Valentine’s Day is a wonderful time to celebrate and honor friendship. Join me as I share activities you can use to strengthen community and build friendship in your classroom this Valentine’s Day.
We think you would agree when we say that February is a busy month. We jump from Valentine's Day to Presidents' Day all while we are studying Black History Month. Whew! This Presidents' Day we turned to Printables to help us bring an important...
In this post, you'll find easily digestible audio bites from Dr. King’s speeches, fresh resources for Black History Month, and a new take on some old favorites. Get kids and adults of any culture begging for more social studies.
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner so start bringing out the foam pink hearts, red paint, and chocolate candy kisses because you’ll need them for the book ideas that I am going to share with you!
After learning to write persuasive essays, my students were eager to share their opinions with the wider world — so I turned to the World Wide Web. I decided that a blog would be the perfect soapbox for my students while letting me address...
This year my students are taking part in an endangered animal project-based learning unit. In project-based learning, students take an important outside problem or question and research to try to solve the problem or answer the essential question...
Of all the different learning styles, the most prevalent in my classroom is the visual learning style. Over time I have discovered that visual learners have distinct needs that set them apart from the other students, and that they require...
One of my students' most memorable activities is a lock-in. This is essentially a giant sleepover in which students get to spend the night in the school with all of their friends. In this post you will find strategies for planning a successful...
This post focuses on the five lessons I've learned during my Kindle Pilot Project.
This month my post features an exceptional teacher whose classroom I visited recently. Jen Upright’s joy and positive outlook are infectious and pervade her classroom. Not only do her 3rd graders love Jen, they’re making excellent academic and...
Due to the rigorous demands for academic achievement, centers such as housekeeping, blocks, and dramatic play are slowly vanishing from many kindergarten classrooms. Read on as I share how you can incorporate academic skills into play.
This Valentine’s Day we invite you to take a look at how we creatively plan a Valentine’s party that is standards based.
How are successful schools using data to improve state test scores? In this post, I describe how interim assessments can be used to assess student mastery of skills, to drive instruction, and to predict student performance on state assessments....
A visit with Dr. Adam Hott, of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, led me to consider how as teachers we inspire the next generation. Learn how I use magazines, field trips, and virtual field trips to expose my students to the outside...
From “hopping” along the number line, to “juggling” numbers in our heads, math is exuberant, it follows game-like rules, and it takes a lot of strategic thinking to succeed. It makes perfect sense, then, that games are a wonderful way to teach...
The Super Bowl can be a highly teachable moment within our classrooms. Sports are such a huge part of many of my students' lives, and I try to bring as much of what they are passionate about into my teaching as possible. I also discovered that...
No matter how diligently you work, starting from day one, test prep anxiety will arise around this time of year. Have you done enough to prepare your students? Do your students have strategies under their belts that will help them do their very...
Keeping students motivated and focused in the classroom is a difficult task. Due to a variety of circumstances, some students seem distant and uninterested in learning. But taking a moment and seeing my lessons from the students’ perspective,...
It’s the time of year when your classroom smells like wet mittens and snow gear must be worn for recess, necessitating an extra 20 minutes to get dressed to go out. To help with the torment of readying for the great outdoors, I’ve chosen a few...
Books, movies, and other top resources for teaching about Black History
