Listening centers for primary grades Are you looking for a way to revamp your Listening Centers for primary grades? Do you remember (or are you still in) the days of rewinding cassette tapes or purchasing a set of books for all of your students and then trying to store them? Well not anymore!! QR Codes …
How to Create Effective Classroom Newsletters
HOW TO CREATE EFFECTIVE CLASSROOM NEWSLETTERS Classroom newsletters are an excellent way to keep parents informed on what’s going on in their child’s classroom. Sending home a classroom newsletter is a simple, but effective way to do all of the following : Maintain great parent-teacher communication Keep parents up to date with what their children …
Tips to Teach Context Clues
One way to instill confidence in your students’ reading abilities is to help them master context clues! Using context clues to understand a new word’s meaning is something our students will continue to use far beyond their time in our classrooms. Today I want to share with you a few tips to teach context clues …
4 Tips to Get Started With Informative Writing
Before students begin creating their own informational pieces, it’s important that they see a variety of informative passages and texts. They need to really be able to distinguish what makes this type of writing different from Fiction. A simple T chart to show the differences of informational and fiction writing and work good to get …
5 Ways to Help Your Students Master Summarizing
Teaching students to summarize seems like it should be fairly easy. There are no comprehension questions, no digging deeper into the text and no activating prior knowledge. After all everything they need is right there in front of them. In this blogpost I’ll share 5 ways to help your students master summarizing. But easy is …
Activities for Martin Luther King Jr. Day
There always seems to be an eagerness among students to learn about the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and what a great topic for them to be eager about! There are so many lifelong lessons that children can carry on into adulthood. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is such …
New Year’s Day Books
I think we can all agree that 2020 has been some kind of year! I mean holy cow! So while taking down the Christmas tree and having my last Peppermint Latte is sad, I know I’m not alone when I anticipate the new beginnings that lie ahead in 2021. Even though they’re kids, I bet …
Christmas Tree Books
Here is a list of 12 of my favorite Christmas Tree Picture books-in the shape of a Christmas tree 🙂 ! I’ve also included a few activities you can do in your classroom with them. If you click the titles below you’ll see the YouTube version of each book incase you don’t have it handy! …
Santa Claus Read Alouds
“SANTA! I KNOW HIM!” Our favorite jolly guy in the big red suit is coming back to town. To help bring the Christmas cheer into your classroom, I have compiled a list of my favorite Santa Claus books as well as a few activities to go along with them: Each link below will take you to …
Thanksgiving Read Alouds
Can you believe there’s only a little over two weeks until Thanksgiving?! It’s likely you’ll want a few (or alot) of books to share with your students about Pilgrims and Native Americans, being Thankful and all things Turkey! I have put together a list of my favorite Thanksgiving books to read aloud during November and …