Investigating Condensation and the Water Cycle

…part of a lesson on states of matter. Because this is an exploratory activity, it’s best not to provide too much background information before you begin. Condensation Investigation is designed…

Checking for Understanding with Exit Tickets

…effective strategy to check for understanding is to provide each student with a paper exit ticket. When creating effective paper exit tickets, I consider the following to be 3 critical…

How to Cure the Classroom Library Blues

…level. Students have 7-10 books in their book baskets. Each student is assigned a day to “book shop” in which they return their old books to the proper baskets and…

Hands-on Geometry – Part I

…and line as best they can. The kids really get into it! When I say “parallel lines”, their arms always move up over their heads in two straight lines. When…

Book Character Day – Fun and Educational!

…to Laura’s Best Freebies. Book Character Parade Another activity that would work well with Book Character Day is a Book Character Parade. Here’s a snapshot that Barbara Gruener of the…

Power Reading Workshop and The Daily 5

…first read The Daily 5 shortly after it came out in 2006, and I was impressed by the sisters’ inspirational writing style and by the program itself. Their book outlines

12 Ways to Motivate Reluctant Readers

books. Think audio books are for little kids? Maybe you haven’t listened to Madeleine L’Engle read A Wrinkle in Time! Audio books are some of the best reading motivators you’ll…

Cooking Up a Caring Classroom

Book Titles and Topics Checklist After I realized that Julia’s books would be ideal for class meetings, I asked her if she had a chart with all of her book