Interactive Science Notebooks

My absolute favorite part of teaching 5th graders? Teaching science! It's a well-known fact that in a title-One school, there isn't much time in most grade levels for really getting into the science curriculum until after the state tests. And that only leaves about a month's time for teaching science!

Word Study Journals

Since I'm working on beefing up the word study part of my reading block, I've been thinking about what to include in my students' word study journals. As part of the 5th grade curriculum, my students need to know and be about to use word parts- prefixes, suffixes, and Greek & Latin roots.

Word Study

This year our school is revamping our word study approach for upper grades. As part of our school's Literacy Team, I was really excited to try something new for my 5th grade friends. We got off to a good start at the beginning of the year using Month by Month Phonics (whose materials only go up to 4th grade !) and Words Their Way.

New Blog

It's Christmas break, which means I have some extra time on my hands. I've been following so many other teacher blogs for such a long time, that I thought maybe it was time to start my own. Right now, I'm not exactly sure where this blog will take me. I'd like it to be a place of reflection and sharing of ideas that work or don't work for me. Maybe even swap some horror stories  tales of teachable moments.