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Teaching Composing and Decomposing Numbers to Kindergarten
Use these fun free downloads and popcorn to introduce your kindergarteners to decomposing numbers. Includes a recording sheet - learn more!
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All About Me Back to School Activity
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Place Value for Grades 1 and 2
Place value doesn't have to be boring. Understanding that tens and hundreds can be thought of as 'bundles' in base ten, that digits represent the amounts of hundreds, tens and ones, and that those digits are a simplified way of writing the expanded form of numbers does sound quite dry! And yet many of us have to begin the year by reviewing place value - after all it is the bedrock of the number system.
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Staying Focused on Workdays
Going back to school, even when we are at our most enthusiastic, can be tough after a long vacation. Especially when we have a list of tasks we have to complete. And when we haven’t seen our co-workers all summer and we need to catch up. And when our administrators and districts give us professional development classes when we just want to put up the alphabet posters in our room. It can be overwhelming when you enter your classroom on that first workday with chairs stacked against the wall and empty bulletin boards begging for life. Here are three tips to keep you at your most productive and to respect…
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Using Nursery Rhymes at Home and in the Classroom
Listening and speaking are the foundation for reading and writing, and as teachers we know the importance of reading to children from a very young age. But just as important is hearing and learning nursery rhymes. Back in the day I learnt all my nursery rhymes bouncing around on relative's knees, and would proudly show of my ability to 'read' my nursery rhyme book back to front, reciting all the nursery rhymes that are still emblazoned on my memory to this day.
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More Than a Test Score
It's testing season here, and to me that only means one thing. Stress. Stress for our teachers. Our principals. Our parents. But most of all, stress for our students.
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We’ve Got The Whole World In Our Hands
Earth Day is April 22nd and it is a great opportunity for upper elementary students to evaluate the impact that we have on the planet and what the future implications of that impact could be. When I was looking for videos I found a lot of smaltzy, sing-songy videos aimed at lower elementary about recyling, reducing, reusing, planting, etc. But in this blog I want to highlight the five that I found for upper elementary students that I think are the most useful for explaining and laying out the consequences of not looking after our planet, as well as things families can do that could have a positive effect. (Disclosure:…
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Fractured Fairy Tales
Teaching a unit on fairy Tales, folktales and fables was always one of my favorite times in school. We would start with traditional tales, which even back in the 1990’s not everyone knew, and if they did it was often just an wide-eyed Disney version. Then we would move on to lesser known tales, like that of Bluebeard, who told his wife never to open the room on the top floor of the house (but left her the key anyway), Rushen-Coatie and Yeh-Shen (Scottish and Chinese versions of Cinderella, respectively). By far my favorite part of the unit though, was teaching ‘twisted’ or ‘fractured’ versions of familiar fairy tales, usually…
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Mother’s Day Craft
(Disclosure: Some of links below are affiliate links, which means that at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.) As I write this, I know it’s not May, but I want to help you strike something off your list that will creep up on you in a couple of months: Do you find yourself frantically pulling out your hair when you realize that it is Mother’s Day and your students haven’t grown a plant, written on a shrinky dink or made a bracelet/magnet/picture frame for their moms? Before you reach for the yarn and the every trusty box of…
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Celebrating Black History Month: Part 2
Following on from last week’s post, celebrating Black Americans that you may not have heard of, here are some more ground-breaking and amazing pioneers in history that you might be familiar with. I have researched a book for each historical figure, a suitable website and and engaging activity to hook your students. (Disclosure: Some of links below are affiliate links, which means that at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.) Bessie Coleman Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman was an American civil aviator. She was the first female pilot of African American descent to earn a pilot’s license. She gained her…
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Celebrating Black History Month: Part 1
Observing Black History Month In 1964 the author James Baldwin reflected on the shortcomings of his education. “When I was going to school,” he said, “I began to be bugged by the teaching of American history because it seemed that that history had been taught without cognizance of my presence.” As an immigrant to the USA, Black History Month (introduced in 1976 to rectify the situation that James Baldwin and Black Americans had experienced in education) has afforded me the opportunity to learn about history shakers and makers. Some of the names were familiar to me, as in this blog post, but often I had to dig deep to research pioneers,…
