Picture Books to Teach About REsidential Schools Teaching students about the history of Canadian Residential Schools is necessary but can lead to some very heavy conversations. I have found the best way to do this is through the use of picture books. 14 Picture Books It can be difficult to know which books are appropriate…
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 new read Alouds for your Grade 3 or 4 Classroom? Whether it is on Instagram, Facebook, or in the school, I am always hearing the question “What book should I read to my class next?” I decided I would let you know which read alouds my 3rd and 4th grade students…
Are you looking for FREE ways to engage your students at the beginning of the school year? Some much is going on at the beginning of a new school year. Setting up routines, going over expectations, gathering information, and so much more. All of these bring moments where you need to have your students working…
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…
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…
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…
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…
No matter what grades I have taught I have ALWAYS had my students write journals. Of course journals in primary grades are different that journals in intermediate grades. At the beginning of the year when I introduce journals to my intermediate students (this year grade 4/5) my students are like…”Hold on! We don’t do journals…
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…
Our Thanksgiving is over here and so are our Thanksgiving themed activities. This year I had student turn themselves into turkeys. Well not literally 🙂 While I was procrastinating on Facebook I saw a post by Mrs. Beattie with this activity for Thanksgiving and I knew my class would love it. I started by reading…
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…
Well the week before Spring Break has come and gone. It was a challenge to keep the kiddos going but we did it. I think they might have faired (fared?) better than I did. I am definitely needing a break, especially after writing report cards. YIKES. There may have been a time last week that…
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…
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…
Wow I just realized how long it has been since I posted on my blog. As usual life is crazy right now with finishing my masters degree. My first ahhhh date is April 8th because my action research is due on April 7th and then all I have to worry about is my course work….
April is National Poetry Month so I thought I would have my first blog post of the month all about poetry. I LOVE teaching poetry in my class especially with the older grades because they are very creative and are not always reliant on templates to fill in the blank. I am kind of sad…
