Some days I wonder what I did before Pinterest? Now here are a few of my tips to make your Pinterest experience less chaotic: Create very specific boards for your pins to be “pinned” to. When I first started all teaching/education ideas were on ONE board. I quickly learned that
Part of being an effective middle school teacher is knowing your students, but also having them know a few things about you outside of teaching. In the classroom, I will often share stories of my crazy pets (cat, dog, guinea pig and rabbit) or random things that might happen to
Twice a year (February and June), students in my class are given the opportunity to give me descriptive feedback on how they feel the year is going in our classroom. I align these times with when I hand out their report cards. My philosophy is that if I am going to give them an update on how
Do your students ever tell you they cannot type up a good copy of an assignment because they don’t have a word processing assignment? I used to get it all the time, until I found a free word processing, spreadsheet, drawing, and presentation making program at http://www.openoffice.org/ This program allows the format
This week we are working on Math exam review in class. Every year I give students a “Math Exam” at the midpoint in the year aligned with when our local high schools are starting their official exams. These are not official provincial or state exams, they are just a study tool to
Students will thrive at reading if the classroom is setup to encourage relevant and purposeful reading materials. Read my 9 tips for creating a rich reading environment below. 1. Books on display 24/7. Change them up weekly. This is my display case of high interest books. I consider
If your school is anything like mine paper is at a premium, but your students visit the lined paper box daily. To solve this dilemma many teachers at my school have a GOOS (Good On One Side) paper box. Students know that anything that requires paper, which is not an official note or
Before I implemented the GRASS strategy for problem-solving in math in my classroom, I was getting incomplete answers. Now that my students have a structure to follow, their answers are more detailed and focused. GRASS Strategy for Math Problem-Solving GRASS is an acronym that stands for
By using highly-engaging rants, your students won’t even realize you’ve channeled their daily rants and complaints into high-quality, writing!
