Building relationships is the most effective classroom strategy out there! One way I start to do that from the start is with Back to School postcards! After the first couple weeks of school, I write a personalized message to each student and mail them a postcard. Who doesn’t love getting snail mail?! Especially since it…
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How I organize small groups for math workshop
So, you’ve gone to the workshops, read all the books and blogs, researched your resources and you’ve decided to get going with math workshop. Stations, rotations, guided math, whatever you wanna call it! Small groups will absolutely change your classroom for the better. There is so much value to sitting down with a small group…
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March Madness Transformation
March means test prep season is upon us! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, room transformations are my absolute favorite way to review and prepare for upcoming test! Thus, March Madness!!! This room transformation and activity were formatted similarly to the Unlock activities by Cooties and Cuties and Second Grade Sassy Pants.…
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Long Division Strategies Part 2
A few days ago, I posted about how I progress through the CRA (concrete, representational, abstract) model for introducing division. From the very basic use of splitting base 10 blocks into groups, all the way to a method very similar to the standard algorithm (that still builds conceptual understanding without just memorizing steps). You can…