As Earth Day approaches, I thought I'd share some exciting and educational activities that I plan use to celebrate this day with my students. The BEST part is that they are all PRINT AND GO! We are all so busy this time of year that I was so thrilled to open up my "April" binder and pull out these activities and add them to the copy bin! I am an outdoors person and I spend a LOT of time talking about my gardens and I used my love of gardening and hiking in a … [Read more...]
Classroom Fish Tank Project
For the past 15 years, I have been doing a project in my classroom that tops all of the other projects I do. It is the type of project that comes up in any conversations I have with past students who are back for a visit. Years ago, my brain conceived this project and it has only gotten better with time! When I do it, we create an ACTUAL FISH TANK in our classroom. Other teachers have used the project as more of a Project Based Learning project where students … [Read more...]
Opinion Writing: Unleash Student Voice
Happy Sunday! I hope you're enjoying a long weekend. Our district has done away with February vacation, but we do get Presidents' Day off and Tuesday as well. Today I wanted to share an activity that I do with my students when it comes to opinion and persuasive writing. I thought it might be something you could put in your lesson plans too. I read my class The Three Little Pigs, while exploring the idea that different perspectives lead to … [Read more...]
Bulletin Board: New Year, New Books
Happy New Year! What a whirlwind this year has been! In third grade we are forging forward but we are still feeling the effects of the past few years on our students. We are teaching so many SEL lessons and teaching kids how to interact with each other in positive ways! It sure makes for busy days. This past week I kept staring at the 12 Days of Kindness Bulletin Board that I had put up in December, and I knew that I needed to do something about it. I … [Read more...]
Read Across America Week
This past week we celebrated Read Across America week like many elementary schools around the country. We put our own spin on it and included some really diverse texts. Some of the books we read were books on inclusion of others and kindness. We were also learning about different rights and responsibilities of citizens so we incorporated some deeper texts as well. We put out a flier for our students that included a week of simple activities that we would … [Read more...]
Fitting It All In: Reading Skills
Reading Skills. There are a LOT of them. Sometimes it seems like when you focus on one skill, your students forget about the other ones! A few years ago we were deep in the throes of MAIN IDEA and Supporting Details. A question popped up about THEME and my class looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language! This was so painful because we had spent weeks on THEME in a previous unit! We need to spiral back to skills many times before they are truly … [Read more...]
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