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.
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…
Yearly planning takes time up front, but it saves hours every week once the year is underway. A yearlong curriculum map gives you the big picture so that your daily…
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…
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.
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.
Thanksgiving history timeline activities give students a way to hold the story together across multiple read-alouds. When students can see the events arranged chronologically — from Plymouth, England to the…
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…
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.
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,…
Holidays are a great time to infuse informational writing into your reading and writing curriculum. Students get to learn about animals from around the world and learn to write informational paragraphs…
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