and living life one day- and book- at a time
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 …
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 …
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 …
I’m going to take a moment to discuss something personal. Why? Because it is definitely going to affect my teaching, and that’s what I write about: teaching. On Wednesday morning, I woke up and got ready for work like always. I packed my lunch and breakfast (because I cannot eat first thing in the morning), …
When we returned to school this January, we had the honor to hear a presentation by the 2022 South Carolina Teacher of the Year, Ann Carter. It was extremely motivating and thought provoking. Her challenge to us as teachers was to be Gold Stars in our students’ lives. The relationships that we make with our …
Last Friday I felt it coming on. I had been sneezing and coughing more than usual, and I even felt a little achy. I did nothing, but start drinking plenty of fluids and tried to rest. Rest, I told myself, was important to finish out the last week before winter break. By Monday, I kept …
Get the Christmas Activities for the classroom ready. The Christmas craziness is coming. You know, that time where the kids check out and Christmas break is the following week. Usually, the time leading up to Christmas break, we have students who leave for the holidays, or we have students pulled out for practice for Christmas …
There’s always a downside to testing, whether it is MAP testing or state standardized testing. The one thing that I have enjoyed about our standardized testing is the ability to take the kids out to the ballfield and let them run around after sitting so quietly for so long. MAP testing isn’t like that. Our …