“I Hate Benchmark!” Three Mindset Shifts That May Help
Let’s talk about three changes I made to my mindset about teaching Benchmark Advance in my classroom that made a huge difference to how my students and I felt about the program.
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Latest Posts
Breaking Down Benchmark Assessments
Benchmark Assessments All too often, we hear from teachers sharing concerns about assessments being too long or not being user-friendly. Let’s chat about ways to make the assessments more useful! In this post, we discuss how we can make tests more understandable for students and ways to make time for
Designing a Quality Anchor Chart
Starting my career out working for Los Angeles Unified School District, I was placed in a school that had predominantly English Language Learners. My particular third-grade class was almost entirely made up of ELLs, so in my first few years of teaching, I learned many different teaching strategies that helped
Get Ready for the Back-to-School Season!
Are you ready for another exciting new school year? Are you looking for new ways to improve your classroom setup, organization, or planning for the year? The Back-to-School Bootcamp is exactly what you need to get you off to a great start for a new school year! This virtual 3-day
Get Yourself Organized and Ready for a New School Year
Are you ready for a new school year? As the end of summer is approaching, you may be thinking about how to get yourself more organized and prepared for the new school year ahead. Many ideas of how to make the new school year the best one yet might be
End of The Year Activities and Ideas
We have reached the final home stretch of the school year! For many, these last few weeks can be a bit of a whirlwind from end-of-the-year celebrations, awards, field trips, parties, graduations, packing up your classroom, and just wrapping up all of those loose ends of the school year. You
Unit 7 of Benchmark Advance
Welcome to Unit 7! This unit is all about communities, culture, and civilizations. This is the main hub for all my resources, tips, tricks, project ideas, and freebies for this exciting unit! But first, here are all the ways you can connect with me: * My Facebook group has tons
Unit 2 of Benchmark Advance
Unit 2 focuses on characters and is the first fictional unit for the year. Using fables and folktales, we will learn about characters. This unit will incorporate many fun and creative activities. Introducing the Unit I begin this unit with an anchor chart focusing on the essential question. During this
Unit 1 of Benchmark Advance
Immediately after the Review + Routines weeks, CA and National Edition teachers transition into a unit on rules and government, which I think is pretty fitting! We transition from talking about classroom rules and expectations to larger-scale ideas.
What is the Schwa, and How Do I Teach It?
What is the Schwa? “Schwa” is such a funny sounding word to describe what’s actually the most common vowel sound in the English language. It may be common, but it’s not always well understood by elementary teachers. So what is it, anyway? According to the Oxford Language Dictionary, it’s “the
Three Things You Need to Do Before Teaching a New Unit
Jumping into a new unit is fun and exciting for both you and your students. Follow these three tips to make the most of your new unit! Vocab Check – With Your Kid Glasses On One of the biggest hurdles in a new unit is vocabulary. Some of that is
Make Word Study Fun: Strategies For Playing With Words
Teaching children to read is perhaps the single most important job we have as elementary school teachers. Reading is the foundation for everything! There have been a lot of theories and much debate about the best strategies for teaching reading. I’ve spent a lot of time studying literacy—enough to know
