I love getting a new holiday-themed book to read for pleasure in December and why would our students be any different? It’s especially exciting when kids get the chance to read a holiday-themed tale about characters from a series they already love. We’ve talked before about how we love reading
As a teacher, I really do love October. There are so many fun ways to add a little Halloween zing to your regular classroom routines. Today we’ve got a fun freebie for you that puts a spooky twist on collective nouns! Collective nouns are names for groups of people, animals,
Want to know my tried-and-true secret to surviving the last few weeks of school? THEME DAYS! I love theme days for two reasons. They keep the kids engaged. They make planning easier. We call these our D.L.I.T.E Days. D.L.I.T.E stands for Differentiated Learning and Integrated Theme Experience. You can call
How you start your day is often how you live your life. –Louise Hay Beginnings matter. What happens before the first bell even rings has a huge impact on the outcome of the entire day. The tone of the day is established in the first 20 minutes of the day.
I sat down to type up what I did the first week of 2nd grade, but a few thousand words later, I’d only covered the first day! So it seemed like we probably needed 2 posts on that topic. If you want to know how I organized the first DAY
Back-to-school is the worst of times. It’s so stressful and exhausting (seriously it’s so, so tiring!). But it’s also the best of times! The feeling of a new beginning is absolutely exhilarating. I love that fresh start, where everything is possible and I haven’t screwed up…yet! I may be in
What’s better than relaxing with a great book in the summer? How about THREE great books?! Join us for our Summer Book Club! We’ll doing a little light reading, some thoughtful thinking, and a lot of fun discussion. After some suggestions, we’ve selected three great reads that we can’t wait to dive
“Mom wants answers after child with ADHD receives ‘Least Likely to Pay Attention’ award.” That was in my newsfeed the other day. It’s easy to look at a story like that and think the teacher is incredibly cruel. And though it seems so obvious that this was a terrible, terrible idea,
I first saw Anne of Green Gables when I was 8. You know the 80s mini-series from Canada with Megan Follows and (the all-time best TV crush) Jonathan Crombie??? I fell in love from the first scene with Anne reciting poetry to herself as she walks through the woods. Tell
Around here at Second Story Window, there’s not much we love more than Christmas picture books! Today we’re sharing some of our favorite versions of the 12 days of Christmas. Our other Christmas books posts have narrowed our recommendations down to our top 5, but there are just too
Do you know The First Six Weeks of School by Paula Denton and Roxann Kriete? I love this book! I got it early in my teaching career and it’s one of the few books that I pulled out to reference EVERY YEAR! The main philosophy of this book is that
When it comes to fluency practice, students need something to read. But what? Really, any text that students can read independently works for practice: rereading familiar books Reader’s Theater scripts student newspapers (Scholastic News, Weekly Reader, etc.) joke books short poems But if you’re looking for more targeted practice, leveled
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