After all the snow that so much of the U.S. has been dealing with, is anyone else ready to dream about spring?? Here’s a round up of my favorite upper elementary St. Patrick’s Day activities, conference tips, and test prep ideas to use for spring semester.

Rainbow Math

Primary teachers don’t get to keep all the thematic fun to themselves. Upper elementary students love seasonal activities and projects too!

When I think of St. Patrick’s Day activities, rainbows always come to mind. What’s more fun than “tasting the rainbow” with Skittles?? You can use them to reinforce math skills like circle graphs, percents, and decimals.

For more details, read this blog post about using Skittles for math.

Spring Math Picture Activity

I have several math picture activities that are always a hit with students! This one has a garden theme.

Creative Writing

Directed drawings make great St. Patrick’s Day activities too. This leprechaun drawing could inspire lots of creative writing! Students could write from the perceptive of a leprechaun, practice punctuation by writing a conversation with a leprechaun, or stretch their poetry muscles by writing a limerick.

Spring Task Cards

Refreshing your task cards is a simple way to update your early finisher work or centers for the new season. These spring inference riddles, 4th grade math review cards, or reading skills review cards are super low prep!

Parent Teacher Conference Tips

March usually brings parent-teacher conferences. I know parent-teacher conferences can be stressful and require a lot of advanced prep, but I love this time of year for building relationships and letting my students shine. Here are my best tips for conferences and suggestions for digital student-led conferences too.

Engaging Test Prep

Like it or not, March also means standardized testing is right around the corner. I try very hard to make test prep rigorous, but also part of our usual routine so that we aren’t doing things just for the testing season. This means task cards, games, and project-based learning are the stars of the show.

My FREE Passport to Success is one way to make test prep engaging. Click the picture to see it in action.

I also have this round up of test prep ideas for activities, anchor charts, and motivators from other upper elementary teachers.

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I hope these ideas help you prep for a meaningful and fun spring in the classroom!