Try as we may, we just can’t get enough of seasonal books. Do you have the same seasonal-book-buying affliction? One of the ways I love using seasonal books is in a daily countdown to the holiday. Here’s how we count down to Halloween with a spook read every day! We already have a post about…
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Morning Routines: Setting the Stage for a Successful Day
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. The effectiveness of the entire…
The First Week of School in 2nd Grade
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 of 2nd grade, check out…
Differentiated Word Study Made Easy
When Heidi and I were both teaching 2nd grade, we had a dream. We had a dream of THE IDEAL WORD STUDY PROGRAM. We both feel like we had some really solid practices in place for teaching phonics and spelling. But we had complaints about our cobbled together word study program: It never quite seemed…
The First Day of School in 2nd Grade
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 the minority (okay, I’m definitely…
Unlocking the Power of Fluency Webinar
Hi teacher friends! We wanted to alert you of some upcoming free professional development opportunities that we’re hosting in the coming weeks. You’re invited to join us to learn about Unlocking the Power of Fluency for your students. This is a free, live training we will be offering on a couple of different days. Click…
Teacher Summer Book Club 2017
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 into. Will you join us?…
The End of Year Tradition It’s Time to Abandon
“Mom wants answers after child with ADHD receives ‘Least Likely to Pay Attention’ award.” That was in my news feed 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 know exactly how…
10 Teacher Truths I Learned from Anne of Green Gables
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 me you loved it, too!…
How To Avoid These 6 Common Fluency Instruction Mistakes
There are some common mistakes that teachers make when they embark on teaching oral reading fluency. I’ve made some of these mistakes myself. But we hope to save you from making the same mistakes and have some idea for you of what to do instead. Mistake #1: Using ONLY 1 minute timed readings to assess fluency If…
