Early Finisher Activities for Math One thing I always struggled with as a teacher was keeping my fast finishers busy. This was by far the biggest issue with my classroom management – those who finished quickly would start talking and distracting others who were still working. This is because they either didn’t know what to do, or didn’t want to do it. I didn’t have engaging early finisher activities for them! My go to is always “read a book.” But not all students like reading or have a book on hand they’re interested in. Over time I’ve learned about the power of choice to help keep students engaged. If students…
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An Easy STEM Challenge to Celebrate Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is just around the corner! If you’re like me, you love incorporating seasonal activities into your instruction. If you need a quick, easy to prep activity to do in the weeks before Thanksgiving break, I have a super easy STEM challenge for you! This STEM challenge is super low prep and uses materials you probably already have. If you don’t, however, you can get everything you need with one quick trip to the dollar store. (You know I’m all about sticking to that budget!) What You Need For this easy STEM challenge, all you need is some index cards, tape, and a can of corn (or other vegetable). I…
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An Outstanding Room Transformation Doesn’t Have to Be Hard
A room transformation is an instructional technique that helps us engage our students by bringing real world scenarios into the classroom. It is exactly what it sounds like – teachers transform their classrooms into something else in order to pique students’ interest. Room transformations are super trendy right now, but many teachers are concerned that in order to implement one, they have to spend a lot of time and money. Fortunately, that doesn’t have to be the case! I am a firm believer that creating engaging lessons shouldn’t cost a lot of time or money, and room transformations are no exception! Today I’m sharing with you my super simple tips…
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How to Incorporate Movement in the Classroom
Kids need to MOVE! We know this is a fact. Plus, scientifically speaking, movement helps improve learning, too. For this reason, it is so important to get our students up and moving during class time! Unfortunately, with so much content to get through, this can be difficult to do. Today I’m sharing 3 of my favorite, super easy ways to add movement in the classroom without interrupting instruction time. Obviously, brain breaks are important – small instructional breaks taken throughout the day so students don’t get burned out. But, often times, brain breaks aren’t enough to keep our kiddos focused on instruction. My tips are not only easy to implement,…
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How to Teach Place Value in a Fun Way
How to Teach Place Value Place value is one of my absolute favorite topics to teach in math. However, when I first started teaching, I had absolutely no clue how to teach place value. It seems easy enough, but it can certainly get pretty mundane and boring after awhile. Over my years of teaching, I found some pretty creative ways to make teaching place value way more fun for our students. I’m sharing 5 place value activities with you today that can help add a little something extra into your instruction. How to Teach Place Value Activity 1: Place Value Ring Toss View this post on Instagram A post shared…
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Summer Guest Post: Liberating Your Classroom with Student-Centered Learning
If you’re intrigued by the concept of student-centered learning but don’t know where to start, you sound like I used to. My name is Jenn Breisacher and I am the CEO of Student-Centered World, your new favorite professional development website that helps teachers move to a 100% student-centered environment in their classroom (yes, even yours….and yes, even with your students!). You can check out our website or follow us on Instagram! When you ask someone why they became a teacher, many times the reasons are similar: they loved school themselves, they want to make a difference with children, they have an innate desire to teach, etc. As time has moved forward, we know…
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3 End of Year Activities to Keep Students Engaged
Engaging End of Year Activities Happy June! While many of us (me! Hallelujah.) are already enjoying summer vacation, many other teachers still have a few weeks left with their students. *Moment of silence for these teachers* If you’re one of these teachers, then you are probably searching for some engaging end of year activities. It can be hard to keep students interested at the end of the year, especially if testing is already over. And while it would be awesome to just show a movie everyday until the end of the school year, unfortunately most schools frown upon that… If you’re struggling to find end of the year activities for…
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How to Use Task Cards in the Classroom: 7 Creative Ways (+FREEBIE)
How to Use Task Cards in the Classroom Task cards. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I had absolutely no clue how to use task cards in the classroom – but now I can’t imagine life without them! This is because task cards are low prep, easy to use, and so versatile! At first, I thought they were basically just flash cards. Wow, was I wrong! Of course, they can be used that way, but there are so many other ways to use task cards in the classroom as well! Over the last year, I’ve discovered numerous uses for task cards, and most of them are extremely low prep!…
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How to Use Weather Journals for Students
Why Use Weather Journals for Students? One of the best ideas I’ve ever had as a teacher (in my personal opinion) was to record our weather everyday in weather journals for students. Why was this my best idea ever? As a student, I often wondered why I was learning something. When I am I ever going to use this in the real world? As an adult, I now see the value of many of the things I learned, and wish I knew more about those things! The problem we run into when kids don’t see the why behind what they’re learning is they never buy into it. They don’t engage,…
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3 Ways Student Engagement Makes Your Life Easier + FREEBIE!
I have a HUGE passion for student engagement. This passion has been a fairly recent discovery, though I’ve always loved making learning fun and felt that it’s important for students to love school. However, last year, in the middle of my fourth year teaching, I was feeling a little burned out and bogged down with curriculum and doing the same old thing every. single. day. I felt like I was failing my students and I sure wasn’t having any fun teaching. I was losing my why and feeling a little demotivated. I had been hearing a lot about the newly released book, The Wild Card, by Hope and Wade King,…
