Get Inspired

I’m so glad you’ve joined me on my little corner of the Internet! I’ve been sharing teaching resources and ideas on my blog since 2011, so it can be a little hard to know where to start. I’ve created this page to highlight some of my most popular posts and resources to help you get started.

Literacy

Teaching reading and writing are two of my passions, and I absolutely love sharing lesson ideas here. From quick lessons to complete units, scroll down to see all the different literacy lessons I’ve shared over the years.

More Literacy Ideas

Grammar

You have found your go-to location for all things upper elementary grammar. I promise I won’t judge your grammar, but I WILL help you teach it!

Most Popular Grammar Posts

Learn how to integrate daily grammar practice into your routines to save valuable time and strengthen grammar skills too.

6 Ways To Integrate Daily Grammar Practice Into Your Routines

Teaching punctuation in upper elementary involves advanced topics like quotation marks, dialogue, and apostrophes. Learn how to make it fun!

Activities for Teaching Punctuation: Quotation Marks, Dialogue, and Apostrophes

Upper elementary language skill activities to teach conjunctions, interjections, articles, and prepositions. Download a FREE reference guide.

Language Skill Activities: How to Teach Conjunctions, Interjections, Articles, and Prepositions

Teaching Adjectives and Adverbs

teaching nouns and verbs grammar skills upper elementary

Teaching Language Skills: Nouns and Verbs

Free anchor charts, interactive notebook pages, and activities to teach commonly confused words in upper elementary.

How To Teach Commonly Confused Words in Upper Elementary

More Grammar Ideas

Novels & Picture Books

I’m passionate about incorporating authentic picture books and novels into my classroom on a daily basis. Whether you’re looking to use picture books to teach reading skills, implement novel studies, or incorporate books into your morning meeting to address essential social and emotional skills, you’ll find it all here!

Most Popular Novel & Picture Book Posts

Research shows that reading fluency is a direct indicator of comprehension success. One of my go-to ways to practice fluency is with fluency picture books!

7 Favorite fluency picture books

4th grade novel study books

3rd Grade Novel Study Books

Advanced chapter books for higher-level readers in second through fourth grade. Each of these books vary in topic to reach more interests.

Advanced Chapter Books for Elementary Readers

Literacy Choice Boards

More Novel & Picture Book Ideas

Math

Making math engaging and fun doesn’t mean eliminating rigorous content! Over the last several years, I have shared hundreds of math lessons and ideas in the blog posts below. From teaching error analysis skills to tackling multi-step problems, you are guaranteed to find an engaging math lesson in the archives.

Most Popular Math Posts

Learn six strategies for increasing critical thinking through word problems and error analysis. Also includes several FREE resources to improve critical thinking.

6 Strategies for Increasing Critical Thinking with Problem Solving

Teaching multiplication and division is simple with these FREE lessons, anchor charts, books, and differentiated activities.

The Complete Guide to Teaching Multiplication and Division

$Critical thinking in math helps students learn to analyze and evaluate math concepts, identify patterns and relationships, and explore different strategies.$

How To Encourage Critical Thinking in Math

Teaching regions of the United States has never been so fun! Become tourists to learn about regions in literacy, math, social studies, and science!

Teaching Regions of the United States: Cross-Curricular Learning Projects

This FREE GUIDE has numerous ways to extend teaching addition and subtraction skills with upper elementary students.

The Complete Guide to Teaching Addition and Subtraction

More math Ideas

Anchor Charts

Over the years, I have created dozens of anchor charts in my classroom. I am a huge proponent of creating anchor charts with my students, and I strongly believe that the perfect anchor chart isn’t always pretty. The posts below feature many of my anchor charts.

Most Popular Anchor Chart Posts

You can use this FREE resource to help cover all of key standards when teaching point of view and perspective in upper elementary.

The Complete Guide to Teaching Point of View and Perspective

The Complete Guide to Teaching Multiplication and Division

This free guide to teaching inference includes checklists, book lists, lesson plans, anchor charts, practice activities, and more!

The Complete Guide to Teaching Inference

The Complete Guide to Teaching Addition and Subtraction

Teaching main idea and theme is a critical reading comprehension skills. These resources will help students discern the difference.

The Complete Guide to Teaching Main Idea and Theme

This FREE context clues guide includes a ton of ideas, context clues lessons, essential skills, book list, free activities, and more!

The Complete Guide to Context Clues Lessons

More Anchor Chart Ideas

Classroom

Whether you are looking for tips to better manage your classroom, classroom design, flexible seating, or classroom organization, you are in the right place! Browse through the posts and categories below to explore all of my tips and tricks for running your classroom.