Around this time of year, teachers are thinking about classroom organization. How they can tame the chaos that has overtaken their classrooms or areas of their classrooms? And how to make everything more efficient? If you are like me, chaos or disorganization keeps me from my best. It is distracting and my classes don’t work as efficiently as they could…. View Post
It’s almost time for the New Year to begin! And now is a perfect time for a fresh start on our learning goals. This free writing activity will help students set new personal learning goals. As adults, we know that setting goals can be powerful and help us go farther. It can be powerful for students too! Of course, I… View Post
It is time for our annual Top 10 Christmas Gifts for Teachers! Ten fun and useful gifts specially picked out to be just what a teacher might want or need! You may find some great gift ideas for your favorite teacher and just maybe for yourself too! You can check out last year’s list here. Just click the links to… View Post
November is a month of thankfulness and gratitude. Really, I try to live all year being thankful for all that is in my life. My cup surely runs over…I have a wonderful and healthy family. I have friends who share good times with me. I have peace in my heart and coffee in the mornings! In gratitude for you, 14… View Post
Multisyllabic word fluency is so important as reading levels and texts get more complex. We’ve got 3 ideas to help make this easier for you and your students! And as a bonus…a couple of free things too. This post goes along with our series on building reading fluency. You can find the first post in this series here. Find our… View Post
Identifying the main idea is one of the most important comprehension skills for readers. But readers also sometimes find it difficult to master. We have some engaging ideas today to help you introduce this skill to your students that will make main idea and supporting details a lot easier and fun to do! First, prepare some Main Idea Detective bags… View Post
We are back to our series on building fluency! This week’s tips are about building fluency with phonics. Specifically with decoding activities. Building accuracy and automaticity with phonics skills is key for increased fluency. And as I always say… the whole point of all these pieces of reading is to lead to better comprehension. If you missed part one in… View Post
