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Planning For An Efficient Morning Routine In the Classroom

Taking the time to plan your morning routine carefully can help ease one of the greatest challenges we face as teachers…finding enough time for all the instruction we need to fit in. Often, we feel there is a need to hurry on to the next topic once we see a student has reached their learning goal. Unfortunately, this seemingly relentless need to move on robs many learners of their infinitely more important need to go back and review concepts. We learn quickly that in order to make room for the spiral review students need; we need to hit the ground running each morning when they arrive in the classroom. all MY OLD APPROACH TO MORNING WORK During my first four years as an elementary teacher, I consistently made room for math spiral review during morning work. I used the spiral review materials included in our district math curriculum. Although the concept

Core Inspiration Camp Array Multiplication Project Laying Next to Math Project File Bin

Four Tips for Organizing Math Project Materials In Your Classroom

Helping young learners stay organized during a multi-day project doesn’t have to be a challenge. With a little planning and visualizing, you can easily create organizational structures in your classroom that will help your students stay organized. You no longer have to feel like the project has completely overtaken your learning environment. Four areas I urge you to consider when planning the logistics for your PBL unit include: Distributing Materials Organizing Work in Progress Tracking Student Progress Incorporating the Project into Your Schedule This post includes affiliate links for which I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you should you make a purchase. Distributing Project Materials When prepping for your project, you can print all the materials students will need in order to complete the project and place them in a folder. On the project launch day, students label one pocket of the folder “Materials I’ll

Core Inspiration's desk elf classroom job card with desk elf checklist and bowl of tidy up tickets sitting on a white table.

How To Manage Your End-of-Day Classroom Tidy Up Routine

Tidying and organizing your classroom shouldn’t be something that takes much of your teacher time. Your students share the space with you and they should share the responsibility of keeping it clean/getting it ready for learning each day. When your students work with you to keep the space clean, there’s more time for planning, prepping, and making each day in the classroom more engaging for your students, which motivates them to care for their environment. This is something you have heard me talk about time and time again, especially on Instagram stories. Each time I talk about this topic, I receive several messages about how I approach tidy up time at the end of each day so this collaborative effort to care for the classroom environment is a success. I hope seeing my answers to these questions in one place paints a complete picture of my approach to tidy up

Math workshop parent communication cover sheet laying on top of blue weekly work folder next to file bin with weekly student work.

Five Tools To Help You Communicate With Parents About Their Child’s Progress During Math Workshop

These five communication tools make it easier for you to consistently share student progress about math understanding with families. If you love using hands-on learning, multi-step projects, and work that students refer to multiple times throughout the unit so they can build on their learning and deepen their understanding, these tools are for you! Each tool is designed to keep parents in the loop with what their child is learning and how they are progressing in your workshop-style classroom.

Rubrics for various projects scattered on table top with highlighter laying on top of them.

How to Use Rubrics to Help Students Set Learning Goals, Boost Engagement, and Improve Work Quality

Learn how to use rubrics to help students set goals that lead to high-quality work and keep them engaged so they can make meaningful growth.

Metal file bin with group 1, 2, 3, and 4 files containing different word sorts copied on different colors of paper.

Prep for An Entire Trimester of Word Work in 30 Minutes or Less

When Words Their Way is first introduced to you, it can feel a bit overwhelming. Wrapping your head around how to best organize and prep all the differentiated word sorts students will be working on from week to week takes a bit of trial and error. In hopes of saving you a bit of time, here is a breakdown of exactly how I organize and prep word work. Using this system has made word study one of the easiest things to differentiate each day in my classroom. Creating Differentiated Groups Based on Assessment Data After giving the Johnston’s spelling assessment to my students, I use the Words Their Way Spelling Inventory Feature Guide to record any errors they’ve made on the assessment. You can find these feature guides in Appendix A of the Words Their Way overview book. I use the same feature guide for each student the whole school

Five Classroom Tips for Channeling Student Excitement During the Holidays

Have you ever noticed your students get a little more excited than usual during the days leading up to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas? Do I even need to ask? It’s inevitable really…and who can blame them? For many of your students, the weeks at the end of the calendar year are filled with special activities with family and friends, stores filled with holiday goodies, and commercials reminding us of the festivities to come. So, how do we channel that excited energy and continue with productive learning in the classroom? Here are a few of my favorite tips. Consistency is Key Stick to your consistent classroom schedule. During years when I’ve abandoned my regular schedule structure to try a theme day or to create longer blocks of time to work on a special project, I’ve found my students become overwhelmed and struggle to focus. With all the excitement and special activities

Math In Motion Divide and Conquer featured in a math games demo round.

