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professional Development For Teachers

Engaging in professional development opportunities can provide fresh perspectives, new strategies, and valuable skills that will benefit both you and your students. Browse my FREE professional development opportunities below. I hope these resources help you reflect, set goals, and invest in your continuous growth as educators.

Email me the professional development options!

free professional development for teachers: how to use picture books to teach standards

Picture Books and Related Activities

There’s often a misconception that picture books are only for younger students, but they’re also a great way to reinforce concepts for upper elementary students. I’m passionate about sharing my favorite titles and how I use them with my students. In this series, you’ll find book lists and related activities for key upper elementary skills.

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Register for 8 weeks of FREE professional development for teachers. The weekly tips will leave you better prepared to teach 8 key upper elementary reading and math skills.

8 Weeks of Curriculum Guides

I also created weekly tips that will leave you better prepared to teach eight key upper elementary reading and math skills all year. This series covers: context clues, place value, main idea and theme, addition and subtraction, inference, multiplication and division, point of view, and math vocabulary.

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professional development books for teachers

Professional Development Books

Looking for a reading list of professional development books for teachers? No matter your need, there is a good teacher book out there that can help. I scoured the bookstores, talked with colleagues, and asked my virtual teacher friends about their favorite professional development books. Here’s a list guaranteed to educate and inspire. 

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free professional development for teachers: grammar in upper elementary

Non-Negotiables in Grammar

This mini-course covers must-teach grammar skills in the upper grades and how to incorporate them throughout the year. You’ll learn strategies for meaningful grammar routines to teach parts of speech, punctuation, sentences, homophones, and multiple-meaning words all year long. It includes:

  • A certificate of completion*
  • Immediately actionable items to implement into your classroom
  • Pre-recorded videos, so you can work at your own pace when it’s convenient for you
  • FREE RESOURCES to use all year
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free professional development for teachers: fluency in upper elementary

Increasing Oral Reading Fluency

This mini-course will teach you how to implement research-based strategies for increasing oral reading fluency in your classroom. It includes 5 short instructional videos with one-page lesson plans to set your students up for fluency success all year! It includes:

  • A certificate of completion*
  • Immediately actionable items to implement into your classroom
  • Pre-recorded videos, so you can work at your own pace when it’s convenient for you
  • FREE RESOURCES to use all year
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free professional development for teachers: critical thinking in upper elementary math

Increasing Critical Thinking in Math

In this mini-course, I share my absolute favorite lessons and strategies for increasing critical thinking through problem solving. You’ll leave with six lessons to implement into your classroom, an error analysis starter kit, and more! It includes:

  • A certificate of completion*
  • Immediately actionable items to implement into your classroom
  • Pre-recorded videos, so you can work at your own pace when it’s convenient for you
  • FREE RESOURCES to use all year
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hey, I’m Mary

I’m so glad you are here. I’m a current gifted and talented teacher in a small town in Colorado, and I’ve been in education since 2009. My passion (other than my family and cookies) is for making teachers’ lives easier and classrooms more engaging.

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Year five in this space, and after a few days of P Year five in this space, and after a few days of PD mixed in with sporadic time for classroom set up, it’s starting to feel like my home away from home again. 💕 

Is it perfect? Nope. Is it a space that brings me and my students joy? Yep. Does a lot of learning and laughter happen in this space? So much. 🥹

That’s it. That’s what matters.
I will NEVER get over the fact that thousand of st I will NEVER get over the fact that thousand of students use these resources every day. 😭

🚨 🔔 Drop a comment below, and I’ll send you all the info, including FREE weeks of each! 

I started creating these resources when I couldn’t find anything that fit my needs. Most spiral reviews focused on WAY too many skills at a time and my students needed time to review very specific skills. While my goal is always to immerse my students in authentic texts and tasks, I found that starting every single day with a quick skill review to keep content-specific terms fresh in their minds and well practiced was a GAME CHANGER! ✍️ 📖 

 Whether you use the journal format, digital version, or full-page version, it’s accessible and available for grades 2-3 or 4-5 (which offers great options for differentiation!). 🤩

#classroom #teacher #teachergram #teach #backtoschool #iteach #teachersofinstagram
Grab yours FREE and implement it during one of you Grab yours FREE and implement it during one of your first few days of school! 💕📕 Comment below, and I will send it your way.

