Need to write a unit plan, but want to create one you'll actually use? Here are some quick steps to unit planning that will make daily lesson planning a snap!

Check it out! Here is another awesome first grade blog along with an awesome giveaway! AND another cool first grade blog and giveaway at: AND 125 FOLLOWERS giveaway at: HURRY and check it out! On to another note, desk arrangement. I admit I am one that likes the rows still and only on certain days have been able to handle the kids in little groups with their desks. This coming year, I will have a much bigger class size and am looking at ways to arrange my desks. I found this interesting information on desk arrangement: So, I'm curious on how you arrange your desks and how does it work out for you? Thanks! Kristi

Notes From the Portable is a blog about teaching, reflecting on connections to Common Core Standards and 21st-Century Skills.

Learn how to get organized and set up a weekly lesson planning routine. Find out how Miss DeCarbo streamlined her schedule and maximized her time at school.

A SWOT analysis helps identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Here’s a step-by-step guide to SWOT analysis, along with examples and templates.

Preparing for Your First Elementary Music Teaching Job. Organized Chaos. Top 5 suggestions to help you get ready over the summer for your first elementary music job.

Need free entrepreneurship curriculum, lesson plans, and projects? Here's entrepreneur lesson plans for high school, middle school, and elementary.

An Elementary Teaching Blog with tips, ideas and freebies for your classroom. For new teachers and seasoned teachers alike!

Calling all teachers! Have you found anything you would like to share? I'm thinking specifically about: words of wisdom games activities organization ideas classroom management brain breaks I will share a few that I've found while helping a first year teacher get ready for school. Please share ...

There are so many different places you can start from when creating a Curriculum Outline. A curriculum outline is a broad overview of your entire program, across all grade levels. It’s a zoomed out picture of what concepts you want to cover, and what grades will cover them. I’ve written about a c

We all know that every child's journey to become a reader is different. What is simple for one may be incredibly difficult for another, some are great with phonics instruction, others seem to sail right through sight words, and others yet can read the words, but have a hard time with understanding what they're reading. How on earth are you supposed to teach a room full of children who are all unique and at different points on their reading journey? You differentiate. You may have 3-4 reading groups, you may have 6-7 reading groups (yes, I did that), you may pull students for 1-1 instruction, or small group instruction with a group that needs to work on a particular concept. Today I thought I'd show you some simple ways to use a single reading resource many ways, that is, to differentiate. I'm going to focus today on emergent readers. UNC defines an emergent reader as: "Child on the path to fluent literacy, before conventional reading and writing skills emerge. Emergent readers demonstrate alphabet knowledge, a concept of what a word is, a sense of story (beginning, middle, end), listening and retelling skills, phonemic awareness, and verbal expression." Here's an example of some text you might use with an emergent reader. It has a limited number of words, uses mostly sight words, and has pictures that clearly match the sentences. You'll notice the text has a repeating pattern, in this case, "I see a red __" The book I took this from has 6 sentences with this pattern, one to a page, plus a final page without the last word on it, for the children to add in their own word and picture. Once children are familiar with the text pattern from the book, you can have them match the sentences and pictures. Start with just a couple, and work your way up. You can also separate the words in a sentence and have students pay close attention to each word in order to put the words in the correct order. This is a great time to point out that sentences start with capital letters (so the word "This" must be first) and end with punctuation (so the word yellow must be last). Children will look at the first letter in each word to help them decode the word, and need to think about what makes sense. They may notice that the first word in each sentence is the same, or point out the pattern the sentences are based on. If they struggle with one of these words, you might want to point out other instances of the word - preferably in a sentence they've already read. I find that children are much more likely to engage with the text if they have the opportunity to "play" with it, so I make word and picture cards large enough for students to manipulate easily. I usually use mine in a pocket chart. Just think of the fun children can have putting the words in the wrong order to create crazy "sentences" - and the reading and thinking about the words necessary to do so! If you are working on skills like this with more than one child, challenge them to work together to make the sentences, or to scramble them up for each other. My students LOVED taking turns scrambling and decoding sentences. You can even have them dictate and illustrate additional sentences that fit the pattern, and let them scramble and decode those! As students gain skills and confidence, you can challenge them with more text at once... ... including multiple scrambled sentences. Here I've combined both of these techniques: several sentences need to be unscrambled, and then the matching picture can be found and placed with each one. Notice that these are still predictable sentences that follow a pattern, and that the pictures still correlate closely to the text. By varying the number of sentences children are working with, whether the words are in order or scrambled, and whether the pictures are with the sentence or scrambled separately, you can manage the difficulty level for different children - or the same child, on different days. This is the most challenging level I've come up with for this kind of text. I've scrambled both the pictures and the words for multiple sentences, and have provided the text in book form for students to refer to as they put everything in order. Look how much more challenging this is than the other ways of differentiating listed above! By the time students can work with the text at this level, they've most likely mastered the sight words used in the text, and will be able to identify those words in other places. (In other words, they're really reading!) When working with children like this, it's important to look at what they CAN do, and to build on the skills already in place. A child who already knows the sight words in a text probably doesn't need to match pictures to sentences, just as a child who is working to put a single sentence in order will only be frustrated if you scramble several at once. You want them to enjoy the experience of working with words, as well as to learn new things! These techniques will work with almost any emergent reader text, but if you are interested in the texts I've used in this post, they are all part of this resource, including the word and picture cards for children to manipulate: I'd love to hear how you differentiate for your emergent readers - share your tips in the comment section below!

