and living life one day- and book- at a time
Sometimes I look back on my past successes and feel less than before. Am I still not the same successful teacher I was back then? I suppose that I could blame this new climate of student learning on the missed learning moments during Covid, but surely after this long we should be reaching the end, …
One of my main goals this school year has been to challenge my students to use transition words when writing. Often, it’s difficult for students to use transition words in their writing with a purpose. I realized when I started to teach text structure in informative writing that my students didn’t understand what transition words …
In my usual scrolling on my phone through different news and articles, I came across an article written by Megan Quinn of Your Tango titled “10 Boys vs 10 Girls Were Left Unsupervised In A House For 5 Days and The Results Were Wildly Different.” Of course, being the middle school teacher that I am, …
I hope that you are off to a restful Christmas break. This school year has been one for the books for me, as it has been filled with so many firsts. From medical leaves to students who will ONLY behave for me. Repeat that last line and you’ll understand the frustration for my colleagues. Yes, …
Sometimes you have that group of students that no teacher seems to want. They complain about the students. They criticize their abilities and write them off as being unteachable. These are the ones that I seem to be drawn toward in teaching career as I was the mother of one of these students. When I …
This school year started itself off with personal challenges. Over the past two years I’ve questioned by ability to teach and struggled with my health. After meeting with many parents and students, and looking over the data for one of my classes, I left work talking with God about what He expected and what I …
One of my most favorite activities to do with my students is to create book trailers. It allows them to give a summary of a book in a visual format that also gives them the opportunity to utilize their creativity. There are several ways that students can create their book trailers. One is to use …
We started our poetry unit this past week, and by Thursday I was feeling about as “Blah” about poetry as my students. I hadn’t yet broached my favorite poems as I was using one larger poem in each of my grade levels to teach some of the basic poetry terms, so my enthusiasm was really …
It never fails. We create a fabulous written assignment and provide the students with a clear, concise rubric, and when we receive the work, it is far from what we expected. In the last quarter, I gave my students a written assignment and provided them with a rubric. I told the students that the rubric …
One of the great ways to assess a lesson that has been taught is to utilize a quick formative assessment or questioning to determine the success of the lesson. After a lesson, when using Classcraft, I can choose to use The Wheel of Destiny to randomly choose a student to answer a question about the …