Three Tips For Making Math Games A Success

I’ll never forget the first time I tried incorporating games into my math block. It was my first year of teaching, and I had all the right intentions, but the execution was a total disaster. Sound familiar? My plan was to teach a math lesson to the whole class, and then have my students rotate to different activity centers: a center where they would meet with me, one where they’d play games, and one where they’d complete their seat work. It was essentially Math Workshop before I knew Math Workshop existed. After briefly introducing each center that morning, I taught a whole-class math lesson and sent everyone to their first math rotation. My students headed to their activities with excitement, and I sat down in front of the small group I planned to work with. What It Looked like when math games failed Within the first minute, confused stares turned toward me

How To Transform Your Closet into the Ultimate Teacher Home Office

One of the first things you’ll notice when you walk into my classroom is how much I adore using organizational tools from The Container Store. I always save up to purchase a couple special items for my classroom each year from their amazing selection. Over the past ten years, I’ve been able to slowly-but-surely design a learning environment that meets my organizational dreams and helps students work as self-directed learners. That organized space is something I’ve been missing dearly since I’ve started working from home. A few weeks ago, I mustered up the courage to reach out to The Container Store and ask if they might be interested in collaborating to organize the classroom supplies that are now part of my home office. My love for their company multiplied when I quickly received an enthusiastic response from their team and we leapt into a very exciting work-from-home project designed to inspire

Core Inspiration job cards attached to classroom whiteboard next to class schedule.

Are Your Classroom Jobs Ineffective? Here's What You Can Do.

Creating an efficient learning environment that feels calm and easy to navigate so students can focus on learning is essential. Many teachers head into the start of a school year ready to welcome their students into a carefully-planned environment, but find themselves struggling to maintain that environment once the school year gets rolling. If this sounds familiar, then it is time to start leveraging the power of classroom jobs and interactive modeling. Classroom jobs are a fairly common classroom management tool, but they are not often used to their fullest potential. If you have class jobs but still regularly find yourself sitting in a disorganized or untidy classroom when your students head home, then it’s time to revamp the way you introduce those jobs by using interactive modeling. How to Use Interactive Modeling for Classroom Jobs Interactive modeling helps students understand the exact thinking and skills required for each job

Core Inspiration Third Grade Classroom Library Shelf

Three Quick Tips for Social Distancing in the Classroom Library

At this point, we have no idea what school will look like come fall or exactly how we’ll need to tweak our routines and expectations to ensure students stay safe and healthy if they return to the classroom. One thing that helps ease the feelings of uncertainty is to think of each space in your classroom and brainstorm ways to maintain the systems you’ve put in place as much as possible with modifications that will help students maintain social distance while at school. The classroom library is an excellent place to start because it requires thoughtful organization that can help to calm nervousness and anxiety, and takes you one step closer to being ready for whatever challenges back to school may bring. Whether you use the classroom library organization system I’ve shared on my blog, or have one you already love, here are three tips for keeping your classroom library up

$Core Inspiration fraction word problem solving task card next to storage box with fractions label and word problem solving recording sheet with specific problem solving steps.$

8 Ways To Organize Your Math Problem Solving Task Cards

As you may know, problem solving task cards are one of my favorite learning tools for building students’ ability to solve complex word problems. Over the years, I’ve tried a few methods for keeping my task cards organized, and I wanted to take a moment to share those approaches with those of you who are looking for an efficient way for students to use task cards in your classroom. This post includes affiliate links for which I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you should you make a purchase. Keep in mind, organization systems are not one-size-fits-all, and you may need to try a couple of approaches to organizing your math problem solving tasks before you find the system that best fits the space you have available. You may also find the approach you use from one year to the next needs some tweaking, depending on