We've all been there: one class is ahead of the rest of the grade level, it's the last day before a vacation, you're stressed/ tired/ sick and can't think straight to teach a regular lesson, it's a weird schedule day and the kids are spinning in circles, there's a last-minute change and you can't do the lesson you had planned... Whatever the reason, we all have days when we need to step out of our regularly-scheduled sequenced curriculum and do something different for one class period. Sure, you could throw on a movie or pull out some worksheets. But those types of classes can result in lots of behavior difficulties (and no wonder, the students are usually bored!). Here are my favorite ways to use those "one-off" class periods in meaningful musical ways. These ideas are ones that don't require too much thinking on my part, don't require advance planning to set up, can be done with large or small groups, and keep students engaged for an entire class period. 1. instrument merry go round I actually use this activity as a part of my regular "curricular" lessons as well, but it's a good one to pull out when I want everyone to stay focused and engaged but I know they're going to be antsy. I have every student pick out one instrument (usually I limit their options to small percussion on specific shelves in my room) and bring it to sit in a circle on the floor. Then I tell them to play when my hands are open, and stop when I close my hands. If they play/ don't play at the wrong time, they're out for the next round. Once they get the hang of starting and stopping, I have them leave their instrument on the floor, stand up, and move over one spot around the circle. Then they pick up the new instrument and repeat. Keep going around the circle and switching instruments! The great thing about this is I can use it to review a variety of concepts. Instrument names and playing techniques are obvious ones, but I can also teach dynamics by having them play louder/ softer when I hold up dynamic symbols or move my hands bigger or smaller, review instrument classification by calling out certain types to play on different turns, or practice rhythms by having them echo patterns instead of starting/ stopping. Lots of ways to change it up! 2. Musication I purposefully save videos from this awesome YouTube channel to use only for this purpose so that I know students won't get tired of them. They are most well-known for the play-along videos for Boomwhackers and hand chimes with color-coded notes, but there are also play-along videos for percussion (which is great for large groups and younger students), and even chord play-alongs (which I use with ukulele but could also be done with guitar, piano, etc). One other pro tip for these: you can slow down or speed up the videos on YouTube without distorting the sound by clicking on settings (the gear icon at the bottom of the video) and selecting "playback speed". This is a perfect way to keep classes engaged and "up the ante" by repeating the same song but speeding up each time! Of course switching the parts/ notes they're playing is another great way to change it up and keep everyone on their toes. 3. posters I don't do this often but every now and then, especially if I'm under the weather and I don't think the students will be too high-energy, I'll have the class make posters to hang up on the walls. Sometimes I'll have them make posters for an upcoming music event to hang up around the building, including reminders about concert etiquette. Other times I have them make posters about something they're learning: instrument families, a musical element, music vocabulary, etc. Bonus: it's great to have student work to actually display on the walls because most of our student work isn't visual, and administrators (and kids!) love to see that in the classroom! 4. soundscapes There are so many ways to do soundscapes- I've written an entire blog post just about all the ways to do them here- but the most basic one I pull out most often in this scenario is to write down names of places on slips of paper, fold them up and have students draw one from a jar, and then have small groups come up with a soundscape to match that scene using only their voices and found objects they have in the room. So for example if a group has the beach, they may make the sounds of waves by flapping a piece of paper, seagulls with their voice, beachballs getting hit by hitting a chair, etc. If you're reading this right now and thinking ha, I wish I had a sequenced curriculum laid out for me that I could even stray from in the first place! Don't worry, you're definitely not alone- I talk to so many music teachers every week who are planning their lessons week by week or even day by day from scratch! You can get my complete curriculum with all the plans and materials for the entire school year for K-6 general music here, or learn exactly how to make your own in this free e-course here. I hope these lesson ideas are helpful the next time you find yourself in one of those situations- I'll be using a few of them this week after I finish my concerts and try to finish the week until our vacation!

