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 …
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 …
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 …
Finding a way to make learning fun and engaging can be difficult the older students become. Add to that the issue with technology, and teaching becomes more challenging. One of the problems that we have in middle school is that students who have never had a personal laptop are suddenly presented with one, and with …
Not often do we have an opportunity to just sit and reflect on why we teach or how we became a teacher, but sometimes a student will notice the things happening in the classroom and ask, “Why did you become a teacher? I could never do this!” In simple terms, I was disappointed in my …
Engagement. It is the one thing that all teachers long for in the classroom. Engagement means that your students are actively involved in what is happening in class. It means that the lesson is relevant and effective. For the last two days, I have stressed about today’s activity. We were putting a character on trial, …