Happy November! This month is all about being thankful and celebrating the amazing things we have in our lives. I wanted my students to reflect on those very things while continuing to practice their writing. On a whim, I thought of this thankful turkey book so satisfy both the writing process and their thankfulness in a cute […]

1. November Third Grade Homework Spent the beginning of the week with a goal in mind, FINISH November homework for those third grade kiddos. I remember this time last year I was just thinking about a way to make homework a little less painful for my group of kids. Now, almost a year a later, […]

1. Building Vocabulary Have you heard of a CCD before? I was inspired to write all about this great strategy for building vocabulary within your classroom. I tried to break it all down so that you could start using it in your classroom right away and even included a freebie!     I’m talking all […]

Before I tell you what a CCD is, let me tell you where it originates. It’s one of the many strategies used in Project GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design). I was lucky enough to be GLAD trained a few years ago. I quickly used these strategies with my 3rd and 4th graders in a unit called, Biomes of […]

I remember when I first started my teaching program and all the conversations revolved around parent communication and connections. I heard phrases like “home to school connection” and “parent involvement” without really knowing, at the time, what that truly meant. When we talked about newsletters within my college courses, I would always think “it sounds […]

Last week was my first week in my new school teaching 6th-8th ELL students. To say I was nervous was an understatement. I never thought I would ever teach in middle but I’m actually loving it. I’m very happy about my hard decision I made at the end of last year. But all in all, […]