This is the ultimate end-of-the-year classroom cleaning and organization checklist! All of the hard work of planning has been done for you. With tips for how you can get students involved in the process! This packet has everything you need to get your classroom ready for the summer and is geared towards grades 5th-12th, although any teacher would find this step-by-step and day-by-day resource helpful. It’s a countdown! Count back from your last day of school to begin. “3 weeks left” should begin on the Monday of your 3rd-to-last FULL week of school This resource is organized by day, with tasks perfect for student involvement on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Teacher-centered tasks are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but feel free to reorder tasks to fit your class schedule! Student involvement tips: Decide how involved you want your students to be! Most activities involving students can be done in the last 5 minutes of class. Allow those “early finishers” to help out! If you are a middle school or high school teacher with multiple student groups, pick the group that loves to help - there’s always one that’s great for this! You can tackle all the tasks yourself if you prefer. Organization resources: Blank, printable labels great for taping to bins and folders are at the end of this packet! An easy printable to-do checklist and classroom inventory checklist are also available at the end of this packet!

I’m teaching half-time this year and still feel like I never have enough time to do everything I’d like to do! I’ve figured out a few ways to save time as a teacher and they really help me fit it all

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Rudolf Steiner, in lectures to the first Waldorf teachers, described the three stages of the Waldorf curriculum. Helpful overview of the Waldorf approach.

If you believe behavior is not only learned but a product of self-awareness and self-respect-- these classroom rules are for you.

I have to admit I was just a little bit (okay, a lotta bit) concerned about having a 7th grader this year. Junior high… almost high school. Yeah, there were...

I am officially starting my substitute teaching job next week! Super nervous and excited! I can't wait to get back into the district that I student taught. I have been printing out some emergency plans to be extra prepared. Here is the sub report that I made this morning. I hope you may get some use out of it, too! Click here to download the pdf

Hello fellow educators! 🙂 One of the best ways that I’ve found to stay on top of what I am doing throughout the year is to have long range plans. I have them for first grade, and now I have them for third as well! 🙂 We have a county curriculum pacing guide in our...Read More »

