I love teaching my 3rd graders about area and perimeter! It is a challenging concept, but I love how hands-on we can make it. I wanted to share some of my favorite activities for introducing perimeter and area with you.

Introducing Perimeter and Area with Food

There is no kid in the world that...

Read Opinion Writing Mentor Texts

Before you can ask your students to write in a genre that is new to them, you must first show them what it looks like. So to begin your unit, you’ll want to share examples of opinion writing with your students. These mentor texts provide students with...

It is that time of year - the dreaded test prep season. I don’t love testing, who does? But I have found lots of ways to make the test prep a little more fun. It’s all about the task cards!

I printed up a big stack of math and ELA task cards and then found lots of quick and fun ways...

Test Prep Dos

1. Do plan fun review activities.

Test prep should NOT be boring! Test days are already boring enough on their own. We want to keep the days leading up to the big test as engaging as possible. Get the kids up and moving and out of their seats. Play games and rotate through centers....

Struggling to determine the best way to approach teaching graphs to elementary students? There are so many different types of graphs that students need to be able to read and create, and I’ve finally gotten it down in order to best help my students be successful with reading and creating...

If you’ve ever wanted to get an in-depth look into the inner workings of why digital games are essential to your classroom, keep reading. I am a very big believer in games and that kids learn while they are playing, while not realizing that they’re learning. If we can incorporate fun...

Are you prepping to teach poetry, but just aren’t sure where to start? I’ve compiled a list of tips to make teaching poetry a cinch AND get your students loving it too.

Tip #1: Use Relatable Poems

This is a big one. You have to hook students on poetry from the very beginning. Many of...

When we teach students to make common denominators can get very tiresome quickly. All of the little opportunities for errors with making equivalent fractions, adding and subtracting, and just when they think they are done they have to simplify the fraction. It can definitely get tedious quickly....

Teaching grammar can seem daunting, but after many years of trial and error, I have perfected the steps of teaching grammar that will keep my students engaged and excited. Each day’s grammar lesson is 10-15 minutes at most and we focus on the same topic throughout the week to ensure...

Solving word problems is a huge standard in upper elementary math classes. Students have to be able to read the words and figure out what they need to do in order to solve the problems. Sometimes the word problems are straightforward and other times, students really have to think about the best...

Games are such an effective tool for practicing skills in the classroom. Students are so engaged when playing games and we remember more of what we learn when we are having fun. 

I worked hard to incorporate games into my classroom on a very regular basis. My students played vocabulary games...