Author: Jessica Boschen

Jessica shares her passion for teaching and education on What I Have Learned. Jessica has 16 years of elementary teaching experience and currently homeschools her two middle school boys. She enjoys scaffolding learning for students, focusing on helping our most challenging learners achieve success in all academic areas.

Reading

Common Latin and Greek Roots: A List and How to Teach Them

Teach a student the root port, and you have not taught them one word. You have handed them a key to transport, import, export, portable, and porter. That is the…

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Reading Comprehension

Pre-Teaching Vocabulary Activities That Boost Comprehension

You hand out a new science article, students start reading, and within a paragraph, three hands go up: “What does habitat mean? What’s adapt?” By the time you have answered,…

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Writing

Stretch a Sentence Worksheets: Which One Is Right for You

If you landed on my store and found several different stretch-a-sentence worksheets, you are not the only one who’s asked which is which. I get this question a lot: what is…

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Writing

Picture Writing Prompts That Stretch Simple Sentences

Ask an elementary student to write about their weekend, and you often get one flat line: “It was fun.” Give that same student a photo of a dog splashing through…

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Instructional Strategies | Classroom Management

Morning Work Ideas That Build Real Skills (Not Busywork)

The first ten minutes of the day set the tone for everything that follows. Students trickle in, you take attendance and answer the same question for the fifth time, and…

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Writing

Sentence Combining: How to Teach It in 5 Minutes a Day

Read a stack of 3rd grade writing, and you will see the same pattern over and over: “The dog ran. The dog was fast. The dog went to the park.”…

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Reading

How to Build a Morphology Word Wall That Students Use

When a 4th grader hits the word transportation in a science text and freezes, it is usually not because they have never seen it. It is because no one has…

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Math

Shapes Anchor Chart: Teaching 2D and 3D Shapes

Every year around the geometry unit, the same thing happens: a student points at a square and calls it a rectangle, or names a cube a “square” because that is…

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Physical Science

Physical and Chemical Changes: Activities for Grades 3-5

Teaching physical and chemical changes sounds simple until a student asks why dissolving sugar isn’t a chemical change but rusting a nail is. It’s one of those topics where students…

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Classroom Management | Back-to-School

Half Composition Notebook Ideas: 7 Daily Routines

Half composition notebooks are cheap, tiny, and everywhere in teacher supply hauls right now, but once you’ve bought a class set of 40, the real question is what to do…

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Writing

Morphology Morning Work: Daily Word-Part Practice

When a student hits a word like “unbreakable” and freezes, the fix usually isn’t sounding it out one more time. It’s seeing that the word is built from parts: un,…

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Physical Science

States of Matter: Solids, Liquids, and Gases for Kids

An ice cube, a glass of water, and the steam off a hot cup are all the same stuff in three different forms. That’s the whole idea behind the states…

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