Mentor Sentences with Answers for Grades 3, 4 and 5
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1y ago
Do you use Mentor Sentences with your students?  They are a great way to cover Common Core Language Standards as well as what makes writing effective, as opposed to the traditional sentence correction method used in worksheets that ask students to find the errors.  I find that providing models helps students elevate the quality of their writing in context.   If you're new to the idea of incorporating grammar practice into the craft of writing new, creative sentences you can read my introduction to Mentor Sentences here.    Another great feature of Mentor Sentences i ..read more
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5 Ways to Teach Place Value and Word Form
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1y ago
Once your students can count past 20, it's a good time to teach them place value.  I'm glad our curriculum in fourth grade starts with place value.  It makes sense that students understand what a number with multiple digits means and how to say it before we ask them to find products with 4 or more digits!   So to start out our year, I want to share with you 5 ways to teach place value and word form. 1.  Money (Hands on Learning) The biggest hook I have for teaching place value is MONEY.  I ask students what is it about big numbers, like millions, billions, or mo ..read more
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Prepare for New Student Orientation During Back to School Season
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1y ago
In September, we're prepared to welcome a class of new students.  But midyear, hearing, "You're getting a new student this morning" made me break out in a sweat.  I realized I need to be prepared for new student orientation all year. Here's how to eliminate the stress that goes along with welcoming a new student to your classroom, even when it's sprung on you at the last minute. Prepare for New Student Orientation in September. Keep new students in mind while you are in “Back to School Mode.” Here's how to make a new student feel welcome even when his or her arrival is sprung ..read more
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Pandemic Teaching and Teachers’ Collective Trauma
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1y ago
I hope 2021-2022 was a better year for you than 2020-2021.  I hear the term “collective trauma” thrown around a lot, and it makes perfect sense to me.  An expression that resonated with me was “We were all in the same storm, although we were NOT all in the same boat.”  I’m sure that we all had our own very specific problems that came up between March 2020 and now that are either related to the pandemic or how others handled it.  But right now, at least for me, things feel different today than they did that March.    In January 2020 some of my students were get ..read more
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Returning to in Person Learning: Next Steps
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3y ago
Have you returned to full in person instruction yet? I feel very lucky that here in MA, viral rates have been dropping over the past few months and teachers have had the option to register for vaccines for about 2 months.  The children switched from hybrid instruction (in September) to fully in person at the end of March.  Like many schools, I’m seeing some children who were remote learning rock stars and others who struggled.  Plus they haven’t interacted with half of their peers for over a year!  The building was closed from March to September, and then my students were ..read more
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How to Teach Comparing and Ordering Numbers
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3y ago
Are your students learning to compare and order numbers?  In fourth grade, our objective is to read, write, compare, and order numbers up to 999,999.  Here is how you can organize your lesson sequence for place value with numbers in the hundred thousands.  Assess Prior Knowledge of Place Value Students should know place value up to the amount you are asking them to compare.  In other words, if you want your fourth graders to compare and order numbers in the hundred thousands place, but they can’t read numbers higher than 9,999, practice finding the value of the digits in n ..read more
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Stop Teaching Revising and Editing Like That; Try it Like This!
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3y ago
Do you teach revising and editing by having students mark up or correct grammar mistakes?  I mean, that's how I was taught to edit my writing.  And yet, no one taught me to tie my shoes or ride a bike by giving me 10 wrong examples.  So if you've never heard of Mentor Sentences for teaching grammar and revision, let me introduce you!  How do Mentor Sentences Help Revising and Editing? The way I see it, Mentor Sentences work because we are: Teaching students to improve their writing by reading and analyzing model sentences Naming the grammar concept we are learning to rec ..read more
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5 Ways to Encourage Participation During Distance Learning
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3y ago
Will you be distance learning for back to school 2020?  I've been trying not to worry about it for the past month because it was out of my control and up in the air.  But now that our state has received more guidance that we'll be doing part time remote learning and possibly part time in person, I can start to prepare.  I can think back to what worked well in the spring and then grow from there.  So here is what worked for our elementary school when we started teaching during the pandemic.  How to Make Distance Learning More Engaging 1.  Access to the internet is ..read more
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Let's Keep Educating Ourselves about Structural Racism
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3y ago
When I started creating resources, I thought “I’m not racist; I try to include lots of cultures.”  I make an effort to buy books for my classroom library that represent a variety of perspectives.  I used to have a fun Cultural Foods Event (until continuing this tradition would have meant excluding students with food restrictions).  I thought I was doing plenty in my classroom to make everyone feel seen so I was doing enough. Now I understand that although I try to kind and inclusive, that doesn’t mean I’ve been perfect.  Just because I don't intend to offend anyone, does ..read more
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Fraction Number Line Tightrope Activity
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3y ago
It took a while to really "sell" me on the idea of using number lines (and I'm a visual learner)!  However, since number lines don't seem to be going away when it comes to curricula and standardized testing, I knew I had to accept them, get comfortable with them, break them down for those kids who also are not initially "sold" on them either, and make them interesting for my class.  I've developed games and homework pages, but this year I wanted to "step" it up a notch and engage those kinesthetic learners.  So that's when I created "Number-line Tightropes!"  How I Set U ..read more
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