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Comparing and contrasting texts, characters, themes, and literary elements takes critical thinking and is key to reading comprehension.
Literacy | Comprehension | Reading Skills

Comparing and Contrasting Texts: Why it’s Important and How to Teach It

If you think of comparing and contrasting as looking for differences between an apple and an orange, it seems like a pretty easy skill! In fact, that’s exactly how I teach students about the essential skill of comparing and contrasting….
READ POST Comparing and Contrasting Texts: Why it’s Important and How to Teach It
wednesday
General

Teacher Appreciation Task Card Giveaway

We’re halfway through Teacher Appreciation Week, and I hope you are feeling super appreciated by now. I’m hoping to add to that by giving away TASK CARDS today! It’s no secret how much I love task cards, and today’s giveaway…
READ POST Teacher Appreciation Task Card Giveaway
Last week of school lesson plans for upper elementary. Includes fun, engaging, and academic ideas to end the school year.
End of the Year | Seasonal

Last Week of School Lesson Plans

I can’t believe we are nearing the last week of school, but I’m already finalizing my end of the school year plans. We have put state testing behind us (yay!), so I love to incorporate several super engaging but educational…
READ POST Last Week of School Lesson Plans
sunday
General

2022 Teacher Appreciation Week Giveaways!

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! Each day this week, you have a chance to win some of the things teachers love most. Books, gift cards, school supplies, manipulatives, digital and printables resources… allll the goodies! You can find out more about…
READ POST 2022 Teacher Appreciation Week Giveaways!
Anchor chart, hands-on practice activities, and a free assessment for teaching mean, median, and mode in upper elementary.
Anchor Charts | Free | Graphs and Data | Math | Math Anchor Charts

Activities For Teaching Mean, Median, and Mode

Last month I shared this post about teaching data and graphing in upper elementary, but I didn’t touch on data sets and teaching mean, median, mode, and range. Mean, median, and mode are important data concepts for students to understand….
READ POST Activities For Teaching Mean, Median, and Mode
This post includes an anchor chart and practice activities for teaching adjectives and adverbs in upper elementary.
Literacy | Anchor Charts | Free | Grammar | Literacy Anchor Charts

Teaching Adjectives and Adverbs

Teaching Adjectives and adverbs can seem like a basic skill for upper elementary students, but it is an essential language skill that can’t be skimmed over! You may be tempted to blow past teaching your students these language pieces because…
READ POST Teaching Adjectives and Adverbs
Learn to play this Jeopardy-style whole class review game. It works with any task cards and is easy to set up too!
Task Cards | Classroom | Fractions | Free | Math | Test Prep

Task Card Whole Class Review Game

At one point or another, I think we have all played Jeopardy with our classes as a whole class review game. It’s fun, the kids love it, and it’s an easy way to review!  On the other hand, It can be…
READ POST Task Card Whole Class Review Game
end of the year reading projects
End of the Year | Literacy | Seasonal

End of the Year Reading Projects

If you’re looking up end of the year reading projects, then that means something amazing – summer is approaching! This time of year always re-energizes me because state testing is behind us, summer is ahead of us, and we get…
READ POST End of the Year Reading Projects
5 quick angle activities upper elementary
Geometry & Measurement | Anchor Charts | Math | Math Anchor Charts

5 Quick Activities for Teaching Angles

There are quite a few angle standards that students need to master during our larger geometry unit, so here are five of my favorite quick and simple ideas for teaching angles.  Teaching Angles Anchor Chart We tackle all big topics…
READ POST 5 Quick Activities for Teaching Angles
Lessons and practice activities for teaching data and graphing skills in upper elementary. Includes anchor charts, task cards, and free quiz.
Math | Anchor Charts | Free | Graphs and Data | Math Anchor Charts

Teaching Data and Graphing

Teaching students to interpret data and graphs is an important upper elementary skill. Data is all around us and being able to display and interpret it is a critical skill! Students encounter graphs not only in math class, but also…
READ POST Teaching Data and Graphing
Just-for-fun ideas for April Fools' Day pranks to play on your upper elementary students. Includes academic ideas too!
Seasonal

Classroom April Fools’ Day Pranks

Do you typically find yourself scrambling for fun April Fools’ Day pranks at the last minute? Not this year! We’re helping you plan ahead with a bunch of fun ideas from upper elementary teachers in our free Inspired In Upper…
READ POST Classroom April Fools’ Day Pranks
Upper Elementary ELA test prep tips, strategies, and resources to make review productive and engaging too!
Test Prep | Classroom | Free | Literacy

4 ELA Test Prep Tips

The end of the year and test prep time can make any teacher’s head spin! Luckily, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to ELA test prep. I am going to share my tried and true test…
READ POST 4 ELA Test Prep Tips

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I’m Mary

Welcome to my blog! I started blogging in 2011 and have amassed hundreds of posts full of engaging, research-based, and classroom-tested teaching ideas. Enjoy exploring!

