Should Your Students Memorize the Multiplication Facts? That is the question that many teachers and parents ask every year. I am a firm believer that students should know their multiplication facts but I am also adamant that repeated multiplication drills are not the way to do it. It is very helpful to know the multiplication facts…
Using a student planner has many benefits. Do you want to help your students work on their organization skills and at the same time open up communication with families? I have the answer for you… a STUDENT PLANNER Over the years I have always had my students use a planner, daily, and I have notice…
Making Student partner groups Putting students into groups or partners can be a tricky thing. We all know that who a student works with makes all the difference in how successful an activity will be. Many times teachers (and I was/am guilty of this too) put students together based on abilities. The students know who is…
Growth Mindset Lessons As soon as I read After the Fall by Dan Santat I knew that I wanted to use it in my classroom. Besides the amazing illustrations, it has an incredible growth mindset message. I have tried many different behaviour management and self-regulation methods in my classroom over the years. I have seen…
Are you looking for an eye catching display for St. Patrick’s Day? This St. Patrick’s Day art and writing project will have everyone stopping to take a look. This project is also a great way to get your students reflecting on their life and all they have to be lucky for. You will need at…
Are you wanting to add physical health to your distance learning plans? With so many students spending so much time on the computer as part of their at home learning, it is important to motivate them to keep being active. This was my answer. I will let students choose what they want to do everyday…
For years I struggled to organize my listening to reading materials. I never remembered to change out the books. Books and cd players were getting wrecked. Students had to listen to the same books over and over again because I didn’t have many books. It took a few years of struggle and many organizational tries…
Are your students too old for the traditional desk plate name tags? I want my students to have name tags but they feel that the ones with the number lines and other reference items are too young for them. Because of this I have my students design their own name tag. By having them design…
Are you looking for an engaging multiplication activities to practice facts with? I bet your students love sharks as much as mine do! I have combined sharks and multiplication to create a fun, FREE way for my students to practice their multiplication facts and I am sharing it with you. Students learn multiplication facts quicker…
I have read a lot of research articles about the importance of teaching students the ins and outs of syllables and I could bore you with all the technical mumbo jumbo, but I won’t. I will let you know the highlights of my research (and 14 years of teaching) and do so in easy to…
Do you have a class that needs differentiated St. Patrick’s Day activities? All your students can be working on alphabetical order with these St. Patrick’s Day alphabetical order pages. They are differentiated to help with students who need extra time to complete an activity. The pages look similar, one just has fewer words. There are…
To start Reading off this year we are focusing on learning the Reading Power strategies.If you haven’t heard about Reading Power by Adrienne Gear (Note: All book links are aff. links) it is a must for anyone teaching reading. We have started by learning about how to make connections to what is being read. The…
It feels like Valentine’s Day has snuck up on me this year. These last few days all I have done is shovel snow and haven’t had time to think about planning Valentine’s Day. I am glad I have my Valentine cards already printed. I just have to cut them out and label. Oh yah….and buy…
I have been doing a lot of updating of products lately. I have added more engaging, interactive activities that I have tried in the classroom and are student approved. One of my favorite updates has been to my Homophones unit !It went from being boring worksheets to engaging activities and literacy centers. Here is a…
I LOVE Halloween time! There are so many wonderful, descriptive words that go with Halloween which leads to many literacy activities. If you have a class that you have to differentiate work for, these FREE alphabetical order pages will be perfect. They look similar, and have most of the words the same. The difference is…
A couple weeks ago I was looking for a quick art project for my class to complete. I cannot remember where I saw a picture of a winter scene done on black paper with chalk, but it was likely Pinterest. After searching town for white chalk (our school only had yellow) and finding some, I…
Hi All, I have this 15 minute block of time, once a week, first thing int he morning before we go to PE that I have to fill. I usually have my students do some morning work activity. Most times it is Math or Language Arts but it ALWAYS has to be independent work, as…
Here is a quick freebie for you. I always want to set expectations at the beginning of the year for how I want students to answer questions. Since I teach grade 4/5 I don’t want just one word answers (unless it is an adaptation for a student) but rather more in depth answers that have…
I am always looking for new ways to dismiss my class. Whether we are going from the carpet area back to our desks or from our desks to the carpet area or from either place to the door, I don’t want my students rushing in a big mob to where they are asked to go….
