Teacherof20

In my time in the classroom I've seen the teachers often spend so much time teaching routines and structures thereby neglecting the content. In this blog entry, I'll talk about how to leave routines the same, to free up time for teaching the content. 1. Teach the same game with different content. There are many games floating around that are all the same basic principle. Teach it, then change up the content it teaches. For example, in this October Freebie , there is a Spin n' Jump game. You can have this be an activity at a station all year, with different content. The Spin n' Jump game could be about 3D Shapes, sight words, vocabulary terms with non-linguistic representations...you name it! The game is the same, but you'd be reinforcing different content based on what you're learning that week. Likewise, with this Roll n' Graph game, found in the same freebie, you can use the same format, and change up the content in the game. I've used roll n' g

Top 5 things to do to keep your class engaged the last month of school Here are some things to keep your students motivated and engaged in class the last few weeks of school. It can be hard to keep their attention when they've checked out for summer break (even though we're only in April!!). Here are some tools you can use to help students feel motivated to finish out the year strong! 1. Balloon pop motivation Set up balloons at the top of the whiteboard (where kids can’t reach) and the last few minutes of class pop one a day (if they've had a good day). Inside have incentives, such as no shoes the last 10 minutes of class, have a dance party, have free time with blocks and board games, etc. If the class doesn't have a good day that day they don't get to pop a balloon! 2. Games, games, games Have students bring in their favorite board game to play with classmates at a designated time of the day. If you need to cover academics during this time, board

This week’s talented teacherpreneur is Johanna from ThatTeacherJo . She started creating resources when, as a bilingual teacher, she couldn’t find any quality Spanish resources. She figured if she needed them, other teachers did as well. She’s been growing her store ever since! The supplement resources to the Daily Five and CAFE she’s created are the most valuable resources she’s made. They have helped her structure her literacy block which was a great starting point for her 9 years ago when she became a teacher. She tells any aspiring teacherpreneur that if you create resources for your class, most likely others will need them too. She’s often downloaded others products and used them in her class, to which she is very grateful. Take a chance and go for it. There are many tips on how to get started out there. Her next venture as a teacherpreneur is to learn how to create digital resources on google slides. It is top on her to do list for the summer!

This week's Talented Teacherpreneur is Angie from Ser Bilingue Rocks! She has been teaching for six years, and was originally inspired to become a teacherpreneur because of the lack of Spanish resources she had access to. Her store has steadily been increasing in growth, and she is now a very proud teacherpreneur because she creates resources in both languages that help other teachers and students from all over! The most valuable resource in her store, and the one that's inspired her to create more hands-on engaging resources for her classroom and her store, is the 2D Shapes booklets. They are available in both languages, but her Spanish version, " Figuras Geometricas 2D " is her top seller! Her advice to aspiring teacherpreneurs? Do your research. When she opened her store, she didn't upload a resource for another 2 months after that! She was busy researching how to create products, including how to write descriptions for the products, giving credit to o

I f you teach K-2nd, you know that you have a certain amount of minutes dedicated to each subject. Yet the increasing rigor in the standards require kindergarten teachers to have their class reading by the end of the year. So, we find ways to incorporate ELA skills into content areas while still teaching content area standards. We hope our kindergarten science units have some grade level text. How can we incorporate ELA into science units successfullly? Here are 3 steps you can take: 1. Find grade level text that talks about what you're teaching. Some good resources are Reading A-Z. While most of their books don't directly address the Kindergarten Science Curriculum, they do contain certain science themes appropriate for kindergarten.  Thi s water clarity reader ,  this  weather reader , and  this  "how objects move"  science predictable reader meet the Texas kinder TEKS. They include a predictable reader and a video that reads the book aloud to be use

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

This week's talented teacherpreneur is Angela from the Fantastic Teacher ! Angela is currently a teacher in McKinny, Texas. She decided to become a teacherpreneur when she was working at a poor school, and started making resources for her class. While working in Dallas ISD, her district implemented Writer's Workshop. As it was being implemented, she had a wonderful writing coach mentor who trained her and inspired her to create daily lesson plans for her class. As a result, she created hermost valuable resource, her Writer's Workshop (Taller de Escritura ). Her advice to those thinking of selling their resources online? If you love to create activities and lessons for your class, TpT is a good place to share your ideas and make money at the same time! It takes time to grow, but if it is something you love to do, it is worth it! Her goal moving forward is to find or create a daily intervention for her students that is fun and engaging!

Subitizing is the rapid and accurate identification of numbers used to assess small quantities. Knowing how to subitize (or recognize small quantities without having to count them) enables students to gain automaticity and numerical fluency. They can add and subtract faster. They are more confident in their abilities. In my subitizing activities center , I also incorporated number words, as an added skill students can practice and a way to incorporate literacy into my math time (we will fit literacy in whenever we can!) So, why is it important to have a math center focusing on number recognition, quantity (subitizing), and number words? Students need to be fluent in reading and math. Number words come up on many occasions in text (one specific example is the DRA assessment). Numerical fluency is important in problem solving. Seeing representations in your mind of the quantity of a number can help with adding more on, or taking away, or even grouping (tasks that require mu

My name is Nicole, and I am a past K/1st teacher and Reading Specialist. Currently I am a stay at home mom, and TpT seller at the Teacherof20 shop. In the past I've written 3 successful Donor choose projects that have gotten funded by anonymous donors within months of being written. Here are a few tips on how to write a stellar project. 1. Stay within the $100 to $300 range. The donors choose website itself will tell you that projects that are overly expensive rarely get funded. Not all projects are fully funded by a single donor. In the event yours isn't, it will take longer to fund if you have to wait for multiple donors. 2. Pick items and a theme for your project that isn't an immediate necessity. If you need the items right away, you probably don't want to rely on Donors Choose because it will more than likely take months for someone to fund your project. The three times my projects got funded, it took at least 2 or 3 months. If you absolutely need the materials r

You probably don’t know this about me, but I wasn’t always the picture of teacher organization that I am today ;-). I used to do all the things they say not to. I had piles of paper everywhere (gasp!) I planned my lessons at midnight on Sunday night before teaching for the week. I realized 30 seconds before students were due to walk in that I didn’t have any copies run for the lesson they were about to start. I scrambled to get technology set up after students were already seated and ready to go, resulting i downtime and chaos. Basically, I spent tons of time and increased my stress all because I didn’t have a plan. It was frustrating, discouraging, and to add insult to injury, I didn’t even really enjoy what I was teaching. If you’ve ever felt like this, lesson planning and prepping ahead of time is a total game-changer. Once I started lesson planning earlier, my professional educator journey got a whole lot easier. Here are some of the lessons and how they've radi