Science Notebooks for Students

Keeping a science notebook encourages students to record and reflect on inquiry-based observations, activities, investigations, and experiments. Science notebooks are also an excellent way for students to communicate their understanding of science concepts, and for teachers to provide students with...

There’s a video for that

Recently my daughter came home really worried about an upcoming math test. They were studying the U.S. and metric systems of measurement, and Molly was really confused! She just couldn’t seem to grasp the relationship between meters and yards, or liters and cups. She had a stack of flash cards to study by, but they really didn’t make any sense to her. Thankfully, Scholastic’s site Study Jams had a...

How do you encourage summer learning?

Many teachers find creative ways to keep kids learning over the summer. These efforts are fueled by summer learning loss research whose finding is clear: Children who don’t read during the summer can lose up to three months of reading progress and that loss has a cumulative, long-term effect. Summer learning is loss is bad for kids, and it’s especially bad news for kids who struggle during the school...

Reading Together: Tips for Parents of Children with Speech and Language Problems

Children with speech and language problems may have trouble sharing their thoughts with words or gestures. They may also have a hard time saying words clearly and understanding spoken or written language. Reading to your child and having her name objects in a book or read aloud to you can strengthen her speech and language...

Free Language Stuff

I juggle between posts that address big issues such as curriculum and leadership with posts that provide educators with resources that could be used in the classroom. Today. With the right student or students. Today’s post is of the resource variety. You won’t believe what you’ll find at Free Language Stuff. The author, Paul Morris, is a speech-language pathologist who generously provides hundreds...

Teacher appreciation

A very happy teacher appreciation week to all educators! Teachers deserve far more than a week’s celebration, but setting aside this designated week gives parents and PTOs an opportunity to pool resources and volunteers and recognize teachers for all they do. At our elementary school, we do something every day this week (schedule here). My favorite days are always You’ve Got Mail, where we ask students...