Minutes a Day—Mastery for a Lifetime!
Until four years ago, the only Great Pumpkin I had ever heard of was the one on It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. And then I read about a special breed of pumpkin and the people who grow them. I’m talking about REALLY big pumpkins. Too-big-to-carry pumpkins. World-record pumpkins. There are competitions all over the […]
We wrote about Bertie Bott’s Every-Flavour Beans1 which included such culinary delights as vomit, rotten egg, soap, and booger in Level 2 of our Reading Comprehension series. No surprise that the opening of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway has led Jelly Belly to re-release this popular treat which, for the faint of […]
Hey there, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade teachers! School starts soon, and if you’re like a lot of my friends, you’re looking for ways to “do more with less.” Okay, I’m not a fan of that euphemism either. Too often, teachers are told “there is no budget” for the high-quality instructional materials they need. Yet, […]
As my profile states, I am a Cleveland Indians fan. Inhabitants of Northeast Ohio understand what that means. You see, we have witnessed a lot of exciting baseball in our town, and we have come REALLY close to winning it ALL. But it’s been 70 years since we’ve won a World Series. My 88-year-old mother […]
Summer Solutions Books The Simple Solutions Approach–solid instruction, daily distributed practice, and ongoing assessment–is a proven strategy that promotes mastery and ensures long-term retention. Summer Solutions provides review and practice that allows students to retain important math and language arts skills, not only over the summer break but for a lifetime. Grades 2–3 Summer Solutions […]
No More “Summer Packets” All teachers are aware that summer learning loss is real. In fact, many teachers take a pro-active approach to curb that loss by creating summer reading lists or putting together “packets” of enrichment or reinforcement worksheets for kids to complete over the summer. All activities have the same goal: keep students […]
A recent trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios had me thinking back to my first Harry Potter memory and the treasure trove of descriptive language found in the series. Do you have an early Harry Potter memory? Mine was the summer of ‘99. I heard Oprah Winfrey talking about a […]
It’s February, when teachers everywhere turn to thoughts of… presidents. I, being no different, made sure to attend the updated and recently reopened Hall of Presidents attraction during my recent trip to Disney World. The video portion of the presentation appears on a panoramic screen. It tells how the Founding Fathers had a new idea […]
Galileo Happy 454th Birthday! I had such fun writing the Ben Franklin birthday blog, I thought I’d write about another scientist. I stumbled upon Galileo’s name in a novel I was reading, Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, in which two characters briefly discuss one of Galileo’s discoveries. “What I recall about this Galileo […]
Snap out of the day-to-day monotony in the classroom by planning a virtual field trip to…anywhere. Virtual field trips are a great way to enhance your curriculum and make learning more engaging. They incorporate 21st century technology in a meaningful way, provide interactive learning experiences, and expose students to places they may never have a […]