Mother’s Day is this Sunday and we have been working on finishing our Mother’s Day Gifts. There has been a lot going on at our school this year so I didn’t want to go with my usual Mother’s Day gift ideas because they require quite a bit of prep beforehand. While I was shopping at…
I am super excited to announce that I have been included in this years Winter Ebook for Grades 3-5!!!!! All of the Ebooks are amazing and it is hard to get a spot in them so when I found out my page was going to be included I was ecstatic. Click on the picture to…
Well we have been hit hard by Mother Nature these last couple of days. We had no snow (usually it snows at the beginning of November) and I was beginning to wonder what Christmas was going to look like when … WHAM! We got a ton. We had so much snow at once that Thursday…
Well it finally feels like we are in the swing of things at school. Everything is behind because of our late start so it is weird that we only have a few CAFE strategies done. Here is an update on our most recent activities. We had a Seusstastic time with our Tune in to…
We are still not back into our classrooms. I just finished my 5th week (2 in June, 1 in August, 2 in September) on the picket line 🙁 Since we are not back at work I have had extra time to get things ready. Well what I can do with the stuff I have at…
I know we all have those students who chronically do not finish their work and if you are teaching in a school like me, inevitably there will be students who will not do homework or who will not bring it back. A few years ago I really needed a solution to organizing all of the…
We just finished our animal unit in Science and I used a little fox to help me! I saw the book What Does The Fox Say a while back and bought it immediately because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. We had a day where we revisited What Does The Fox…
Yay another Bright Ideas Blog Hop. I love them greatly !! I have gotten so many great ideas from them each time. For this month I thought I would share with you all how I motivate my students to track while they are reading. During my guided reading groups I felt like a broken record…
This week we started looking at story elements in hopes that soon my students will be able to write their own story with well developed story elements. I decided to start with teaching them setting. The first day I introduce setting with this anchor chart. As I was going through the anchor chart, I went…
Wowzers !! Friday was a busy day for us. Not only did we celebrate Valentine’s Day but we also had our 100s Day celebration. It was a fun filled day and I was proud of by kiddos for keeping it together and not being to wild and crazy (especially when candy was involved). This past…
I am very excited to announce that I am part of this years Holiday Ebook for Grades 1-2! I am on love with my freebie in there and my students have a lot of fun with it. There are 50 Teachers Pay Teachers sellers who have included a winter freebie and a teaching tip. There…
Some of my students are having troubles remembering the colour words, both how to read them and to write them. I created these signs to hang in my classroom and so far they are working great. Students know where they can look if they are stuck on a colour word! I love the Melonheadz Kidlettes…
Since I am in a primary classroom this year I needed to revamp my literacy program. I had the opportunity to go visit another primary classroom where they were doing Daily 5. I immediately knew this is what I had to do in my class. I thought I would share with you the activities we…
We read A Bear in War and coloured poppies for our Remembrance Day wreath today. A Bear in War is one of my favourite picture books for talking about Remembrance Day. It is a true story and showcases Canadian history. After we read the book we visited the website for the Canadian War Museum to…
Wow things have been crazy this week. We had our student led conferences on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night. The earliest I left the school was 8pm. Thursday I was there until 9pm. It was so worth it though. I was sceptical that student led conferences were the way to go. I had never done them…
I think that Halloween is my favorite holiday to decorate my classroom for. This week we finished our Halloween cats and I put them on the bulletin board in the hallway. I may be bias but I think it turned out pretty good. Usually I have a flat tree but this year I wanted to…
Okay so some of you may have had wild fun last night but me… I stayed home and did some planning, printing, cutting, and laminating….WAHOO fun I know. We are wrapping up our place value unit and I wanted my kiddos to have some fun activities to explore on Monday so I finally got around…
