and living life one day- and book- at a time
Each year at the end of the year, I assign the students a quest. They are usually apprehensive because they are unsure as to what is going to unfold, especially since I know what is about to happen: Someone is going to lose all of their gold that they have saved so carefully for a …
At the beginning of the year, there’s usually an icebreaker that I love to use. Many of the teachers that I teach with in middle school typically use the same one, and it’s Find Someone Who. I’ve use multiple versions of this. I’ve used it as a get to know one another activity for those …
There are various ways to group students up when cooperative learning is required. One way is to count off and hope that students remember their number, but another way is to set it all up at the beginning of the year and never worry about it again. I do this through an appointment clock. Students …
Over the years, I’ve learned that building a good rapport with my students is a priority when it comes to teaching. I have been in classrooms where students have continuously shut me out for one reason or another, and I’ve also been in classrooms where students enjoyed my class and were more than eager to …
What advice for new teachers would you give? Often teachers coming into the profession have an ideal expectation and are often hit with the harsh realities once they are in the classroom. Much of the work can be overwhelming, but over the years I’ve learned to focus my priorities and create a manageable schedule for …
SSR or Silent Sustained Reading is something that you should include in your classroom daily as it: Improves reading stamina Provides students with enjoyment Improves test scores Increases confidence Improves reading stamina It’s true that students lack the stamina needed to read during the state testing. Too often, students become weary after reading long passages …
What is it like to teach middle school? Imagine you are on a roller coaster and you are just about to pull into the station to disembark the car, but the brakes suddenly fail, and you are now off on the same ride again. That pretty much sums up what it’s like to teach middle …
I had a conversation with a colleague about improving my students’ writing stamina while still making writing fun for them. I was discouraged by the fact that students didn’t often think that my prompts were as fun to complete. To make matters worse, I sat through a professional development meeting where the speaker pushed the …
At the beginning of each year, I teach my students the RACE writing strategy. I find that many times, as students reach middle school, they lack the ability to fully explain and cite evidence from the text. While the ability to cite evidence is a key standard, it is also an important skill when writing …
One of the hardest reading skills for students has been to identify and use text structures. Due to this, I decided to create a way of scaffolding instruction for text structures during this quarter. Generally I would teach text structure as I came across it in a text, but after reading their short stories from …