In the past year we have both introduced the Math Journal into our Guided Math program. This has been a great and innovative way for studen...

Make a hurricane in your kitchen! This extreme weather science activity will help kids learn about hurricanes, including how they form and how they move!

I'm going to show you how to create a homeschool zoology unit without a curriculum. And I have more ideas about animals on my page Rain Forest – Animals of the Amazon.

Here is a simple science activity making Olympic Ring crystals that your kids will love. Help them learn more about the games and why they are significant.

Adventures in Second Grade!

This past fall we made the decision to seek out occupational therapy (OT) for Caroline. She was struggling a great deal with the act of writing and we also suspected she had some midline issues. With her permission, I'm going to write about our experience with occupational therapy for dysgraphia or writing problems. We strongly

Introduction Welcome to my second hub while I'm on my learning adventure! This time I'm going to be talking about ASCII codes. This hub is going to be short and simple but can be used as a reference if for some reason you ever do need an ASCII chart.

Reasons to go to Alpha Centauri: because it's there.

What are learned words? In Orton-Gillingham terms, learned words are what many people call sight words. You may also refer to them as red words or high frequency words. Most teachers can agree that learned

In what really and truly feels like the blink of an eye, my little girl is a tween now. She’s taller than I am. She has shed her rosy cheeks. She sleeps in till noon when allowed. She participates in conversations about current events with a quiet astuteness that takes my breath away. Depending on […]

Carl Zimmer is one of my absolute favorite science writers, and he's about to come out with a new book called A Planet of Viruses. I'm a bit of a…

Long e words are quite tricky to teach because there are so many different ways to spell the long e sound and there aren't any rules or generalizations.

Donald Knuth is an extraordinary man. As well as inventing 'Literate Programming' and writing the most important textbook on programming algorithms, he is also famous for designing and programming one of the most widely-used digital typesetting systems ever, even designing the fonts that went with it. He also pioneered the use of 'Open-source' software. Knuth is a man of engaging charm and enthusiasms who combines a knowledge of history, music, art and mathematics with a unique insight into the art of computer programming.

Here are 5 must-use Google Chrome extensions for teachers.

Today I’m sharing my newest step towards improved organization in the classroom: notebook divider tabs. (I got the idea from a blog post by Sarah Carter and knew that I wanted to modify them to wo…

Children will love these fun learning activities based on the popular storybook The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

Welcome to Math Craft World! This community is dedicated to the exploration of mathematically inspired art and architecture through projects, community submissions, and inspirational posts related to the topic at hand. Every week, there will be approximately four posts according to the following schedule:

Best science experiment ever! Make a fantastic eruption with hydrogen peroxide, yeast, soap, and food coloring! This science project is perfect for science shows for all ages: preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle, and high school! Even adults enjoy this one!

Happy Wednesday, friends! I'm just going to throw it out there that I have not been an amazing teacher this week. My little family and I are getting ready to visit our boys in Africa in *eleven slee

Excel VLOOKUP with Drop Down - The VLOOKUP function in Excel can become interactive and more powerful when applying a Data Validation as the Lookup_Value.

New to Kindergarten teachers... start reading here to start your year off with a bang! Here is a list of everything you need to know.

I’m a huge fan of using doodling to help students learn …and today I’m going to share why doodling is important plus easy ways to h...

Teaching electricity is exciting when done with pickles in this engaging demonstration that will hook your students and make them want to learn more!

A student walks up with with his finished math test and hands it to me. I glance at the clock. I think, Hmm, 10 minutes ago I gave you this...

Creating an EPIC Forensics course doesn't have to be hard! Learn my 5 "must try" strategies that are guarenteed to get your students excited about learning!

