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, or things. Some of these…
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Reading Fluency in a Flash
Over the last year and a half we’ve talked to countless teachers about fluency instruction in the classroom. When we help students recognize words effortlessly and teach them to read with appropriate expression and phrasing, we’re allowing them to access texts in a more meaningful way. Reading fluency is the key to unlocking the magic of…
BTS Success: A Free Back-To-School E-mail Course
Back-to-school is the worst of times. It’s so stressful and exhausting (seriously it’s so, so tiring!). 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! After 17+ first days of school as a teacher, I…
My 2nd Grade Morning Routine
The way we begin each day in our classroom sets the tone for learning and speaks volumes about what and whom we value, about our expectations for the way we will treat each other, and about the way we believe learning occurs. –Roxann Kriete How do you start your school day? It’s a question every…
Establishing Classroom Procedures : A Plan for Back-to-School Success
Before you can really plan out the first days and weeks of your school year, you need a plan in place for how you intend to handle the routines and procedures in your classroom. Effective procedures are a hallmark of every well run class. They’re an indispensable part of a successful school year. If your room…
The Secret to End of Year Survival
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 them Theme Days or whatever…
More Halloween Books We Love
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 spooky read every day! We already have a post about…
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…
