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Tips for a Smooth Meet the Teacher Night
Meet the Teacher Night. Do those words make your palms sweat and knees wobble? I have to admit that after 17 years, I still always felt sick to my stomach just before parents walked in! Once I got talking, everything would go smoothly, though, and fortunately, I never had any disasters. Well, if you also…
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Back-to-School Read-Aloud for Phonemic Awareness
Don’t you love when you find a great book to read aloud? I am always looking for amazing read-alouds and when I found The Hungry Thing by Jan Slepian, I hit the jackpot! It’s such a funny story that’s perfect for rhyming and phonemic awareness. If you don’t have the book, I included links in…
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Class Behavior Management: Individual, Group and Whole Class Systems
One of the biggest areas teachers have anxiety about is behavior management. Will our students listen to us? What if they don’t? How can I gain their trust and respect? Of course, it’s important to build relationships, have engaging lessons, lots of patience, understanding, and build a caring community in your classroom. These can all…
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How to Quiet a Talkative Class: 14 Attention-Grabbing Tips
In the middle of a lesson on Chaucer, my high school English teacher suddenly started mooing. You read that right- MOOOOOOOOOOO! We all stopped our side conversations, doodling, note-passing, and looked up at Mr. Block. He then continued his lesson as if he hadn’t just done the weirdest thing. But now, he had our attention.…
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Using Anchor Charts and Graphic Organizers on Your Whiteboard
I love anchor charts and use them daily. They are such a great tool in my classroom, for my students, as well as for myself. Read this blog post for ideas on how to create and use them, tips, and free anchor chart pieces. In this post, I wanted to share one more way you…
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Anchor Charts: Why They Work and How to Use Them
Do you love anchor charts as much as I do? Anchor charts may look pretty, but there are so many benefits to anchor charts besides just adding to your class decor! First of all, what IS an anchor chart? An anchor chart is a poster created to record and display important points about your lesson.…
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Goal-Trackers: A System for Helping Students Set Goals
Give your students more ownership this year! Helping them set their own goals can be a powerful tool for improving academics, behavior, and effort. How can you Help Students Set Goals? Teaching students to set goals is a skill they will benefit from throughout their entire lives. Discuss the importance of setting goals and model…
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Student Goal-Setting
As teachers, we have benchmark goals for almost everything. “Students should be reading on ___ level by the end of ___ grade,” “Students should be reading ___ words per minute,” “…. know __ letters/ sounds by __” “…. know addition and subtraction facts to 10, 20….” These goals may be helpful to us as teachers,…
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Body-Spelling Sight Words
Multisensory Sight Word Practice High-frequency sight words are essential to gaining reading fluency. Want to know the best way to practice? Here are some key things to do to make sight words stick: In all of my years teaching and researching about sight word instruction, I’ve learned that when kids are engaged and using their…
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Teaching Different Learning Styles: Strategies for Reaching All Learners
This blog post about teaching different learning styles was originally written in 2018. It was updated in 2024 to reflect the latest available research. Ever have students zone out during some parts of a lesson, but stay alert during others? This may be attributed to their learning style or preference. We’ve all heard it: “Not…
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Word Wall. Not Wallpaper.
Ever read your students’ writing and see words that you’ve already covered misspelled? In fact, those words are on the word wall and students can easily look up to spell them correctly. So why don’t they?? This may be because often a word wall is just (dare I say it?) CLASS DECOR to kids. They…
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5-Minute Sight Word Game
You finished a lesson early, now what?! I know, that very rarely happens. But, indulge me for a minute. So, you have an extra 5 minutes before you have to get ready for lunch/ music/ PE… Hmmm, what can you do? There’s not enough time to read a book or have kids write in a journal.…