Do your students have Spring Fever yet? It is certainly starting to spring up around my school! With warmer weather, more sunshine, and summer coming ever nearer, student behaviors are starting to ramp up. One way to promote a calm environment is by reading to your students. Here are 10 splendid spring read alouds to add to your collection! 1. […]
10 Splendid Spring Read Alouds
5 Marvelous Mother’s Day Gifts to Make in the Classroom
Mother’s Day is three weeks away! That makes it time to start thinking about and having students start creating a gift for their mom or other important female (grandma, aunt, like-a-mother etc.) in their life! As a mom, I always loved when my kids would bring home their Mother’s Day gift from school. They would come home with big grins […]
10 Best Short Videos for Teaching Phonics Rules
We want students to retain what we are teaching them. A great way to do this is by using videos! And what’s better than that, is a video with music! Typically, I play a video at the beginning or the end of the lesson. I will play it either as an introduction to what we are going to learn or […]
The Most Important Thing for Increasing Reading Fluency
I hope everyone got the opportunity to get some much needed R&R over Spring Break! If your Spring Break just started, lucky you! Well, I am back to work tomorrow and looking forward to it for the most part. I don’t love getting up early, but I do love working with my students. And with that, I want to share […]
5 Eggs-cellent Easter Read Alouds
Easter is only a couple weeks away! It’s unbelievable that Easter is on the last day of March this year! I haven’t even worn my green for St. Patrick’s Day yet and I’m thinking about Easter. With thoughts of Easter, it’s time to share my book list of Eggs-cellent Easter read-alouds! 1. How to Catch the Easter Bunny by Adam […]
5 Ways to Maximize Your Teacher Work Day
Have you ever at the end of a teacher work day thought to yourself, “I barely got anything accomplished today. Where did the time go?” It has happened to me a time or two, or more, until I started doing these 5 things! Now, I get a mountain of work done during my teacher work days with only a small […]
8 Books for Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day is March 17th, which happens to fall on a Sunday this year. Even though it is over a weekend, that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate the holiday with your students, either the Friday before or the Monday after! Everyone can dress in green, you could eat green foods, do a rainbow experiment, hunt for gold coins, or […]
8 Last Minute “Oh Crap, It’s Valentine’s Day!” Activities
I can’t believe Valentine’s Day is Tuesday! Now that January has FINALLY ended, February seems to be flying by! With that, I’m going to share some easy to prepare last minute Valentine’s Day activities. That way just in case you forgot or just didn’t have the time to get something together, you’ll have something fun for your students to do […]
Using Data Effectively
The middle of the year is an excellent time to look at your students’ data and analyze it! I agree with most educators that there is too much testing in schools. However since we have this data, we should use it! I know using the words “data” and “analyze” in the first sentence of this post may have you cringing, […]
Magnetic Letters: A Mighty Literacy Tool
If you teach in the primary grades, it is essential that you have enough sets of magnetic letters and magnetic boards for a small group of students. This is a tool that I use almost daily in my reading small groups. You can do so many quick, meaningful actvities by having students use magnetic letters! By using magnetic letters you […]