Throughout the year, our students will often get stuck in a book rut. Either they are reading the same books and authors over and over or they don't know what to read next. As teachers, we want to introduce them to new genres, authors and book series. Purposely setting aside time for students to … [Read more...] about A Simplified Book Tasting
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Friday Journals
Creating a connection between home and school has such a huge impact on a student's education. One way that I go about this is having students share with their families what we are learning in the classroom through a series of hand-written letters. On Fridays, during Writer's Workshop, my … [Read more...] about Friday Journals
The Morning Routine
Chaotic. Frenzied. Loud. Yep, my mornings used to start out like that too. As it turns out, that's not a great way to start the day in elementary school classroom! I was frantically trying to get attendance and lunch count done (please don't call my room again - I'm sorry I forgot to send it!). … [Read more...] about The Morning Routine
Building a Community of Readers
As a child, my friends and I would talk about the books that we were reading while we ate our PB&J at the lunch table and on the bumpy bus rides home. Something tells me I wasn't your typical kid though. So, how do we get our students to discuss books? To share their favorites? To reveal why … [Read more...] about Building a Community of Readers
Teacher Appreciation Week
Next week is Teacher Appreciation Week! At our school, we get all the students involved to show the staff how much we really care about them. It's a really simple, easy project that has a big impact. Each student receives a blank template to complete. Classroom teachers can decide to do this in … [Read more...] about Teacher Appreciation Week
Writing Meaningful Sentences
A few weeks ago, I passed out my students first set of spelling words. {we use Ladybugs Teacher Files Morphology Dictionary, which is awesome!} For homework, they were to look up the definitions of their words and write a meaningful sentence. I really stressed that meaningful sentence part. On … [Read more...] about Writing Meaningful Sentences
