Teacherof20

This week's talented teacherpreneur is DianaJo from DianaJo's Math and More ! She loves to help students that are struggling with math. So much so, that she has tutored over 200 students one on one, and gained many valuable insights to lower achieving students that can help them succeed! She initially heard of TpT when a friend of hers retired, and encouraged her to create and sell products. The idea of being able to create anything she wanted really drew her. The most valuable product she's made for her store has been her Math and ART! products. Most of her work has been with struggling students. She had these kids in mind when she created Math and ART! These products really help struggling students because they are self correcting and fun! One thing she'd like to know more about is incorporating STEAM into her math class especially. She hopes to do some research on this and offer related products in the coming year. After all, learning happens best when we c

There are five simple steps I follow for my guided reading lesson in kindergarten. It doesn't matter if I've hashed out what I'm doing with my group for hours in advance, or if I'm just fumbling through that particular week, these five steps are easy to follow no matter what amount of planning you've done! 1. Phonemic Awareness: the best bang for your buck in the phonemic awareness realm is blending and segmenting phonemes because those are the skills most directly tied to reading. If the assessment your district uses requires your students to substitute or omit phonemes, then be sure you're working towards that goal during this portion of the lesson. Otherwise, focus on the blending and segmenting during a guided reading lesson in kindergarten. Once students have mastered this, use this time to briefly review blending and segmenting and maximize time spent reading the book (Step 4 of the guided reading lesson). If you'd like more ideas on differentiating

This week's teacherpreneur is Meshelle from Smith Science ! Meshelle began teaching long before TPT was a thought! Creating learning experiences for her students has always been exciting for her. She was on a perpetual search for activities that addressed her content, engaged her students, and was easy to follow. Engagement was her priority, but she was determined that her classroom content was rich . If she couldn't find what she was looking for, she created it herself!    To address the many ability levels in her classroom, she created Brain Gush , a collection of mathematical challenges that incorporate 5th grade concepts but push the envelope! Her students love it when she passes out the new version of Brain Gush each week! They especially love that they can work in any order. She's found so many other teachers in the TpT community that have faced the dilemma of varying ability levels in the classroom, and have found Brain Gush helpful! Her advice for aspiring

Kindergarten math word problems are taught methodically. Your students are young, but their number sense and ability to add, subtract, and group numbers together is so innate. You'd be amazed at the capacity of your students to solve kindergarten math word problems with different strategies, and using different tools. The way I begin is by giving my class a math word problem . I do a shared reading of it (or allow them to read themselves, depending on the time of year and level of difficulty of the text). Then, I let them have time to think about it, and solve it on their own. I give them no guidelines, or hints. Several students will undoubtedly come up with the answer, and be anxious to share it! I inculcate it in them to NOT call out or share the answer! As they work, I walk around and observe what strategies students are using. This is important for later on in the lesson. It gives me an idea of who to call on when we're at the carpet discussing our problem solving st