Latest on the Blog

End of the Year! YIPEE

I know a lot of you are already done for the year and quite possibly might be enjoying a margarita as we speak...sadly I go right until the end of June.If you're still looking for some end of the year activities I've got a couple options for you:If you read, "The Important Book" by Margaret Wise Brown with your students this year, they will love this end of year activity. It's kind of like a memory book but they follow the pattern of The Important Book and share the most important things ... Read the Post

How About a Tug of War? Making Thinking Visible

Have you ever heard of using the "Tug of War" strategy with your students?I got this great idea from the book, "Making Thinking Visible"This is an AMAZING teaching resource! If you are looking for ways to promote engagement and critical thinking in your class (who isn't?!) this is definitely a must read!So, the Tug of War strategy goes like this:Present a fairness dilemma.Identify the factors that "pull" at each side of the dilemma. These are the two sides of the tug of war.Ask students to think ... Read the Post

Mentor Monday! Persuasive Writing

Hello Fabulous People! I am feeling refreshed after a nice 3 day long weekend! We had Monday off for Queen Victoria Day. Here in Ontario we call this weekend May Two Four. The main reason we call it that is because there are 24 beers in a case here and there tends to be a lot of beer drinking on this weekend....especially among college/university students.Either way, I get a day off!I'm linking up with Emily from the Reading Tutor/OG for Mentor Monday to share some persuasive writing ideas.One ... Read the Post

Mother’s Day Classroom Activity

Every year Mother's Day sneaks up on me and I am always trying to plan something last minute.So on Tuesday I was browsing Pinterest when I came across this really cute Card/Lap Book by Jennifer Drake. If you don't know what a lap book is just check out the pictures and it should be clear. Basically, you use a plain folder and you take the sides and fold them into the middle so you have two flaps. Your students decorate the flaps and the inside of the folder with things related to the topic ... Read the Post

Likely or Unlikely? Teaching Probability

We finished our probability unit this week! I posted last week about some of the things we have been doing during our probability unit so I will recap those and tell you about how we finished off!We began by reading Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs which is a great book for introducing probability and whether things are likely, unlikely, certain or impossible.We followed up the book by organizing events into categories. I gave the students a list of events and they had to cut them out and glue ... Read the Post

Five for Friday: Saturday Edition!

I've been busy, busy, busy working on my new Poem of the Week Activity packs...I ended up falling asleep at 8 pm last night, I was zonked!So, here I am today working on a blog post to share all the great things we've been doing this week! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs for Five For Friday (Saturday Edition)We started working on probability this week. I started us off by reading, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs". Then I had my students organize various events into the categories, ... Read the Post