Here we are…almost March! (How did that even happen?!) I don’t know about you, but for us that means we’re getting ready to move into our test prep season…lots of bubbling and essay writing! What’s needed most during this time …
Hi friends, I don’t know about you, but the last few months have seemed like a whirlwind of stress and excitement! I have the sweetest class of 20 students, which I can hardly believe! Teaching where I teach, …
Although I’m not actually back in the classroom yet, I still haven’t stopped thinking about my classroom. It’s been a summer full of reading blog posts, Facebook posts, and my own professional reading to help improve my craft. My brain …
In my school, we formally assess students 5 times per year on their reading levels. The school even creates goals on the number of levels students need to move in a given year as a way to track growth and …
3 questions to ask yourself as you set up your classroom library Read more »
One daunting summer task on my never-ending to do list is to tackle the garage–I mean really get in there and get rid of organize a lot of stuff that’s accumulated over the years. We spent a good part of an …
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of learning about T.Denny Sanford. He is a businessman and a philanthropist. His motto is: and he wants to die poor. At 81 years old, his net worth is 1.77 billion dollars–you can read his …
Creating Classroom Communities with Sanford Harmony Read more »
After digging through my office, I found this gem of an idea using Maya Angelou’s poem, Life Doesn’t Frighten Me. I remember doing this activity shortly after Maya Angelou’s death. It seemed very apropos at the time. Thinking about it…it’s a …
Look at our featured mentor texts! Love them 🙂 After days of reading “Swimming with Sharks,” we were ready to wrap it up and move on to other texts and genres. Before we left, I wanted my students to think …
Using Close Reading to teach Test Prep Strategies…Theme Read more »
Change over time…it is on every test and yet it is one of the most difficult concepts for kids to grasp. 😏 Here’s the chart I used and created with my students. This became the focus for the lesson…our teaching …
Using Close Reading to teach Test Prep Strategies: Analyzing the Character {Part 2} Read more »
In previous lessons, we worked to differentiate between character feelings and character traits, sorting them as positive and negative. But they were still writing character feelings as character traits and vice versa. We created charts together and the students referred …
Using Close Reading Strategies to teach Test Prep…Analyzing the Character {part 1} Read more »