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📢 UPPER ELEMENTARY TEACHERS: Comment GRAMMAR below 📢 UPPER ELEMENTARY TEACHERS: Comment GRAMMAR below, and I’ll send you my FREE hour-long Grammar PD! ✨ Join thousands of other teachers starting their year on the right track with writing and grammar!

Inside the super short course, I’ll walk you through my five grammar non-negotiables that will help set your students up for success this school year. 🩷
Always so much to do and so little time! 👏 Comment Always so much to do and so little time! 👏 Comment below, and I’ll send you my FREE first week of school lesson plans full of activities, procedures, read Alouds, and more! 🫶 

I want our first week to be full of experiences that set the expectations for the ENTIRE year. We aren’t just “doing activities.” We are working together, practicing with supplies, learning how to transition, and getting to know each other. 🥹
🩷🩷🩷🩷Reading these responses every week brings me S 🩷🩷🩷🩷Reading these responses every week brings me SO much joy, and I learn SO much about my students… their lives outside of school, their writing style and voice, and so much more. 

✨ Leave a comment below, and I’ll send you a FREE guide to get started and a link to prewritten letter templates for the whole year! ✍️ 

Here’s how I run Weekly Letter Writing as homework:

🌟 Each full week of school, I spend a few minutes writing a letter to my students (each student gets the same letter)… In it, I talk about interesting things in my life (they LOVE this), what we are going to learn about and do that week, a character trait we’re focusing on, any interesting dates or celebrations that week, and then I always ask them a question or give them a relevant prompt (or two) to respond to me. 

They write their responses at home and drop them in my mailbox any time throughout the week. I write short responses back to them (directly on their letters) each week. 

#teacher #backtoschool #iteachtoo #teachersofinstagram #iteach
This is one of my favorite back to school activiti This is one of my favorite back to school activities that you can use all year long. 👏 Giant Scrabble has been a staple in my first month of school plans for YEARS, and last year I used the giant letters to play a human-sized version of Tapple, which was a massive hit! 

💌Comment below, and I’ll send you ready to print letters AND my free first week of school lesson plans so you can implement it during YOUR first week! 👏 

🌟 Why does this make such a great back to school experience in the classroom? 🧐 It serves as a GREAT lesson in productive struggle. It’s always amazing to see my students work through both games — and they beg for them to return all year long. 🧩 💡 We also used it as an opportunity to talk about how some students thrive under pressure while it can be intimidating for others. That doesn’t mean anyone is better than another person. 💕🩷

🌟 Details: We don’t REALLY keep score on either of the games. The point is to get them excited about overcoming obstacles and continuing a task that seems impossible or difficult. Most kids aren’t familiar with the games, so some variations and exceptions are allowed.
Like with pretty much every other expectation and Like with pretty much every other expectation and procedure, teaching kids HOW to work in groups is the key to actually getting them to work well in groups. 🩷💖 Comment below, and I’ll send you the one page version of this AND the individual letter descriptors shown here! 

The letters are from @steppintoelementary and SO cute! 🥰
💖 📕 Book Beads have easily become one of my favori 💖 📕 Book Beads have easily become one of my favorite classroom traditions for celebrating reading. 👏 I used this idea for our Battle of the Books teams, so each book was assigned a different colored bead, and once a week, students had a chance to update their necklaces. 

⭐️ Comment below, and I’ll send you ALL the info about implementing it and tons of ideas for applying it to your classroom! 

Shoutout to @lonestarclassroom for the inspiration!
We officially have our two new books for fifth gra We officially have our two new books for fifth grade Battle of the Books!! Swipe to see some other favorites on the list and the entire list (from Pikes Peak Battle of the Books — I didn’t curate this amazing list). 

I am already digging into these two new books and hoping I get to teach them this year as novel studies. 🥰 😁 There are 40 books total on the list, and they removed Kokopelli’s Flute and The Cay this year in place of these new additions.
I’d call my “classroom style” a little bit quirky I’d call my “classroom style” a little bit quirky but a whole lot of fun. 😜 But seriously, I have zero classroom style or theme, and I just add what MOVES me in the moment. 

Comment below for all my quirky classroom goodies (the plants are obviously a must), all the school supplies I’m stocking up on for this year (!!!!!), my personal favorites (yeah, that’s a puzzle scoop), and all the things I’ve bought my kids over the years that I’d buy again in a heartbeat (I could play Ticket to Ride all day every day). 💗
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