Elementary Teacher Sharing Tips and Tricks
Raising confident, curious learners starts with meaningful early experiences—and the right tools can make all the difference. For preschool-aged children, learning should feel like play: hands-on, engaging, and full of discovery. That’s exactly where interactive workbooks come in. Unlike traditional worksheets, interactive workbooks invite children to actively participate in their learning. They encourage touching, tracing, […]
If you’ve ever taught reading in an elementary classroom, you know that small-group instruction is where the magic happens. It’s the moment when you can truly meet students where they are — whether that means scaffolding foundational skills, guiding comprehension strategies, or stretching advanced readers with higher-level texts. Research consistently shows that students grow more […]
When it comes to early literacy, teaching phonics is one of the most effective strategies to help young learners become confident readers. One important phonics skill is learning how to decode and spell words ending with -ng and -nk. These endings are part of a group of sounds called glued sounds or welded sounds—they’re letters […]
Preparing your child for the gifted assessment is not just a recommendation; it’s a crucial step toward unlocking their potential and ensuring they receive appropriate educational opportunities.
Doing a Glow Day classroom transformation was one of my favorite things last year. I did it right before state testing. I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out. My third grade babies were SO stressed about the state test and I wanted to change their mindset to being EXCITED about the test because […]
The final “class” of the day was Care of Magical Creatures. This was our last Harry Potter experiment and something students could take home with them. For Care of Magical Creatures class, students did an experiment called Dragon Snot. I showed this clip from Harry Potter about dragons and we read the top of […]
Charms Class is all about learning spells. There were two main parts to my Charms Class: reading the spell book and “casting” a spell. To cast the spells, students have to do a little science experiment. Before all of that though, we watched this snippet from Harry Potter about Charms class. Spell Book I […]
There are so many things to do with Potions Class that it was hard for me to choose one thing. I ended up remembering this part of the movie and came up with my own Amortentia potion. My students thought it was hilarious because Amortentia is the love potion. In my Harry Potter pack there […]
This is tricky and I’m not sure if I would go about this the same way if I do another Harry Potter day in the classroom. Before Harry Potter Day: For DIY Harry Potter Wands, I bought wooden dowels from Walmart and used hot glue to make the dowels look like wands. As I am […]
The sorting hat was the biggest point of excitement for my students. I did this in the beginning of the day after wand making – in the movies, Harry goes to Diagon Alley and gets his wand before heading to Hogwarts, so it made sense to do the wands first. How do you sort students […]