DIY whiteboards for students take less than five minutes to make for a class set and the benefits are immeasurable!  I absolutely LOVE quick response boards. We have used them for several activities like math daily work, vocabulary, spelling and more. I find that the students LOVE writing with dry erase markers, and I love how quickly I can assess who is understanding the concept and who is ... Read More about DIY Whiteboards for Students

I am SO excited! We just recently got a class set of 30 laptops that we share with one other class. We used them for the first time last week to start our first author research project. Right before we began to read "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane," we researched Kate DiCamillo. Boy, did they have a blast!  We first read the questions found in my FREE product, Kate DiCamillo ... Read More about Author Research Project – Kate DiCamillo

It's April, and that means a heightened awareness of treating the Earth respectfully. Our class has already began to learn about how we can make a difference by conserving resources. We read a passage from "A Comprehensive Earth Day Unit," which discusses different resources we get from our plant and how we can conserve them. We then watched a couple of videos on YouTube about the ... Read More about Earth Day – Let’s Celebrate It Everyday!

This week, as we continued to learn about the scientific method, we dove into a lesson on variables. This concept is always a bit tricky for students, especially independent and dependent variables, but my students seem to have a clear understanding after our introductory lesson. We started off by cutting and pasting our “Science Variables” flap books into our science journals. I projected PDF ... Read More about Scientific Variables: Constant, Independent, and Dependent

I am so fortunate to work at an elementary school that has a science lab, which is run by a fantastic science lab director, who coincidentally used to be my assistant. Her name is Liz, and she also has her own craft business.  (You can check out some of her wonderful creations HERE.) She has the lab looking so beautiful and inviting. I think I get just as excited as the kids to go and visit. ... Read More about Taking a Closer Look! – Qualitative and Quantitative Observations

This week we Powered Up by learning about the Powers of Tens. To start off the lesson, I asked the students to take out their calculators. (Boy were they excited about this). I then asked them to enter 10 x 10 = into their calculators.  I asked what the product was. When they gave me the result, I wrote it on the board. I then asked them to enter 10 x 10 x 10 = and recorded the ... Read More about I’ve got the Power! The Power of Ten that is…