Hey there!  I am so excited about something fun we have going on!  Three of my besties and I have teamed up to form a collaborative Periscope and YouTube Channel to talk all things teaching.  We have taught together for years, and we want to share the good, the bad, and the funny that has happened to us during our time teaching together.  We are now at different schools, except for Holly and I, but our friendship has only grown stronger!  We are here to chat, share, and just vent about all that goes on in our classrooms! We have been periscoping for a little while now.  We try to scope every Friday, but as you can imagine, sometimes it's hard to get together with crazy schedules.  We are planning on scoping this Friday from Rayann's first grade classroom.  She is an AMAZING teacher, and I can't wait to see what she has to share!  Two weeks ago, we got to see Alysia's adorable library and last Friday we had a little snow day fun at a local coffee shop chatting a...
Winter Break has come to an end.  We head back tomorrow, and I feel like it's always a chance to restart the year.  I use the first day back to go over rules and expectations, as well as to set goals for the upcoming semester.  It usually takes a little time for students to get back into the routine, so I have rounded up a couple of ideas to help you and your students ease back into the schedule. I love Amy Lemons's New Year's Fun pack.  She has some cute craftivities, as well as this fun countdown.  It's used as a behavior incentive for the students.  Each hour, if students had great behavior, you open up a bag.  I picked these bags up from the Target Dollar Spot.  There were 8 in a pack for $3. I definitely think you should hurry over and get this pack for this week!  It has always been a student favorite! I like to pick up party hats on clearance each year for a little table competition.  Every thirty minutes I choose a table that exh...
A couple of years ago, I took part in a STEM course at a local university.  While taking the course, I was introduced to this book, Mathematics Formative Assessment by Page Keeley and Cheryl Rose Tobey.   The purpose of a formative assessment is to inform and provide feedback to students regarding their learning.  They should be purposeful, planned, and a variety of techniques should be used.  You can use the usual exit tickets for a quick formative assessment, but the new wears off quickly for students.  I love that this book provides 75 different strategies that are very easy to implement into your everyday instruction.   I wanted to share one of the strategies used in the book that is perfect for these cold, winter months.  It's called Commit and Toss.  It's an anonymous technique that makes the students' thinking visible to the class.   Students are given an assessment probe.  For example, you may be working on double-digit addition with regrouping in m...