The Blog
Visualizing & A Freebie
In one of my intervention groups, we are working on the skill of visualizing as a reading strategy. These are 3rd and 4th graders that I’m working with, so at this point, they are reading more advanced text and focusing…
Winter Wonderland Reading Incentive!
It’s that time of year… lots of teacher are winding down and getting ready for the long awaited winter break. Unfortunately, so are the kids. My first year teaching, I remember being shell shocked looking at my progress monitoring data…
Patterns & Coordinate Graphing
We are finishing up our patterns and coordinate graphing unit! My kids had so much fun with this one, especially coming up with their own patterns. They love to really push the limits and think outside the box when creating…
Theme & Evidence Anchor Charts
I am working on a blog post that should publish tomorrow about coordinate graphing and patterning, but I thought I would share two of my recent anchor charts that don’t really have a place anywhere else. The first one is…
Task Card Corner
**Check out my NEW blog totally dedicated to task cards!* I have been working on my Task Card Corner, and I’m so excited to finally share it with “the world.” I’m so pleased with how it turned out, and my…
Teaching Context Clues
I think that, right along with teaching inference, teaching context clues is one of the most crucially important skills that we teach as educators. It is also one of the more tricky skills that students are faced with, so I…
Nonfiction Main Idea
Are you looking for a new an exciting way to have your students work on identifying main idea in nonfiction texts? This is a super low-prep activity that I’ve had great success with for years! Have extra Time for Kids…
Multiplying Decimals Freebie Find!
I had a sub (we actually call them guest teachers now!) yesterday morning while I was busy collaborating with some other teachers in the district for a Daily 5 training we are leading. As I was planning for my math…
Teaching Syllable Segmentation
In my 3rd and 4th grade decoding and encoding intervention groups, we have been working on syllable segmentation. I had a major internal conflict on whether or not to teach it as part of an intervention group, and in the…
Multiplying Decimals
Now that we have finished up multiplication, and my students have a solid foundation of multi-digit multiplication, we have moved on to multiplying decimals (I had originally planned to go on to patterning and functions, but decided this was a…
Open Ended Comprehension Cards
I have always desired to push my students in their thinking about texts. While we do focus on comprehension questions, both literal and inferential, I love to have students do a little bit of their own question development that requires…
GROUPS Acronym
The first year I began teaching, one of my teammates shared with me this fantastic acronym for GROUPS. I thought I would post it and share it with you all. I have always had it hanging in my room, and…
Expanded Form Task Cards 
Giggles and Grammar | Upper Elementary Grammar Program