This worksheet can be used to test students by having them identify elements as metals, nonmetals, or metalloids.

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 […]

* Last Saturday our family attended the 2014 student art showcase at the California State University, Los Angeles. Our daughter Natalie has been taking art classes over there, as part of the Gifted/Talented Program that she is part of. Sponsored by LAUSD, his program is a wonderful opportunity for children in the public school system to be consistently exposed to […]

Have a yummy math lesson with Hershey Fractions printable cards. Pair it with the Hershey Fractions book and real candy bars to make it the most fun!

I had done a few different centers in the past, mostly with my upper grades, and not very well thought out. This year though, one of my personal goals was to incorporate centers in a way that was well-planned, gave students lots of ways to practice a concept, and gave me more than one way to assess students. I'll have another blog post coming soon about the centers I did, or you can see a video of them on my Facebook page. Today though I want to talk about how to prepare your students for centers in the music room. Before really diving in to centers this year, I talked to some classroom teachers to learn more about how centers worked in their rooms. Each person I talked to said, take the time to go over each center with the whole group before ever dividing the class for centers. Since I don't have as much time as a classroom teacher (my classes are 30 minutes and are back to back), I decided that instead of trying to cram it into the beginning of a class period and then starting centers that day, I would take a class period to discuss all my centers. So I'm going to share with you how that day went. Since this was my first time doing centers at my new school with these students, I had no idea how long it would take to explain all of the centers and how everything would work. I figured if I have lots of extra time, we will play some singing games that I pulled patterns from for these centers, but this actually took about 25 minutes with both of my classes. I brought my classes in and had them go to their assigned seats in front of the board. I said that we would be doing something kind of new in music the next few times we have class so I wanted to share with them about it today so that we could spend all of our time in centers the next two times. Instead of having all of the centers spread out around the perimeter of the room, which is where I put them when we were actually doing centers, I lined up all my centers at the front of the room under the board. On my computer, I had the zip file that contained all of the PDFs for each file pulled up so that as I was going through them with the whole group, if I wanted them to be able to see something better, I could show them the PDF version instead of the tiny cards I was holding for some of the centers. We walked through all of the centers in order. I read through the directions and we "played" each center one or two turns. For some centers I would have a small group of students come up and be the demonstration group as the class watched. I asked if there were any questions about each center before moving on to the next one. My students knew that they needed to ask any questions they had on this day so that they wouldn't come up asking me questions on the actual center days. The students were really interested and engaged the whole time. I think there was a little bit of mystery to it, like "OOO, I wonder what is going to be at the next center" or "I wonder what those manipulatives are going to be for" and that kept them really focused on what we were doing. Students asked good clarifying questions about the individual centers. They also asked about their groups. I have about 28 kids in each class and set up 8 centers. Most of my groups had 4 students in a group, some had 3. I assigned all groups by typing up a list. I emailed the list to their teacher and asked their teacher to line them up in that order (so the four students in group 1 are first, followed by group 2 and so on....) the next time they came to music. I also had her double check my groups to see if there would be any issues that I maybe hadn't foreseen. This was a really good idea because the next time they came to music, I met them in the hallway and they were all in the right order. I had the centers so that center 1 was closest to the door and then they went in a circle around the perimeter of the music room, so as the students followed me in, I basically dropped off four at a time in the order they were in at each center as we went around the room and I was with the last 3 or 4 students at the "teacher center", center 8. I didn't have to waist any time putting kids in order or reviewing directions for any of the centers. I had directions for each center posted at each center in case they forgot or were absent when we went over the centers, but there seemed to be no issues with students knowing what to do at each center. I only had one student come up to me the entire two days of doing centers and it was because of an issue with a group member, so I think that is pretty darn good for our first time! I hope this gives you maybe a new idea about how to prepare your students for centers so that they feel set up to succeed at each one without needing to ask questions during centers. I feel like taking that day to go over them at a relaxed pace, sending the centers groups to the teacher, and having students come to music on centers day already in order really helped everything to go smoothly. Do you have other ideas that I haven't thought of? Share below! Wanting to take the guesswork out of creating centers? Here are centers sets I've created and used with my classes:

Fun ideas for teaching adjectives and descriptive writing that are just right for October and Halloween week in the primary classroom.

