Being a first-year teacher, there are so many little milestones that you celebrate...the first day you're home by 5:30, the first time you send out a newsletter without a parent response, the first ...
Blog
Book Madness: A Tournament of Books
Well friends, I have never been so excited for a sporting event. In fact, this past weekend, I had to employ every bit of knowledge I have about the NCAA tournament (i.e. please read that as ...
Finding Nonfiction Articles for Middle Grades
Today I am sharing with you one of my great frustrations about 5th grade...the lack of resources. We are a curriculum-free school for reading and writing, so in August I walked into a resource-empty ...
Hosting a Classroom Book Raffle
Motivation and enthusiasm for reading matter. One way we build excitement and passion for reading is a classroom Book Raffle! Why a Book Raffle? Launching a book raffle, it's always very ...
My First Stitch Fix
You all know I {love} book shopping....like more than milk chocolate and diet coke on Mondays. It's true. My great love for book shopping, though, is not transferable to other types of shopping such ...
A Few of my Favorite Picture Books
So, true confessions - I buy a lot of books. How do I acquire these books?? Well, that's a story for another post (one coming soon...I promise) to the tune of Scholastic, Bonus Points, 25 for $25 ...
Point of View: 5th Grade Style!
Point of view is more than pronouns and numbers (me, we, they, 1st, 2nd, 3rd person). The true intent of our standards surrounding point of view and perspective is to consider how a narrator’s ...
Root Word Games!
Well friends, today was snow day one thousand. Actually, I am not sure what number it was, but I am calling it June 11th. When I woke up from my morning nap, this 'snow' was gone. GONE. Like I said, I ...
Highlighting STEM Careers
There are so many 'buzz' words in education - Common Core, reading workshop, rigor, goal-setting, project-based learning, STEM...just to name a few. ;) In my district, STEM has been THE spotlight ...
Puzzle Galore!
Happy Thursday, Friends! Well it's official. I have been in school three days in a row this week...a post-Winter Break record, and I am exhausted. For reals. Monday we mourned another snow day, ...
Video Mini-lessons {Keeping Parents Involved}
Parent communication has been a huge learning curve for me this year. Being departmentalized, parents have five different teachers sharing about their classrooms and expectations for students. ...
7-Up Vocabulary Practice
Today I wanted to share about about using 7-Up to introduce new vocabulary. This is a quick and material-free way to engage students with words they are learning! When introducing a new word to ...