Many students in the primary grades struggle with writing stories and reading with fluency. When I noticed that my first graders had mastered writing a good, basic sentence, but couldn’t string a few together, I knew a needed to find a solution. They also needed to work on their reading fluency, so I decided to solve both problems at once:…
Back to school time is hectic, and there’s a lot to think about. However, these 5 first grade resources for back to school make those first few weeks of school so much easier. Here are my top 5 favorite back to school resources and how I use them in my classroom. 1. Letter Sound, Name, and Formation Review and Student…
If you’re working towards making your classroom more inclusive and reflective of the wider community, pictures books can be a great tool to showcase diverse families and home life set ups. In addition to using more inclusive language, teachers can use read alouds to help students both see their family and other family make ups. It’s a great way to…
How do we talk about the people who take care of our students in an inclusive way? The default mode for most teachers to is refer to the adults who take care of students as parents. However, not every child lives with our is taken care of by a mom or a dad. So, a few years ago I made…
Most (although it should definitely be all) school administrators were once classroom teachers, or teachers of some kind. However, often those days are long gone. I’ve had some really fantastic principals and some… less than great principals in my years in education. The ones who weren’t so great often didn’t really remember what it’s like to be a classroom teacher.…