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Category: Critical Thinking

Brain Break Videos that your kids will LOVE!

Analyzing Math Errors: Conceptual vs. Computation Errors

5 Changes That Saved My Sanity

A collection of simple and short ideas to increase critical thinking and creativity in the upper elementary classroom.

How to Increase Critical Thinking and Creativity in your “Spare Time”

Increasing Critical Thinking Part #1 (of ?)

Error Analysis for Enrichment and Critical Thinking

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Over the past 14 years, I’ve enjoyed adding litt

Over the past 14 years, I’ve enjoyed adding little touches to my classroom, and I always love going into classrooms and seeing the little things that make them unique. EVERY classroom has something special!

These are a few of my favorite touches that make my classroom feel special to me and my students! ❤️

THOSE ARE MY BABIES, but my babies are almost elev

I’m ALL about novel studies and think they’re

I’m ALL about novel studies and think they’re so beneficial to students. I have so many resources and ideas that apply to ANY novel to make it low prep as a teacher but engaging and meaningful for kids! ✨ Drop a comment below for a link to my blog post all about implementing novel studies AND to these amazing flip books that make planning and implementation a breeze!

It’s that time of year! 🌳 🌲 A little backg

It’s that time of year! 🌳 🌲 A little background: My school names all of our grade level areas by different house names (bobcat house, raccoon house, etc.) and since my room is lofted, it’s called the tree house! That means I start the year with a study of trees, people who are important to the study of trees, and of course, treehouses!

🌲 My first graders are doing a short reading unit on treehouses to promote creativity. I’m infusing skills like characterization, parts of speech, vocabulary, and inference as we read a variety of picture books about treehouses. You can see most of the books I use for that on the third row of the shelf. Then, they end up creating their own dream treehouse and writing about it.

🌲 After their brain unit, my third graders will be learning about significant contributors to the trees. We start with a week learning about Katherine Sessions, reading tree poetry, and other picture books relating to the trees. Then they complete their own choice project about another significant botanist and present it to the class. You can see most of the books I use for this on the second row of the shelf.

I’m so excited to add Listen to the Language of the Trees from @sourcebookskids to our lessons this year. It had beautiful illustrations and so many connections to our learning!

Give me all the grammar anchor charts! Link in pro

I’ll admit that I might enjoy expanding sentence

I’ll admit that I might enjoy expanding sentences even more than the kids. 😂 We start by making sure our verb is vivid, our noun is specific, and then we add an adjective. It becomes a nice, totally acceptable sentence. Then we add ONE element (who, what, where, when, why) to expand it further. There’s a Junior Varsity sentence (swipe to see different levels of sentences). Finally, we add a second element, and it becomes a Varsity sentence. I usually encourage them to resist the urge to keep going, or their sentences can end up a bit excessive. How do you encourage students to expand sentences?

💡 Tip: Once you've done these together, have students practice with pictures and then bring in their own picture to use!⁣
⁣
https://bit.ly/ExpandingSentences

Topple Blocks are some of my favorite activities t

Topple Blocks are some of my favorite activities to have on hand for a quick review, station rotation, or lesson follow up! 🥳 My students agree that it’s one of their favorite review activities, too!

Here are the details:

✏️ 2-6 kids per group

✏️Everyone in the group has a recording sheet, which contains a variety of tasks that correspond to the block colors.

✏️One student rolls the dice and ALL students answer a question from that color.

✏️Students check answer together.

✏️The student who rolls the dice pulls a block.

✏️Repeat.

If you don’t have blocks, I have gameboards to use, too! I have full Topple Block activity sets available for most math, reading, and language/grammar skills. Drop a comment below, and I’ll send you a link to the games and blocks! 👏

These games were adapted from Hope King’s idea of using Jenga in the classroom, which she shared when I visited the Ron Clark Academy six years ago! 😍

Three must-do math mini-lessons to start your year

Just as we were in the midst of our pencil/eraser

Just as we were in the midst of our pencil/eraser lessons, @panickedteacher posted this super sweet idea to go with the book Perfect, and it was PeRfEcT timing! Once we had finished our comparison of the four books, each student chose a word that describes them, inspires them, or is special to them. Then, they used a pencil to completely shade in a piece of cardstock and used their eraser to reveal their word.

They LOVED this activity, and they look so cute hanging in my room! It was a wonderful way to bring the stories to life and reiterate that everyone and everything serves a purpose and that you can come together to make something beautiful!

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