Seasonal

Seasonal themes make it easier to keep students engaged throughout the year while still teaching the skills you need to teach. From back-to-school routines to end-of-year reflection, seasonal activities can support classroom community, academic practice, and a little extra fun when everyone needs it most.

Life Science | Spring

Life Cycles & Metamorphosis: Articles & Graphic Organizers

How do you teach students about life cycles? Below are some ideas and resources on how we build background knowledge and work with information about life cycles and animals that…

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Back-to-School | Instructional Strategies

81 Sponge Activities to Soak up 5-10 minutes of time throughout the day

Sponge activities are short learning activities designed to fill those 5 to 10 extra minutes in the school day, such as the wait before lunch, the last few minutes after…

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Spring

Second Grade March Math Centers

We’re almost into the final stretch of the school year! March, April, May and part of June! It seems so close and yet so far away at the same time!…

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Back-to-School | Teacher Professional Practice

How to Create a Classroom Daily Schedule for Elementary Students

Setting up your classroom daily schedule at the start of the year is one of those tasks that sounds manageable until you’re actually doing it. You have reading, math, writing,…

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Back-to-School

2014 – 2015 Second Grade Classroom

I was able to go in and get my keys yesterday. We don’t start school for two more weeks, but I have bits of things scheduled here and there, so…

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Classroom Management | Back-to-School | Goal Setting

Classroom Community Anchor Charts for the First Weeks of School

Classroom community anchor charts do something that a list of rules posted on the wall cannot: they capture what students actually said, in their own words, about what it means…

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Reading | Fall | Reading Comprehension | Social Studies

Describe the Connection Between Historical Events

Describe the connections between historical events is a Common Core Standard that is hard to teach! Here is how I taught this standard with the events leading up to the first Thanksgiving. Through this unit, students asked and answered questions, we made a timeline, we read great books, AND we figured out the connection between historical events.

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Reading | Fall | Reading Comprehension | Social Studies

Ask and Answer Questions about Thanksgiving

Asking and answering questions can be hard for students! We set up a routine where students would write 6 questions and other students would answer those six questions. This was the perfect way for me to monitor whether students could ask and answer questions about any topic! Here is how we applied it to Thanksgiving.

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Reading | Fall

Create a Timeline about the Events Leading Up to the First Thanksgiving

The month of November is the perfect time to spend in an in-depth study of the events that lead to the first Thanksgiving. In this blog post, I outline how we…

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Fall

Halloween Center Activities to Keep Students Busy

What do you teach on Halloween? Halloween is a day when it’s really hard to teach any significant content, where students come to school in costumes or at least super…

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Math | Fall

Math Art Activity for Fall – Fall Leaves Three-Digit Addition Activity

Mix art and math with this fun fall art project. Students create a Fall tree using dots and then use their three-digit addition strategies to figure out how many dots are in their table group. We also extended it to find out the number of dots in our class. A great fun, engaging math AND art activity.

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End-of-the-Year | Writing

Pizza Box Writing Portfolios: A Creative End of the Year Writing Activity

Looking for a creative end of the year writing activity that helps students reflect on their growth without adding a ton of prep? Pizza box writing portfolios are a fun,…

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