By getting kids up and moving from the very first moment, you have an opportunity to authentically teach routines and expectations, AND they have a chance to shake some of their  first day jitters out. As a bonus, they’ll start to learn so much about each other and feel the warmth and community of your classroom. ❤️
🚨 💯 Drop a comment below to incorporate thes 🚨 💯 Drop a comment below to incorporate these mental math tasks into your daily instruction!! 👏 It truly takes just a minute or two out of your day… it’s that easy and oh, so important to improving mental math. 

🎉 Here’s how I start every math class: I read these cards orally, step by step, and when I’m done, I count down from three silently using my fingers. When my students see a closed fist, they share their answer in unison — or on a dry erase board. My students LOVE it, and it’s so easy to implement. I see HUGE impacts within the first couple of weeks! Win/win/win! 😍😍

👀 Why mental math?

🧠Increases Self-Confidence
🧠Increase Number Sense and Manipulation of Numbers
🧠Real-World Relevance
🧠Develops Math Fact Automaticity 
🧠Helps build conceptual understanding
🧠Keeps the brain sharp
🧠Taps into different learning modalities 

Need a link? Drop a comment, and I’ll send it your way!

#iteach #iteachtoo #teacher #backtoschool #iteachmath #mathteacher #teachersofinstagram
OBSESSED with these books for teaching important e OBSESSED with these books for teaching important expectations and character building at the beginning of the year!! Swipe to see the books and their themes. Comment below if you’d like the list AND links to resource guides to accompany several of them! 🥰😍
I learned about weekly letter writing while studen I learned about weekly letter writing while student teaching 17 years ago, and I’ve done it ever since. It brings me SO much joy to read the responses! ❤️ 

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

Here are the details:

🌟 Each full week of school, I write a letter to my students (each student gets the same letter)… In it, I talk about interesting things in my life, 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. 

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

‼️ It’s the only homework I give, and it’s my FAVORITE. I love reading their responses and learning so much about them. ❤️❤️

#teacher #backtoschool #iteachtoo #teachersofinstagram #iteach #firstweekofschool
🥔 😀 I’ve been doing Mr. Potato Head Observ 🥔 😀 I’ve been doing Mr. Potato Head Observations during the first week of school FOREVER, but with the popularity of potatoes these days (humans are random lol), I’m taking it up a notch this year. Here is my plan for using our creations throughout the first week! 

🌟 Guaranteed engagement and all you need are some old Mr. Potato Head parts! Check your local thrift shops, garage sales, and Buy Nothing groups!

Here are the lesson details:

👀 Science: This is the OG lesson!! It’s a great science lesson to teach students about the importance of excellent observations and creating detailed diagrams. Drop a comment, and I’ll send you a link to my FREE First Week Plans that have all the details or you can hear me chat about it under my “Engagement” tab on stories! 

✍️ Writing: Write a story about your potato creations! This is a great way to start seeing some of your students’ writing in a super low pressure environment. You could also do a round robin collaborative story verbally!

📕 Reading: The Couch Potato Connection! Read The Couch Potato, then have them draw their own All About Me version of themselves as potatoes. Maybe they’re the Soccer Potato or the Cheer Potato or the Book Potato! Bonus: If you’re ready to start content, discuss character traits and development!

❤️ Positive Potato Signs: I’m going to have my students create Positive Potato signs and leave one of our potatoes up all year while rotating the positive messages!
🔔 First thing’s first: EVERYTHING is a succes 🔔 First thing’s first: EVERYTHING is a success if you want to celebrate it! 👏 

A few years ago, I was looking for a way to encourage connection with students AND incorporate the popular stickers kids love! I don’t routinely reward expected behaviors, but I am ALWAYS looking for ways to get students connecting with me and talking about things they’re proud of… Success Stickers were born! I have learned SO much about my students, their interests, and the everyday events in their lives. 

ℹ️ Every week, students share one success or accomplishment with me (either privately or in our whole group Morning Meeting) and pick out a sticker. They can add it to their journals, their water bottles, or anywhere else they’d like. By the end of the year, they have a huge collection of stickers to remind them of all the successes they’ve have this year! 

🆕 Last year, my kids were LOVING these tiny acrylic animals, so I added Accomplishment Animals as an option and they were a HUGE hit!! Even my own 8th grade kids ooh and ahhh when I get a new pack and beg to grab one or two! 👏 

Comment below, and I’ll share my favorite animals and stickers with you! 

#teacher #backtoschool #iteachtoo #teachersofinstagram #iteach
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