5 Ways to Help Students Become Word Collectors

…you to help YOUR students become Word Collectors — learners who notice, learn, and use interesting and meaningful words! 1. Encourage reading! Pretty obvious, right? Read aloud to your students….

Using Weekly Letter Writing In the Classroom

…grading rubric to hold them accountable for their writing. Weekly Letter Writing Freebie You can download the free grading rubric, example letters, an information sheet, and monthly topic ideas at…

4 Square Planning: The Key to Organized Writing

…conventions, giving opinions, and most importantly, organizing our thoughts. My students were expected to learn three differentiated classes of writing, and my lowest writers really struggled with the execution of…

Spelling Stories – Creativity Unleashed!

…students are like mine, they will write the most hilarious stories just to get the assignment done with the fewest words possible! To see an example, click here to read…

The Ancient Secret for Wise Decisions

…life at school, at home, out with friends, on the Internet, engaged in a sport or hobby, dating, Everything. From childhood to adulthood, we need to make smart choices. Teachers…

Teaching Kids How to Write Super Sentences

…Sentence Go Round. Sensational Sentences: Sentence Writing Practice includes a Google slide presentation to introduce the concepts, 2 digital sentence sorting activities, 2 self-checking Google Quizzes, 2 sentence writing activities,…

How to Recharge Mathematical Thinking

…If you’re skeptical, you might be thinking about discussions you’ve observed in the past. Often one student does all the problem solving, and everyone else writes down his or her…

Helping Children Cope with Tragedy

…both natural and those caused by man. It models effective parenting and teaching responses. This book can help assure children that through love, empathetic understanding, preparation, and effective communication, they…

6 Reasons to Teach Poetry in the Fall

…poetic devices like similes, metaphors, and personification. These techniques are used by authors in short stories and novels, too, and after your students are able to find them in poetry,…

Poetry: A Common Core Dilemma

…love for poetry began in childhood as I shared special moments reading and writing poetry with my best friend, Aleka. Later, as a teen, I found poetry to be a…