Transforming an ordinary classroom into an inspiring and engaging learning environment can significantly impact students' motivation and enthusiasm for ...

In this resource, you will see how to play area dice game that will improve the conceptual understanding of area.

Flower Names – Name Building Practice Printable is a fun, hands-on activity that will have your students building their name in no time.

Classroom form used for students to "apply" for a retake, revision, or redo. Supports Wormelli's ideas of accountability and "relearning" before retaking an assessment or redoing and assignment. ...

How to survive and thrive teaching those *wonderful* middle years of school.

One thing I've learned about 3rd graders....they think they are right. They don't mean to argue with adults, it's just...you are wrong and they are right and they are just explaining. They are doing you a favor. You should be grateful. This is their perception, and you know what they say about perception...it is reality. So I've been training myself to rephrase things in a way that stops any arguing, excuse me, any student lead explanations of misbehavior. I found a great guide that has helped me rephrase my words, it's from Love and Logic of course!

After 19 years in the classroom, I‘ve picked up a few tricks that have saved me from hours reinventing the wheel year after year. The best thing I ever did for myself was complete some upfront work that led to years of little to no prep and planning! Here are my top three work smarter, not harder tips for easy lesson planning: 1. Save and store reusable worksheets and task cards. Classrooms don't have a lot of storage space, but keeping photocopies of the materials your students will use year af

Writing is one of my favorite times during the day! In these first few weeks of school, my students have blown me away with their creativity in their writing. It excites me for what is to come this year! The best thing about being part of the College of Education was you got to pretend you were a kid again. We participated in several lessons that were applicable to our classrooms. In a writing course, my junior year, my professor led us on a Writing Marathon. Our mission was to roam campus for an hour and find different locations to write. He sent us on our way and told us to return in 60 minutes! In my Writer's Notebook, I wrote down my sights around Brady Commons, the Columns, and the steps of the College of Ed. Thinking back on that day, I remember having a great time with friends and writing ..writing... and more writing. I decided to test this strategy out with my kiddos this year. My school utilizies the 6+1 Writing Traits program and our first trait is "Ideas". We have been working on gathering ideas and zooooooooming in on one idea. After specials, I told my kids to grab their Writer's Notebooks because we were taking a little marathon. Their goal: use their 5 senses and observe the area they are in. Minimum of 4 sentences per location! We hit up the following spots in school: Classroom Front lawn Cafeteria Library Playground I had the best time reading through their entries. Several cracked jokes and expressed hunger throughout the process! Besides getting to move around the school, my students practiced generating ideas and focusing in on one idea at a time. I don't know about you but I love anchor charts. It's a great time for the class to get together and collaborate ideas. I believe that charts created together are more powerful than pre-made ones. Yes, I have store bought posters on my wall... but I also have ones we made. It's a nice mixture! You can take the girl out of second grade... but you can't take the anchor chart out of the girl! That's the saying, right? Anywho, here are a few fun anchor charts from around the web. Click the captain for the source! The First Grade Parade First Grade Parade Mrs. Williams Kinders I need to stop this late night blogging. What has gotten into me!? It's bedtime. But first, I'm obsessed with this performance from the VMA's. Enjoy! 2011 VMA - Music - Beyoncé

Here's a simple way to teacher less than, greater than: with toys! Free printable included.

In the first part of this post, we looked at some ways to prepare sol and mi through movement, games, improvisation, composition, and completing melodies. If you haven’t checked it out yet, read it here ! The next step in teaching sol and mi is to present these melodic elements with their new nam

This week was a short week but we were able to get a lot of activities done. The first thing we worked on this week was homophones! My kids ...

Includes almost 50 activity ideas!

These kindergarten anchor charts will give you the tools you need to teach math, reading, friendship skills, and much more!