}. If you wanted to make a more challenging task for a student you could place two jars into one task box so the student has to sort as well. This is the second jar included in the Lakeshore pack. I used another almond container for the activity. And obviously a hole punch to put the holes in the lid. Students have to put the beads into the container through the holes. I saw someone else blog about these small paint containers they found at the Dollar Store. They really are great! I bought four of them and used one for this work box. Students simply push the pom-poms into the container. This activity is similar to the Lakeshore bucket with buttons. I found the small yellow containers at the Dollar Tree in the baby section. They come in a multi-pack which is nice, BUT, they are a pain to cut holes in the top. It's a much harder plastic than I thought, and it cracked in the corners. If I hadn't gone through so much trouble to cut the slot in, I probably would have used another almond container. This was one of the first work box activities I made. I recycled a cookie dough container and cut holes in the lid. Then students just have to put pom-poms into the holes. I'd like to re-do this container at some point because most students catch on that the middle hole is big enough to just drop the pom-pom in versus pushing it through the hole. I don't know if you would call this a "put in" task, but I do. They're putting pegs in a peg board! I can also guarantee you that this peg board is older than I am. For this activity students push down the lever on the gumball machine to get a stone out, then they have to place the stone in the container. I liked the idea of students using their index finger to get the lever done-- additional fine motor practice. Sometimes more than one stone may come out, but that's okay. So there you have it. Those are our current "put in" activities. I hope you get some new ideas for your own work boxes from these. Next I'll share our sorting activities.

Have a chatty class? Do your talkative students get louder and louder during small groups until it feels like chaos? Do they talk when you'r...

FREE Call Backs and attention getters for the kindergarten classroom! Great classroom management tool!

I posted about these songs about a year ago on my Instagram feed and so many of you asked if I would be putting these in my TPT shop to sell. At the time, we had only written three, and I just didn't feel like that was enough to make a whole resource with. Since then, I have been working on writing new transition songs that are sung to some of our kids' favorite tunes! Singing CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT SONGS AND CHANTS during transitions makes moving from one thing or place to another almost seamless. Songs and chants keep students engaged, focused, and excited to learn, which in turn will save valuable instruction time. It also helps eliminate unwanted behaviors by giving your students the structure, consistency, and support they need. Most of the songs included are parodies of popular songs most kids will know. The words have been changed to help students transition in a positive manner. I printed the songs on cardstock and laminated them. I used a binder ring to attach the set together to hang on my board for easy access. There are also three different color options included. :) Let's go through a little breakdown of when and why we sing each of these songs: The Carpet: We sing this when it's time to transition to the carpet. I start they song, they join in. They have to be on the carpet in their assigned spots by the end of the song. Works like a charm every single time! I even added in some little hand motions that end the song with their hands in their laps. All I Do Is Freeze: We mostly use this when students are working in groups or with a partner. Sometimes, I need them to stop what they are doing, so that I can give them a direction or clear something up. It's a great way to get their attention! Clean Up Chant: This one is pretty self-explanatory. I do not instruct them when it's time to clean up; I just start the chant. You may want to add a timer to it afterwards if you need them cleaned up in a certain amount of time. Let's Line Up: Will kids ever get over Frozen? Probably not. If yours are still obsessed, too, they will love this line up chant. It gets them lined up quickly and without distractions, which saves so much time! Back to My Seat: We sing this when we transition from the carpet to their seats. We usually sing it a couple of times to give them plenty of time to make it to their seats. It's a really quick song! Partner Up: This song probably takes the most practice. Anytime you need students to get with their partner, you can sing this song. It also reminds them what to do when they are with their partner. Learning Math is Awesome: Sing this song to signal that it's time to begin math. I can guarantee it will get stuck in your head afterwards. Sorry. We Can't Stop Reading: This song can be used to kick off your reading block each day. It gets them excited about books and where those stories will take them! Quiet Time: I may or may not have sung this one the most. It works so well! I sing it in a calm, quiet voice, in which students will mirror. It immediately calms the room. Sing it a couple of times if needed! See!: I had to incorporate some Taylor Swift in these songs. We want students to be proud to share their thinking and comfortable talking with a partner. We also want their partners to be respectful and value what they are saying. This song is great to sing before students share with a partner or to close out a lesson by sharing what they learned or took away from the lesson. I just added some NEW songs!!! Like It Was: This is another clean up song. You could sing this one at the end of centers. It's really good about reminding students to put everything back in its place. Good For You: This is a song that you can sing as a class to celebrate someone! Maybe someone had a really great idea or accomplished something amazing, you can sing this to pump them up! We're Amazing: I am all about incorporating mindfulness into our day, so I knew I needed to create a song that encompassed that. This is another one that is going to take some practice to get down, but you can always display it as you sing. Some of the songs might take lots of practice to get down! But don't give up! After you sing it over and over, you will eventually get it. You will sing them to the tune of the chorus from the songs. I have added links to the actual songs in the PDFs. You just click the blue arrow at the bottom of the page. Always check these first NOT in the presence of students. I have gone through them to make sure they are safe, but you never know when things can change. A few of these parodies are straight from my students. I asked them what songs they wanted me to write transition songs for, and these are what we came up with. This group in particular had difficulty this year with transitions because they were all best of friends and LOVED to talk, which in turn got them distracted. I LOVED that about them, but we were losing valuable time trying to get refocused. Once I introduced a song or chant for them to do while transitioning, the difference was crazy! It keeps your learning environment positive, too, which is super important. You can check out the resource by clicking HERE or on any of the images in the post. Let me know how your students do with these songs or if you need another song added! I love your feedback! Happy transitioning!

Morphology walls are a great tool in 4th and 5th grade classrooms! Read more and sign up for free posters to make your own morphology wall!

Fun Art Word Search for Kids, use at home or in school to compliment learning covering terms commonly used with art tools.

This post explains how teachers can use an academic version of the highly engaging Spoons game to review concepts. Free games included!

DIY Song Cubes to help children learn music "old favorites" and practice finding and keeping the beat; for preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten.

As teachers begin planning for back to school, I see an abundance of creative classrooms filling my Instagram and Pinterest feeds. I love seeing how other

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Learn About the 7 Continents! Exploring the 7 Continents has never been more exciting! It’s a Small World Continent Study is filled with over 35 activities to help your students gain a greater understanding of the seven continents. This 130+ page unit is filled with great resources, posters, printables, activities, and projects that will open […]