I have been using book studies in my classroom for as long as I have been teaching and it is a favorite time of mine and also for my students. Today I’m going to lay out how I use…
Today I’m going to share with you the Top 5 viewed blog posts from Team J’s Classroom Fun during 2018! It’s hard to believe 2018 will be gone in a few days and we will be moving into the…
Today I’m excited to share my second room transformation with you! This one was a Pizzeria Room Transformation. Our pizzeria was called Village Pizzeria. I’m going to take you through the decor and the different activities that we did…
Being back in first grade this year I’ve had to revamp the way I teach grammar and go back to the very introductory steps of teaching these skills. Second graders had some background knowledge on nouns, verbs, etc., but…
One of the skills that we work on in science is making observations. We started off our lesson by watching a Brainpop Jr. video on observations. Then, I told the students that I had a mystery item in my…
So today I am super excited to share with you my room transformation that I did a few weeks ago. For my first room transformation this year I decided to do a football theme. What started out as just…
My last tip for differentiation in Writing Workshop has to do with goals – but this time – student created. Lucy Calkin’s Units of Studies has specific lessons geared towards students coming up with their own goals. There are…
Conferencing with students is one of my favorite parts of Writing Workshop. It allows you a chance to meet with students one-on-one and really look at their writing and hear from them the writer. Today’s tip is how I…
Today’s Writing Workshop Differentiation Tip is about providing your students with strategy cards that go along with the lesson. If you use Lucy Calkin’s Units of Study, each mini-lesson has a main teaching point. Even if you don’t use…
Another easy way to differentiate during Writing Workshop is Anchor Charts. I love using Anchor Charts in the classroom for all subjects…including Writing Workshop. Anchor charts are charts created with the class and left up for them to refer…