Celebrating The Holiday Season In A Culturally Responsive Way

paper lanterns sitting outside on the ground

If you don’t know what culturally responsive teaching is check out my post here before reading this one. November and December is a time of year marked with numerous important holidays around the world. How can teach about these holidays and celebrate along with students while still being culturally responsive? Here’s some suggestions: Incorporate different holidays equally in your classroom…

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5 Ways To Differentiate Instruction and Support Every Student

Two kids sitting next to each other reading

Differentiating instruction isn’t just about giving students more or less work than others. Students who have mastered a topic or skill don’t need to be forced to do double the math problems than everyone else. They have already mastered the concept. Instead, higher level students should be directed to move beyond what the class is doing. To try something more…

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Engaging Strategies for Teaching Short Vowel Words.

little girl sitting on the floor reading a book

Once your child is able to recognize letters and their sounds the next step is to learn to read 3 letter words with the consonant, vowel, consonant pattern. These are words such as: man, fan, bat, cat, mop, fun. Here are some printable word lists. Teaching short vowels can be done in a variety of fun ways. Here are my…

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Great Games for Your Classroom

Games for Your Classroom

The games/activities below can be used with any grade, any vocabulary list, in any subject. Slap! This is a great game to reinforce vocabulary. Line 3-4 pictures up in a row on your smartboard (or just print pictures and stick to the wall). Bring up two students at a time. The teacher says a word and the students try to…

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Great Hands-On Literacy Centers for ESL Students

Writing/Literacy centers are pretty common in mainstream American classrooms but how about for ESL students? Hands-on activities are still very helpful and possible for students just beginning to learn English. I just finished introducing all the letter sounds with my students. And we are working on putting those sounds together to form 3 letter words. I do centers in my…

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Easy Ways To Assess During a Lesson

We all know that it’s important to assess students. Assessment shouldn’t just come at the end of the unit or topic thought. Ongoing assessment, or formative assessment, should take place throughout the unit. Each day I like to do a quick and simple assessment on my specific objective of that day. I use the results to help me plan for…

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How to make your Makerspace not just a space

(This page contains affiliate links) A Makerspace is any place in which learners can share STEAM (Sciences, Technology, Engineerings, Arts and Mathematics) related concepts of interest, and then collaborate with other learners on ideas and hands-on constructed projects. Lamens terms…. a Makerspace is a place for kids to bring their imagination to life! It can be a corner of the…

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