No more boring book reports! Check out 26+ FUN, creative and unique book report ideas and free printable projects too!

Learn about countries for kids with Around the WOrld Country Coloring Pages! These coloring sheets are easy way to explore 19 countries!

First days of school can be stressful. There's an insane amount of pressure to make a great first impression. The administration wants you to go over the handbook of rules for the district. There's tons of forms that need to be filled out. You need to learn their names and it's hard because half the names don't match your class list. His name is Samuel but he goes by S.J. Her name on your roll says Mary, but she goes by Mary Beth. You want to start off the year on the right note regarding procedures and expectations, but you also want it to be a little bit fun, too. Yes, it can be complicated to plan out the first day. My first day was absolutely fantastic. Yes, I learned names. Yes, I went over the handbook. Yes, I went over forms. But we also did some quick exciting things that started us out on the right foot. In no particular order, here is what made my first day FANTASTIC. 1. I let my students collaborate on a story. I started a story on the whiteboard and each student could only add four words to the story. It ended up being hilarious and making ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE but no one cared. It was fun. They worked as a family. 2. That bring me to my next point--we don't call our classes, um, classes. Or homerooms. We call them families. So I have Mrs. Johnson's Family for my 1st period class and Mrs. Anderson's Family for my second period class. (Homeroom teacher names were changed for this post.) You get the idea. And it really does reinforce this idea that we need to work together like a family should. 3. I embraced and addressed my students' biggest fear. Each teacher has his/her students coming to the room with a big fear. Go ahead and address it. Since I'm the first year of middle school, the big fear is the locker. Will I ever get into it? Will I have enough time to get everything out of it? My students can't begin to learn procedures until we address the locker issue. Once they feel confident with their locker, they are ready to learn procedures. So, what did I do? I lined up my wonderful parents to come work with my students one-on-one the very first day of school on their locker. And it was the best thing for that first day. Address your students' fears with a solution. Don't think, "Oh I need to teach procedures! I'll help them with that later on in the week." No. Their Big Fear is ALL THEY CAN THINK ABOUT. Fix the fear, then they can face all the procedures and rules head on! 4. If you know me, you know that I ABSOLUTELY DETEST GETTING TO KNOW YOU GAMES. Why do I have to name a fact about myself that starts with a J just because my first name is Jordyn? Nothing starts with a J that I like! I hate jelly beans. I'm ok with jolly ranchers but they aren't anything special. I. HATE. GETTING. TO. KNOW. YOU. GAMES. I think I've made my point clear. Soooooo---what did I do to get to know them? I made a statement and pointed to two sides of the room. The students moved to the side of the room for their answer. Examples: 1. Team Cat or Team Dog 2. Would you rather travel every day or never leave home? 3. Team Math/Science or Team Language Arts? 4. Alabama or Auburn? (I live in Alabama, so this is a big deal around here. Feel free to change to whatever sports teams works for you. And by the way, the correct answer to me is the side of the room that was yelling WAR EAGLE!) We didn't do this as one big activity. I broke up the reading of the district handbook by doing a couple of these, then back to the handbook, then a couple more of these, then back to the handbook, a couple more of these, then going over forms. THEY LOVED THIS ACTIVITY! It didn't force the quiet kids to talk, but they did participate by moving. It let the other ones announce why they were on that side. It was just a great icebreaker for those of us who are anti-icebreaker. --->Do you need a GETTING TO KNOW YOU ACTIVITY perfect for the first few days? (And not icebreaker questions that tweens dislike---actually questions they enjoy answering!)

Planning to tutor over the summer? Here are tips for quick and easy planning! Hi there! It's Sarah! I've been tutoring kiddos for the last year and have developed a routine that makes my planning easy and my session flow smoothly. All of the kiddos I tutor are grades K-2 and in need of a boost in their reading skills...fluency, comprehension, and phonics. Warm-up I like to start with some reading that is simple or familiar. I'll either have the kiddo re-read a text from the previous session or read fluency sentences. I have my kiddos keep a composition notebook with past passages to go back and re-read. I use lots of guided reader books to find the just right text for my kiddos to read. These are also great books to leave for kiddos to practice between sessions. Fluency sentence strips from The Moffatt Girls are a GREAT help to boost fluency and confidence! They are also super easy to leave for practice between sessions. Fluency Reading Practice My kiddos have all had good sight word recognition and really need fluency work. I switch between leveled readers and text passages. I usually have kiddos read the text themselves first. After reading, we go back through the text and find words that were tricky and read them. Next, I have the kiddo read through the text with me or by themselves if they are confident. Using a leveled reader Using fluency passages and recording words read per minute (the kiddos love to see their growth!) Find these fluency passages HERE! Using text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Comprehension After some fluency practice with the selected text, I move into comprehension work. In our district, kiddos need to do a written response comprehension question as part of their reading assessment. I have my kiddos practice a written response question with every text and in every session. Comprehension with level reader I use these question stems to develop questions based on the text. Grab the question stems HERE! Completed written response, kiddos write in their composition journal Comprehension with text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Here I use a reading passage with several comprehension tasks for a 2nd grade kiddo. Find these reading passage + comprehension packets HERE! Phonics After the reading and comprehension tasks are complete, I work on some phonics task with my kiddos. One of my favorite tasks is doing a word family word splash. I select a word from our text. I like how this tasks shows kiddos that if they can spell a work like bat, they can also spell cat, mat, sat, etc. Writing short sentences with words from the Word Family Splash Word building and sounding out Extras I like to use phonics poems as an additional fluency tool. The kiddos glue them into their composition notebook so they can go back and re-read between sessions, continuing to build fluency with familiar texts. These phonics poems are from Susan Jones. I use our Literacy Bags in between reading tasks. Literacy Bags break up the rigorous reading and fluency practice we do for much of the session. You can find Literacy Bags HERE! I'm working with a few Kindergartners who need sight word practice. I use the K version of our Differentiated Reading Fluency passages. In K, the passages start as reading letters, then sight words fluently. It perfect support for my K kiddos! You can grab these HERE! Additionally, our Print a Standard packs have been a great support for targeting specific skills students need to work on. Each pack contains tasks for one standard and has several activities for that standard, so there are a lot of opportunities to help the student learn, practice, and master standards based skills. You can grab Print a Standard packs for ELA AND MATH HERE! Connecting with students and parents on a more personal level is the best part of tutoring. I love giving kiddos instant feedback and celebrating their successes! I also love that I can give them more choices to foster a love of reading. In the picture above, I'm showing several text selections. The kiddos I'm working with is able to choose the book he'll read with me for the session. I also love being able to help parents foster learning at home. I've found most all of my parents did not really know about their kiddo's reading level or reading abilities. This makes it difficult for parents to find the best "just right" books for reading at home. After I work with a kiddo, I leave the text piece we worked on for that session (a passage or a book) so the kiddo can re-read it with parents. I leave their composition notebooks with phonics poems for the kiddos to go back a re-read. I also leave the fluency sentence strips for practice between sessions.

