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SMART Goals for Kids

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The beginning of the school year, calendar year, or semester is a great time to teach your students about SMART goals. There’s a lot of correlation between growth mindset and SMART goals so I like to link the two together. Here is the way I work with my students on SMART goals. Step One: DiscussingRead more

Teaching One Variable Equations Using Excel

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Here is a great activity to teach one variable equations using Excel (Google Sheets, etc.). This is a great activity for 9th and 10th graders completing Algebra 1/Integrated math, or for 8th graders working on one variable equations. Why Use Real-World Math Connections to Teach One Variable Equations? When working on topics such as howRead more

How to Switch Grade Levels and Keep Your Sanity

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In my first year of teaching, I had exactly two days to prepare to teach 9th-12th grade math and literature after having student taught in 1st grade. Halfway through the school year, a teacher was let go and I had exactly 20 minutes (!!!) to prepare to teach her 6th/7th grade combo for the remainderRead more

5 Tips to Support Research Writing in the Upper Grades

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Research writing can be an overwhelming process for both students and teachers. We wanted to provide a few tips to help your students produce excellent research reports without causing you to lose your sanity. Here are our top 5 tips for supporting your 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders through the research writing process. 1.  Don’tRead more

Short Story Pre-Writing and Brainstorm Activity

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Writing a narrative short story isn’t easy. Many kids enjoy creative writing, but their structure ends up being all over the place, they don’t know how to create a problem, build suspense, develop an ending, etc. I wanted to create something that would allow my upper elementary/middle school (5th/6th/7th graders) to plan more than justRead more

Character Interview – A Short Story Writing Activity

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Not only did my 5th/6th/7th writing class enjoy this activity, it was a great way to get them thinking about their main character before they started writing their short stories. What You Will Need Character Interview and Character Brainstorming Sheets (you can come up with your own questions or get it here for $1). WritingRead more

Teaching is an Art, NOT a Science

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We polled dozens of teachers to ask the question – do you think teaching is an art, or a science?  While teaching does involve science, teachers we polled overwhelmingly agreed: teaching is an art, NOT a science. Educators gave us many great reasons to consider. Here are some of our favorites: I once read that scienceRead more

Living on Minimum Wage – A Real World Project

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If you’re like us, you worry that your high school students, especially high school seniors, have NO idea what the real world has in store. A great project to do in a Life Skills, Advisory, or Financial Literacy/Consumer Education class is a “Can You Live on Minimum Wage?” project. ALL Kids Need to Know About LivingRead more

Formal Letter Writing

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This year I kicked off our first writing project with formal letter writing. All of the Google documents referenced below are included in our free resource library. Why Teach Formal Letter Writing? Writing a letter is a fun, real-world task that is short, sweet, and easy to revise. By upper elementary and middle school, students haveRead more

Number Sense Cooperative Group Activity

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This is a great way to get your students into groups and assess their number sense, as well as their cooperation skills. Preparation: I whipped up these cards with different types of rational and irrational numbers. They are available for free when you click here, but you can easily make your own set if youRead more