This is a follow-up to my earlier post, Recorders Rock! I thought I would add a couple more quick ideas that you might find useful. Creative Cases We use Yamaha recorders that are available in three colors. The students love the bright colors, and they have a nice tone quality. However, the plastic recorder cases are not very durable. Some students replace their torn cases with creative things ranging from socks to fabric or hand-knit cases. After I warned my fourth graders this year about the need to be careful with the cases to help them last as long as possible, a few students decided to take a proactive role. I have seen creative cases this year, and some look more difficult than others to make. I spotted these duct tape reinforced cases in class this week, and thought they were an ingenious way to make the cases cute and durable. Recorder Rewards We use Artie Almeida's Recorder Express as the main source in our recorder curriculum, and belts (colored yarn) are awarded as students achieve new levels with recorders. We enhance the curriculum with music from Don Muro's Give Me Five, and Easy 8, as well as recorder songs found in Music K-8 issues. Check out B A Superhero (by M.C. Handel/arr. by Paul Jennings, Music K-8, Vol. 16, No. 1). This song is always a favorite with our beginning recorder players. You may like to follow a set curriculum for rewards, such as Barb Philipak's Recorder Karate. However, don't be afraid to customize rewards to fit your students' needs. We select the songs for belts from Recorder Express, since the students have their own books at home to use for practice. The following is a chart of song choices we currently use for each reward level: Check out my latest post for information about visuals for these songs that have improved my students' progress: Kicking it with Recorder Recorder Roll I created a chart to keep up with recorder belt levels. You can download the Word document using the link below. Recorder Roll Chart Download I hope your new year is off to a great start!

On a personal basis I am more of an “Organized Chaos” type of person - see my top desk drawer if you don’t believe me. BUT in my FACS kit...

As many of you know, I use different rules in my classroom than the standard five from Whole Brain Teaching. Their rules are: Follow directions quickly Raise your hand for permission to speak. Raise your hand for permission to leave your seat. Make smart choices. Keep your dear teacher happy. These rules seem a-ok and I really like how they cover the spectrum of possibilities that students can throw in our direction! However, I am head-over-heals in love with the class rules Ashley from The Polka Dot Patch created! These decorated my classroom last year and they were perfect! They worked seamlessly with our school's PBIS system and allowed me to incorporate WBT with no "conflicts of interest". Here's how it looks in my classroom: For her cute signs in pink and green, head over to her lovely blog HERE. Quite a few of you have requested these rules to match my WBT Signs, and I am happy to say that, with Ashley's blessing, you can pick them up HERE on Google Docs for FREE! I have called these "Whole Brain Teaching-ish Rules" and they coordinate with my other WBT Signs: Click on the picture to download the poster set for FREE! I have posted about how my class goes over rules HERE, but here's a quick recap of the gestures that go with the Whole Brain Teaching-ish Rules: Rule #1: Listen (point to your ears) when your teacher (kids point to me) is talking (move hands together and apart like a mouth). Rule #2: Follow directions quickly. (As we say this, we snap out fingers along with each word and say the rule quickly.) Rule #3: Respect others (point out), respect yourself (point to yourself), and respect your school (point to the ground). Rule #4: Raise your hand (raise your right hand) to speak (make moving mouth motion) or stand use index and middle finger to 'walk'). Rule #5: Be safe (hug yourself), be kind (cover your heart with both hands), be honest (place right hand up, like you were about to testify). I have the kids practice these each morning before we begin our Morning Meeting. I used to lead it, but I now leave that up to the Morning Meeting Leader and I do it along with them. I hope this helps you on your WBT journey and thanks to Ashley for your awesome rules!

5 questions teachers too often forget to ask themselves while planning that can increase engagement and improve classroom management.

This week in classroom management, we worked in groups to form a classroom layout design. While there are many components to a classroom’s layout, the main focus of our group’s attention fell on th…

Classroom Rules, Behavior + Expectations: 71 Examples of Charts, Bulletin Boards and More! at RainbowsWithinReach

Here is my first composition for the Boomwhacker Mystery game! Can you guess what it is? Update: Here are two more Mystery Songs!