Skip to main content

Save time, and have fun!

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 radically transformed student engagement in my classroom:



This Word Work game for Winter has games and activities to last an entire month. It teaches 20 winter words with fun and simple to follow games and my students ABSOLUTELY love this center!!



Winter Snowglobe Subtraction around the room. Students walk around the room, find the subtraction problem, and write and solve it next to the corresponding letter on their recording sheet. My students got the chance to review subtraction, while walking around and getting their wiggles out. I am now using this every couple of weeks. They never tire of it!!


Get this comprehensive, ready-made set of lessons that include the ones shown above so you don't have to worry about lesson planning this winter, (just $19 for a limited time for 2,000 pages of digital resources) and recieve my No Prep Valentine's Day Pack FREE as an added BONUS! How do you get the freebie? Fill out this Google form and it will get delivered right to your mailbox: https://goo.gl/forms/P8l0vh49B0lw5HFB3


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

End of the Year Activities

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...

How to Implement Words Their Way in Your Classroom

How do you implement Words Their Way into a classroom? It is very simple. The first step is to give students the initial assessment: it is basically a spelling test. After you have given the spelling test, you use the score sheet to score student’s answers. The score sheet looks like this: The column that your students miss the most (the ones I’ve circled) is the one where you being instruction. The column they fall under will determine what WTW book you will use. The books are: Letter Name-Alphabetic, Within Word Pattern, Syllables and Affixes, and Derrivational Relations. I have broken down the classroom instruction so that each day we are doing an activity with our Words Their Way sorts. Here is what my groups look like in the second grade classroom I’m mentoring. I’ve changed the names of the students for confidentiality purposes: Short vowels: John, Sam, Jane, Sally, Audrey Digraphs and Blends: Arron, Greg, Katie Long vowels: Mary, Marlene, Josh, Nicole, Christi...

Talented Teacherpreneur: DianaJo's Math and More

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...