The past few months, I’ve had a number of sporadic conversations with weavers who would like to teach. For those who are interested in teaching others to weave, I thought I’d share my path and some tips for budding teachers. How I Became a Weaving Teacher My desire to teach was spurred on while I ... Read more

My favorite teaching units are my research and rhetorical analysis unit. I love teaching rhetorical analysis and assigning students a rhetorical analysis PAPA square. Read on to learn more about the rhetorical analysis PAPA square activity and to sign up to receive your own free copy! I love providing my students with the knowledge and resources they need to critically read and analyze text, know why it is powerful, and understand how the author crafted it. I feel that truly understanding the language and the text, primarily through rhetorical analysis, is something that makes all of my students critical thinkers.

James Sturtevant's book, You've Gotta Connect, is full of practical, actionable advice and tools to strengthen the quality of your connection with students.

I finally nailed teaching symbolism! Using candy was both engaging and efficient - a major win that students remembered all year long!

Complete tutorial covering the basics of Melodrama, a list of Melodramatic plot devices, keys to Melodramatic acting style and more.

Here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging.

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

Engaging, student-centered vocabulary activities for secondary students, vocabulary lessons, vocabulary practice, vocabulary ideas

Shakespeare might be a crowd favorite for us English buffs, but the average high school student seems to be less than enthusiastic about the concept. Let’s be

Shakespeare is the master of the English language. My goal for introducing Shakespeare to my kids is that they grow accustomed to lilting language and

These Scientific Method Posters and Science Experiment Recording Sheets are a great way for elementary students to become familiar with the scientific process. Display them in your classroom. Use them for small or larger experiments.

Wondering how to give feedback on student writing? Here are 10 tips for responding to writing in ways that positively impacts students' internal dialogue.

Voice and tone - it can be a little bit hard to explain. OK, maybe a lot hard to explain, especially to middle grade kids.

Are you looking to elevate your Ecosystems and Biomes unit? This 4th or 5th grade project based learning unit for ecosystems incorporates science, nonfiction reading, research, writing, and the arts! Read to find out how I organized the research project, what our launch activity was, the driving que

Help your primary grade students explore, learn, and write about landforms. See our hands-on landforms activities plus our culminating writing project!

Helpful hints and tricks for middle and high school teachers to teach students how to write a Personal Narratives. Includes a free writing planner and narrative writing reference sheet.

A fun and simple musical theory and rhythm game to teach the difference between finding the beat and the rhythm of a song to kids.

So all this talk about anchor charts really got me thinking about my to do list. Last week I started mapping out what I need to do to meet the curriculum maps for April till the end of the year in ELA. When I do this I make a list of books I need to gather, anchor charts I need to make, and any centers, writing prompts, or work pages I need to create. I decided to tackle the anchor charts first. So far I've only accomplished 1 of 4 that I need to create for April ... But I felt accomplished so I thought I would share it with you and give myself a well deserved break :) I decided that since I was going to share I would give you a quick how to based on my process for creating anchor charts. So here we go! Now, like I said before I just start whipping these bad boys out there is planning to do. The first step is to write down the topics on my first to do list. For April these topics included, finding key events in texts, predicting, writing drafts and revising, and writing summaries using temporal words. And yes folks, that's 1 topic per week - add in spring break that's already one week with 2 topics - OH MY! I decided to tackle predicting first, well, because it seemed the easiest to me. So I moved on to work with my trusty friend Pinterest! That lovely photo of my chicken scratch (not my normal handwriting!) is what my Pinterest research turned into. What I do is search my topic then I write down key words or phrases that I liked from various anchor charts posted on Pinterest by all of you lovelies. I then compile this mess into the anchor chart that you will see below. Now, this may not work for everyone, but this is the process that works for me. Next I sketch out my poster in pencil and then go over in Mr. Sketch markers (MY FAVORITE!!!). Now, here's what the finished masterpiece looks like. I choose two colors that are for key points. Here I chose purple and green. Here I used purple to highlight the topic, predictions, and I used green to highlight the steps and key vocabulary. Then I will go back through and highlight anything else important in yellow - usually sentence frames like here. I try to add as many visual pictures as possible because they help the students remember the steps quickly. If you are interested here is the link to my Pinterest page that contains many anchor charts that I have used to create some of mine. One last bit of information - I would highly suggest purchasing a good art eraser for your anchor charts. I use a Staedtler Mars Plastic one. This helps so that your marker doesn't smudge and there aren't pencil smudges left when you are all done. Hope this was helpful! Enjoy the week!

This article explains how to teach satire and the importance of teaching satire to high school students. It offers advice for using satire in any classroom.

Even if all you have is 1 piece of clipart, you can still turn almost any skill into a themed activity. This chapter gives you lots of examples. No more

This post is part 1 in my inquiry series. To learn more about inquiry click through to see my many other posts about inquiry. If you are new to my blog,

This post contains affiliate links for your shopping convenience. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase through one of my links. Yup. About a month ago,…

Here are 5 FREE Google Jamboard templates! These templates are ideal for teachers in a virtual or hybrid setting.

One of the most effecitve parts of a lesson plan is the anticipatory set. It can set the mood for interest, enagement, and wonder. But how?

Pixar short films are a great way to target essential literary elements and techniques from characterization to theme to conflict to symbolism. These Pixar short films inspire class discussion and analysis, and students can then in turn write essays based upon these films. They are an excellent to

What can I do with my teaching degree besides teach? Check out a list of job ideas to start your job search with!

This is an amazing art and math lesson that I got from a teacher at a conference who did teach a district over from me, but is now getting h...

Ok, let's see if we can get through this post without my computer getting all screwy! (*UPDATE: By the end of this post, I had to hook up m...

Need static electricity worksheets that are SHOCKINGLY fun? I got you, science teachers! These are perfect in an upper elementary class!

Shakespeare is the master of the English language. My goal for introducing Shakespeare to my kids is that they grow accustomed to lilting language and

This card matching activity allows students to practice interpreting motion graphs (distance-time graphs). Students can practice reading scenarios and matching them to a distance-time graph. This activity would be great as an engagement activity, review, formative assessment, a science station, spi...

Romeo and Juliet is the frist Shakesepare play many students will read. Help them get off on the right foot with these teaching tips.

Spring graphing coordinate plane activity for kids to practice basic graphing skills by graphing ordered pairs in the first quadrant.

Healthy behaviors are so important to teach at an early age. Children learn really quick when things don't feel right. However, they might not understand what causes them to feel bad. Parents teach their kids healthy habits to avoid getting sick. But do we teach them what happens when they do get sick or hurt?

Kids love Room on the Broom sequencing activities. Work on retelling, identifying characters, and more with the unit I'm sharing about today!