Hi friends! Today I'm going to post about how I taught measuring length this year. As always here is the unit plan and lessons outlined for easy planning if you want to follow along with my lessons! Click on the image to download it as a pdf for free! I always start my measurement unit by talking about shorter and longer. First we introduced the vocabulary short, shorter, long and longer and then completed this chart whole class. I had strips of construction paper ready and I had the students tear the construction paper into 2 pieces and then tell me which one was shorter and which one was longer. Then we glued it on to the chart. During centres I had my students stamp their names on these templates. I quickly made these in PowerPoint by creating a table with 8 columns (because the longest name in our class was 8 letters) and adjusted the height so that they were squares. I copy and pasted to have 3-4 tables on a page and then printed, copied and cut so that each student would have a template. During the lesson we went over our learning goal "We are learning to compare length", talked about what length meant and reviewed our length words short, shorter, long, longer and introduced shortest and longest. I then put their names in the middle of the carpet and we first grouped them according to how many letters were in their names. Then I had students tell me which students had the shortest names and we glued it on the chart below. (Sorry I had to blur the names! I hope you still get the gist of the lesson/activity!) Then we found the longest name and glued it on the bottom. we kept filling it in until we had all of the students up on the chart. On the third day we watched Sid the Science Kid: Exploring Measurement on YouTube and we learned the four measuring rules. Then the next two days we worked on co-constructing our measuring rules anchor chart for our "measurement tools" section of our interactive math wall. As we picked the rule to demonstrate, I told them that we were going to do a happy face (good) example and a sad face (bad) example. They loved this, especially doing the sad face example! I took the pictures as we made each example, printed them off and then we sorted the pictures and taped them under the rule that it matched the next day. The kids took turns picking an item to measure and showing the class a good examples and a bad example for each rule :) On the sixth day we watched Sid the Science Kid: Exploring Measurement on YouTube again... and then we tried the activities from the video! First we used the tallest student in our class to measure the width of our classroom. (Since I don't have any pictures of us doing the activity here is a screen shot from the video.) and then we figured out who the shortest student in our class was and we traced her body onto butcher paper. We cut it out, I taped it to a table and it was open as a centre activity for the students to investigate measurement with snap cubes. (Again, since I don't have any pictures of us doing the activity here is a screen shot from the video.) As one of the summative assessments we measured our feet! I demonstrated whole group and I worked with the students in small groups to complete this activity. This little guy really blew me away. The bears moved while he was writing so the picture doesn't reflect the number well but when he did measure end to end with no spaces there was a little bit of space at the end of his foot. He said "Well one more bear would be too much but I think maybe half a bear would fit, how do you write 5 and a half?" LOVE! In hind sight though I would have just helped him sound it out in words instead of writing it in highlighter for him since he would have been able to do that! Here are some of the independent learning centres that were open during this unit: Play Dough Snakes! We set out green play dough, sequins, googly eyes and pony beads. The only requirement was that the students make 3 or more play dough snakes and order them from shortest to longest. I had two types of mats the one you see below and one with just a big rectangle that said "Make 3 or more play dough snakes. Order them from shortest to longest." for the kids who could order more than 3 :) After they ordered their snakes they decorated! I encouraged patterning on the snakes with the sequins and beads by setting out my example below. These were a big hit for a few days and so easy! I just grabbed some paint chips from Home Depot and wrote their names on them with a Sharpie. Then I cut them to size or taped on an extra spot if they had more than 6 letters in their names to prep them. The students had fun comparing their names to other friends names and some even worked together to recreate our comparing name lesson and ordered the whole class. I do recommend laminating these though... they got pretty beaten up really fast! For those that wanted to I also set out a recording sheet where they could compare their name with a friend's name and record if their friend's name was shorter, the same or longer than their name. After I assessed for the vocabulary shorter and longer and found out which students needed more practice, my ECE sat with them to do this "Length Hunt" activity as a guided group. The were each give a popsicle stick and went around the classroom to find things that were bigger than a popsicle stick and smaller than a popsicle stick. Then they brought the item back to the table and drew a picture of it in the correct spot. Some even labeled their picture if they could! They did really well and now we are proud to say that the WHOLE class has a good grasp of the vocabulary shorter and longer ;) All of the printables you see in this post are in my math unit "Measurement for Kindergarten: Hands-On Centres & Printables"! You can see more details by clicking here or on the images below: I even have some capacity centres/activities that I plan to use already in there and I will blog about it when I wrap up measurement along with comparing temperature and mass! That's it from me! Do you have any fun lessons you do for teaching length? ______________________________________ Added 08.11.21 I now have a digital unit for non-standard measurement! If you are a virtual teacher (or a classroom teacher who wants to use the lesson portion whole group/the unit on your SMARTBoard) you can see the details for the unit by clicking here or on the images below:

Google Slides is my absolute FAVORITE G Suite tool! It is really the most versatile tool in the Google toolbox. So today, I'm giving you 12 Google Slides Resources That Will Make Your Day! Yes, I'm going to say it. Google Slides is like a Swiss Army Knife for your classroom. It is so much more than a presentation tool. Google Slides can help you transform your classroom assignments, give students room to stretch their creative legs, engage them in new ways, and make the learning more DYNAMIC!

