Let us help you teach like a ninja!
Long division has long been one of the most challenging concepts for students in Grade 4 and Grade 5 to master. There are a few reasons students struggle with long division, so we’ve tried to break down some of the ways we set our students up for success.
[Read more…] about How to Teach Successful Long Division Strategies
You’re giving Guided Reading instruction a try. Great! Do you know what you should be doing with your Guided Reading groups and reading instruction? You’re going to teach students to read. But what does that mean?
We teach in upper elementary (usually Grade four or five) which means we have readers in our classroom reading from Grade one through to Grade six. We have English Language Readers, students with learning difficulties, avid readers and all the ones in between. This means we often need to use more than one strategy to teach reading.
[Read more…] about How to Run Your Guided Reading Instruction
Have you been asked to do Guided Reading or teach reading in your classroom, but have absolutely no experience and don’t even know where to start? We’ve been there. Let us share our combined years of experience that took us from beginning teachers to literacy specialists.
This is the beginning of a series that will get you set up to do Guided Reading in your classroom, but honestly, it is a long game. Take the pressure off yourself now because you’ll have to give yourself time to get this whole how to teach reading thing down. We’ve been teaching reading for over fifteen years and there is always room to improve. There are always new things to learn.
[Read more…] about Help! I Don’t Know How to Teach Reading
Recently I was having a discussion with a former student teacher. She had reached out because her last school year felt like a disaster and she was wondering how could improve. She’d tried clip charts, behaviour charts, communication journals, reward baskets and everything else she could think of, but nothing worked. She wanted to know how she could improve her classroom management because she feared she couldn’t last another year. She asked about my secret because she didn’t remember what I did.
Was it that uneventful that she didn’t know what I did? No. Not quite.
[Read more…] about The Reasons Your Classroom Management Isn’t Working and How to Fix It
One of the biggest issues teachers talk about is how much time it takes to differentiate their instruction for the needs of the different learners in their complex classrooms. All teachers want to help, reach and teach all their students, but understanding how to do this can be a challenge especially for teachers who are new to teaching, new to a grade level or new to the types of challenges and barriers a student is facing.
Full Disclosure: Differentiated instruction is hard.
And there seems to be some sort of unwritten out there that everyone should be good at it the first time you try.
Gee, no pressure.
Well, what if we could give you some tried and true strategies that have worked for us? We all know differentiation is important, but what does it mean to truly differentiate for everyone?
[Read more…] about How to Differentiate For Your Students in Less Time
You have a complex classroom full of complex behaviours and learning challenges. Do you worry about how to teach all of them to the best of your ability? Are you spending all your time trying to differentiate instruction but feeling like you’re spinning in circles not getting anywhere?
Differentiation means different things to different people. We’re here to work through the clutter and streamline the planning process. Then you can differentiate for the different learners you have in your classroom without spending all your time planning.
[Read more…] about How to Differentiate Your Instruction
