Ever been to an escape room with your friends? If you’re anything like me, you probably get a bit anxious, a little excited, but more than anything, you want to solve all the clues and WIN! Now, how about we think about how we can bring something similar into the classroom! I made an Escape Room for my class for… Read More
Engage Your Readers with Book Raffles
Book raffles are an AMAZING way to engage the students in your class in the reading process, and it can be fairly easy, too! Here’s how you can get started in your class. For a few years, we have been doing book raffles in our classroom. This is the easiest thing you could ever imagine, and I promise you, the… Read More
Engage and Motivate with QR Codes
I know QR codes have been around for a while, but I don’t think we can discount the power of the code. There are so many awesome ideas of how we can engage students in learning using QR Codes. Check out a few ideas below. Here are a couple of things we’ve done in our classroom: We have a select… Read More
5 Picture Books to Teach Narrative Writing
Narrative writing is one of my favorite things to teach in third grade. I love the stories that I hear when we ask students to tell a life story, or to write about a memorable moment in their life, or to tell about a time that they learned a lesson. I learn so much from my students, who they are,… Read More
Teaching About 9/11: Lessons for Elementary Students
There are topics, concepts, and strategies that are difficult for me to teach, but with a little review and finding some best practices, we know that we can get through to our kids. But, then there are those topics that there is no playbook for. Those that we have a hard time teaching, because we don’t know how our specific… Read More
Read-Alouds for the First Day of School
Every year I struggle to find read-alouds for the first day of school. I’ve used bucket filling books, character ed books, along with books that explain to kiddos that it’s okay to make mistakes, and numerous other titles and themes. But, this year I wanted more than that. I wanted a few books I could read during the first week to… Read More