Hey guys! It's Erin from I'm Lovin' Lit and I'm so happy to be a part of this wonderful new blog! Today I'm going to talk about my feelings about the first day of middle school. Whether you're a new teacher, new to middle school, or just pressing the reset button for the year, I hope you find some new and different things to think about because, well, I'm somewhat opinionated! :) What to Do (and What Not to Do) on the First Day of Middle School Let's start with what NOT to do, shall we? Do NOT: 1. Spend the entire 50 minute period discussing your rules, expectations, and telling kids about what they'll be doing this year. *YAWN* 2. Do that "elementary thang" and have your class (community of learners) collaboratively come up with a list of rules and expectations and discuss the meaning and need for rules, blah blah blah. DON'T. You really don't need to do that. Third grade? SURE! Middle school? NOT. 3. Spend over half of your time doing some really complicated and/or awkward ICE BREAKER type activity where the students are forced to completely leave their comfort zone by speaking in front of the entire class or even making a fool of themselves in front of a hand full of not-familiar classmates. Seriously. Have you NOT been a middle schooler before?! 4. Ask students GENERICALLY to a) write a paragraph about or b) tell the class (EVEN WORSE) about "what they did" or "where they went" on summer vacation. RESIST THE TEMPTATION. DON'T DO IT. Now that you're not doing those things above (you're not still thinking about it, are you?) here are *MY* suggestions on what to do the first day of school. These numbers will coordinate with and complement the numbers above. DO: 1. Spend a reasonable portion (definitely half) of the class time introducing yourself (briefly, you can tell more later) and laying out the expectations that are most important to you. Keep it simple for the first day. The students need to know especially these things: a) How to enter and leave my room. (Wait at the door/line up in hall until invited in; leave only after *I* dismiss, not the bell.)b) What to do when you walk in the door every day. (bell ringer, DOL, sponge, daily, whatever you like to call it - you should have SOMETHING but keep it SIMPLE and SHORT)c) What supplies you'll need to buy (if a list was not provided) or which supplies should be labeled for your class and any instructions on using supplies or storing any of them in locker for later use.As far as I am concerned, most of the other stuff can wait. These kids are being bombarded today by 7 or 8 different teachers. Take it easy. Give them the most important information ONLY. 2.TELL THEM your expectations. They don't need to formulate them with you. These kids know why there are rules, and they don't need to come up with 8 different "community" rules for each class. Can that stuff and just tell the kids what you want/expect from them. Consequences/rewards/etc. You know, just the most important stuff for now. 3. Do something ACADEMIC. Teach a little bitty mini lesson. Give students a PREVIEW of how you teach. Isn't that better than just telling them about it? Just a little tiny lesson. Ten minute quickie. This is important because it SETS THE TONE for the rest of the year. You know I'm all about hidden messages, right? Doing something academic on that first day carries the message "We are here to learn about literature (insert your subject) and we are not wasting any time getting there!" And save those group activities for another day. These middle schoolers are overly-concerned about whether or not their hair is still "just right" or how their shirt looks from the back or WHATEVER. Give them a break and save the "in front of the class" stuff for later. Those ice breakers are totally lame. Yes, even that one you found on Pinterest. If you can SOMEHOW mesh that icebreaker with something academic, I *might* approve. But be careful. Pointless ice breakers are.. well.. pointless. 4. OK - Let's review. Now that you've outlined your most important procedures and expectations and done something ACADEMIC, you really, really want to do something summer related? OK. Fine. You can - just be careful how you word this. Some of your students toured Europe over the summer. Some of your students spent the entire summer walking two miles a day in the heat to participate in the free lunch summer program. Some of your students didn't leave the neighborhood. Some of your students went to Disney World AND Schlitterbahn. Get my drift? Let's not outline these differences on the first day. If you want to do something about SUMMER, word it in a better way. Here are some suggestions: Who did you enjoy spending time with the most over the summer? or What did you do on the FIRST day of summer (or the LAST day) - {more likely to NOT be one of the things mentioned above} or If you had one extra week of summer, what would be the perfect way to spend it? All of these are, of course, my own opinions, and we all know what opinions are like.. everyone has one, right? I honestly hope I've at least given you some things to consider before you start your year, whether it's your first or your tenth. Some of my opinions might not mesh with your style, and that's okay. Some of yours might not mesh with mine. Thanks for reading, and get to planning that PERFECT first day!

As a family, it's important for us that the science we teach our kids is based on God's Word and has a Biblical Worldview. I was excited to learn about a curriculum that offers Science from

I'm going to share a differentiated lesson plan from start to finish. In the article Begin with the Highest Level Learner in Mind I promised that I would share the process, and here it is.