My favorite part of teaching is meeting with my small groups!  For me, it is an awesome time to work closely with my students, catch their mistakes before they become habits, and really customize my teaching to fit their individual needs.  Small groups can be magical! Well, that is if the rest of your class isn't running up the walls!  After years of setting up my math centers (Math Workshop), I learned some strategies that have helped me be successful.  Here are some tips that will help you have a great start with center time, and keep them going strong all year long. 1. Keep it Real When creating your daily center schedule, keep it real! That's right! Don't set yourself up for failure by trying to fit too much into a short period of time. First, figure out how much time you have.   Next, decide how long you would like each rotation to be.  Then, figure out how many rotations you will be able to have each day.   Finally, add in a few extra minutes between e...
Have you ever looked out into the faces of the your students to see blank stares, wondering eyes, fiddling fingers, or students snoring?  I think it happens to all of us!  Also, do your students want snack time right after they walk in the door?  Do you find someone sneaking their snack or part of their lunch during class?  How about this....do you get hungry throughout the day and want to sneak a snack?  I know I do! Sooooooo.......here is some food for thought: Why not use food for motivation?  I know your pocket can't afford to use food for every lesson, but maybe one a month?  If you are in a district where parents are involved, get their help!  I can honestly say that my students have come back to visit after several years and still remember those lessons with food!  Here are some recipes for success in all subject areas: 1.  EXPLORERS AND CHOCOLATE After a lesson on explorers and the value of a cocoa bean, we made our very own chocolate bars.  Click for directions...
There are many ways to organize your classroom library.  You can organize it by guided reading level, genre, author, topic, etc.  I have always organized my classroom library into three sections: chapter books, picture books, and nonfiction books.  That works well for me, but not everyone's classroom library needs to look the same. Today I'm going to share with you how one of my teacher friends (Mrs. Strauss) organized her classroom library.  Since our school has purchased many AR books, she decided to organize her books based on AR book levels. Here are the steps you need to take: 1. Visit the official AR site and find the levels of each book. Write the levels on each book.  You can get fancy and make address labels, but my friend simply had her daughter write the level inside each book. 2. Buy some bookshelves (Walmart has $15 bookshelves). 3. Buys some bins (Dollar store!!) 4. Print the AR book bin labels (freebie below - click image to download PDF file). ...
I forgot my password....I forgot my username....Sound familiar?!?!  It can be exhausting, time consuming, frustrating, and annoying.  Yes, I said it!  It can be annoying!   We have stuff to get done, we are on a time frame.  You can't forget your username and password!!! After 13 years in the classroom I decided that I needed a solution to the "forgetting my username and password phenomenon".  Here is my solution to said phenomenon. For each website that my students have their own username and password for, I have a specific set of cards attached with a loose leaf binder ring.  We call them tech cards.  Each student has their own card, and each card contains their name, username, and password listed.   Attached to the front of the cards is a title card.  The title card lists the name of the website that the usernames and passwords are for.  When Student one says they forgot their password for IXL, I point them to the IXL tech cards that are hanging ...
I DO love back to school time. I love the freshly sharpened crayons, the clean pink erasers, and I especially love the pencils that are all the same size and perfectly pointed for the first (and possibly the last) time in my classroom. Back to School is a time of new beginnings, the glorious Spring of the school year. It's also the perfect time to read some great books to teach concepts like classroom rules and procedures, but more than that, to teach our newbies the deeper things that we want in a class community, like respect, caring, and tolerance.  So which books do I enjoy? I actually could have written a post with about 50 of them but I narrowed it down to my current top ten: 1. How I Spent My Summer Vacation Having kids write about what they did during the summer is a classic. In fact, it's been done so long, I think they might even have done this in ancient Egypt. What I like about this book though, is instead of telling the usual "What I Did Ove...