Primary Teaching Ideas, Resources and Strategies
Our Holidays Around the World unit is in full swing! Today we learned all about Sweden and the focus was Santa Lucia Day. This is one of my favorite lessons to do with my students because they are always SO fascinated with the Santa Lucia traditions. I always use informational text articles to base our lessons around. I have written… Read More
Can you feel the excitement in the air? It’s quickly becoming that magical time of year… the time when all your classroom routines are on auto-pilot. Your students are making progress… you’ve built relationships… you are FINALLY ready to sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Then someone says the word “Christmas” and your students look like this…… Read More
This is my 18th year teaching. Wow, that makes me sound old! (Notice I said that makes me sound old… not that I am old… 😉 ) Anyway, in all those years I have had just about every “kind of class” you can imagine. I have taught pre-k, kindergarten, first grade, second grade and ESE. I have taught in Title… Read More
Welcome back! Hopefully you have been with me since the beginning of this “blog series journey”! This is the fifth and final (for now) post in this series. You can catch up on the series by reading: Post 1 HERE – Post 1 was all about exactly what flexible seating is and why it is so great for kids. (This post… Read More
So, if you are reading this, I am really hoping that you have read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of my Flexible Seating blog series. In those posts I talk about what flexible seating is and why it is so valuable for students, the research that supports flexible seating, how to roll out flexible seating to your students,… Read More
Today I want to talk about getting started with flexible seating in primary classrooms. Specifically, how I introduced this new concept to my students. If you haven’t read Part One of my Flexible Seating series you can find it HERE. Part One talks about what exactly flexible seating is and why is it is good for students. I listed the… Read More
Earlier last week I got together after school with some of my long-time “teacher besties”. We have spread out to different schools & grades over the years, had babies, bought houses… even started a book club! …But somehow when we get together the conversation always makes its way back to school at some point. (…You can take the teacher out… Read More
Dear Debbie Downer (a.k.a. My teacher friend/Colleague/Teammate/Nice Teacher I Met at a Training/Teacher in my Facebook Group/Girl I Went to College With Who is Now a Teacher… ETC…), Let me start by saying, I get it. Seriously, I get it. Sometimes it is all just too much. TOO MUCH, I tell you! Too many mandates, too many complaints, too many problems… Read More
You’ve heard the expression “If Mama ain’t happy – Ain’t nobody happy”, right? Well, the same thing is true for our classrooms. If you, the teacher, aren’t happy – you’re students won’t truly be happy either. And for the word “happy” we could easily substitute “calm”, “focused”, “motivated”, “enthusiastic” … almost any adjective works in that little scenario. When I… Read More
Well, since it is Sunday night I don’t think I can even pretend that this is still a “real” Five for Friday post… However, I do like catching up, sharing the highlights of my week with you and linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching… So, I’m hoping we can just ignore my tardiness (like we do every week- but a lets… Read More