Learn about plants with this 80 page botany lesson for kids! Information, worksheets, experiments, and more for elementary age!

Fun and engaging ideas to get to know your students at the beginning of the school year. Build a strong classroom community with these free resources.

Are you a new 2nd grade teacher? Here are the best tips for taking on grade 2 and all the fun that comes with it!

Science of reading activities can be so helpful for students of all ages. Reading is an essential skill to have in order to succeed in school and life. It’s not just about being able to read the words, it’s about understanding what you are reading and connecting those ideas with what you already know.

Practice grade 4 math with these FREE 4th Grade Math Worksheets and print as many as you need. Fourth grade math answer key included!!

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!

Geometric Art

ALL ABOUT EARTH Get ready for a month filled with so many fun activities to teach your kiddos all about our planet Earth . I teach this unit in April so it coincides with Earth Day. I’ve loaded up this blog post post with read aloud book ideas, free videos you can share with your students,

Teach your kids about the 3 oceans zones: sunlight, twilight and midnight. Plus, get a free printable zones of the ocean worksheet to reinforce everything they learn!

These human body for kids activities allow children to learn about the heart, muscles, lungs, 5 senses, bones organs, cells, and so much more!

Just print these 5th Grade Math Worksheets to get extra math practice at school, at home, or for summer learning - NO PREP, fun way to review!

Free 7th & 8th grade worksheets, printable games, and activities to make learning math, literacy, history, and science engaging and FUN!

Learn about stars for kids with this handy, free printable Constellations Booklet to learn about star patterns in the night sky.

These all about me, back to school art activities for kids are engaging icebreakers. Encourage creativity and build community during the first week back

These 5 fun 3D shapes activities for kindergarten are a great way for students to learn about shape attributes while having a blast.

Which Back to School Activities Elementary can I use for Building Community in my Classroom? Which All About Me Activities are most engaging for my students?

Teachers often have questions about what a literacy block should actually look like. How do you structure your time? When do you pull reading groups? How and when do you teach grammar? The list of questions is lengthy, and with good reason. No one really ever told us what to do! Probably because there is […]

Everything you need to thrive in grade five!

Switching literacy centers in and out every week is such a headache for teachers! This post shares 3rd grade literacy center ideas that work with any curriculum and last the entire school year! PLUS--you can grab some free printables at the end of this post! *This post contains affiliate links to Amazon for your convenience.

Grade 3 science lessons and ideas for teachers... especially in BC! These lessons, ideas, projects, experiments, and inquiry, cover all topics and will have you ready to teach science to students in third grade.

Kids will have fun learning about other countries, famous landmarks, and geography with this France for Kids FREE Printable Mini Book.

When I took this second grade position, I had many things on my to-do list. However, the first item on my list was classroom management ideas. Any teacher would agree that the most important skill in running a class is classroom management. There are so many strategies, but my go-to is Class Dojo! The Benefits

Make 3rd grade math FUN by using free printable math worksheets pdf as math minues with Grade 3! Complete instructions & answer key included.

Looking for an introductory First Grade Self Control Activity? Your students will love this fun story and craft for practice!

My favorite first grade Back to School Activities in my classroom! These are my go-to activities for the first week of school!

Real-life first grade classrooms!

FREE geography matching activity with the 7 continents of the world. Perfect for toddlers, preschoolers and kindergarten to introduce the continents.

Pierwszy dzień w szkole spędza sen z powiek nie tylko uczniom. Nauczyciele po pierwsze opłakują ;) powrót do pracy, a po drugie bardzo często zastanawiają się, czym wypełnić pierwsze zajęcia. Przyg…

What are the learning targets for eight- and nine-year-olds?

Fun STEM activity for outdoor play and makes a great science lesson! (Includes a printable rocket template).

Build fact fluency with these engaging games and activities. Check out these super fun and creative ways to help your students stay engaged.

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!

Engage students with exciting trashketball games! Discover fun back to school games for icebreakers, reviews, and learning classroom rules.

Are you looking for a way to work on first grade math skills? This free packet is for you! It could be used for learning in the classroom or at home! This packet works on

Do you want to keep your students engaged and reading during reading time? Read this post to learn about 10 reading centers for upper elementary.