Learning about plant life cycles taps into your student’s natural curiosity about the world around them. In this article, I will be sharing 7 of my favorite activities for plant life cycle units. Identifying Parts of a Plant Before you dive into talking about plants, it is a good idea to make sure the students know the names of the plant parts. How detailed you need to go depends upon your grade level. Key words to…
With this pollination experiment, your students will demonstrate how insects pollinate flowers. You can grab and print all the directions HERE Pollination STEM Materials It is important to notice that the colors of the powders didn’t always match the package color. I recommend orange, strawberry, and green apple. Even though the green apple appears white, it is perfect to show the other colors when cross-pollinating them. Prep for the Pollination Activity Gather all the materials beforehand….
Are you searching for ways to improve writing skills of young writers without pulling your hair out? I’ve been there. The challenge is to encourage growth without crushing them in red ink. In this 2 part article, I am going to share my favorite and most effective methods to improve writing with younger students. Improve Writing With a Visual Rubric Now rubrics aren’t anything new. However traditional rubrics didn’t help my 2nd graders much. They’d check…
While discussing with my young students character traits examples, it became clear that there were many terms that they were not familiar with. They would default to words like nice, mean, or good. Character Traits Definition Bulletin Board So I decided to pair some character traits definitions with characters in our read-aloud stories. After reading and discussing the story, I ask the children to give me two or three character trait words that describe the character…
I LOVE children’s literature! My schedule always included 20 minutes of reading aloud to my class as they unwind and rehydrate after recess. Year after year read-aloud time was their favorite part of the day. And thanks to Scholastic Book Club and a boat load of points, I curated a vast classroom library of books for my students to choose from. We used books as mentor texts and for author studies. I wanted to immerse my…
Do phoneme awareness, phonological awareness, and phonics mean the same thing? Can the terms phonemic awareness vs phonological awareness be used interchangeably? Let’s demystify these terms! Although each word starts with phon, they do not mean the same thing. The Greek root phon means sound. So phonemic awareness, phonological awareness and phonics are related terms, but not identical. What is Phonological Awareness? Phonological Awareness is a broad term that involves orally identifying and manipulating sounds. This…
Have you ever noticed that strategies for classroom management are a lot like puppy training? Let me introduce you to my Golden Retriever puppy Shadow. Cute, isn’t he? Yeah, things went really well for the first couple of months. He quickly learned to do his business outside, never chewed any furniture, and never destroyed any of his stuffed animals! He sounds like a dream puppy, right? Well, fast forward a few months, and things have changed….
Teaching poetry writing can feel like a daunting task. You either love it or dread it. But let me tell you a secret: Struggling writers often enjoy writing poetry. Now, hear me out. Poems can be two short sentences (couplets) Poems don’t have to follow “the rules” Poems don’t have to rhyme Poems can be about anything What Are the Benefits of Teaching Poetry? Reason #1: Poems can help us see life in new ways. The…
Do you get blank stares when you teach what character traits are? Are their answers limited to words such as “nice” or “mean”? When I taught second grade, I quickly realized how limited my students’ vocabulary was when it came to describing the character traits of a person. They could easily tell me what the character looked like on the outside, but on the inside? Not so much. The good news is I will explain 5 activities…
My #1 passion is all things literacy! I'm a curriculum creator and literacy specialist with over 30 years teaching in elementary classrooms. My goal is to share creative and engaging ways to grow your students and are easy to implement and academically sound. You can expect to find teaching tips to boost your confidence and grow your learners. You don't have to do this alone! I'm the support you've been looking for. I'm so glad you are here!
