Teaching with Jennifer Findley
Upper Elementary Teaching Blog
My break is over, and I officially return to school Monday...sadsville! Other than having to set your alarm, and losing the extra time with family and friends, the other part about going back to work that I dread is the fact that I know some of my kids will have forgotten what we learned or just need a quick review. Last year, I decided to not fight this inevitable fact, … [Read more...] about How to Review After a Long Break from School
The week or days before Christmas break can be hectic in the classroom. Between school events and the students' excitement, it is difficult to teach new skills during this time. For this reason, I choose to use this week to review all (or most) of the skills that we have learned so far in the year. To make things more interesting, the review has a holiday theme. This post … [Read more...] about FREE Christmas Math Review for 5th Grade
For this month's Math is Real Life, I am talking about one of my favorite things to do: Cyber Shopping (and sharing a math with coupons free printable!). My husband swears I am addicted but with Amazon prime and all the other conveniences, how can you not just love it? Did anyone do any cyber shopping this weekend or Monday? I picked up a few things online for the … [Read more...] about Teaching Math with Coupons Freebie
Each year, I find that I have such a huge divide in my classroom as far as mastering 5th grade math skills: students who get it and could teach it, students who could get it from some quality (and sometimes additional) instruction, and students that need major intervention and cannot focus during whole group because of attention or because of gaps in knowledge and … [Read more...] about Guided Math in Upper Elementary (Free Math Centers Included!)
Do you ever find that those are some students who just can't seem to get a skill after the millionth time you have practiced it? This was definitely me a few weeks ago while teaching measurement conversions. We were struggling with measurement conversions because students had little understanding of measurement and little to no knowledge of relative sizes of the unit. … [Read more...] about Measurement Conversions for Kids Who Just Don’t Get It
Division is by far one of the most difficult skills to teach students. The process is lengthy and requires strong number sense. There is also so much room for error that it can be quite frustrating for the students (and teachers!) Last week, I put together this packet of FREE repetitive division practice to keep my kids practicing division even after we have moved on to … [Read more...] about Division Practice: Division of the Day
I blogged over at All Things Upper Elementary today about guided reading organization! All Things Upper Elementary is a collaborative blog with a wealth of information for upper grades. If you haven't check it out, I highly recommend that you do! For my post this month, I blogged all about my Guided Reading Organization Binder that I use to keep all my reading records … [Read more...] about Guided Reading Organization
I jumped headfirst into using interactive notebooks this year, and I am loving it! My class is doing a great job of using their notes, keeping them neat and organized, and taking pride in them. I teach in a school with no textbooks so our interactive notebooks are becoming our textbooks. But, I did run into one snag using interactive notebooks. I had NOTHING to hang … [Read more...] about Interactive Hall Displays
Happy Weekend! Tomorrow my sweet Brody turns 10. Yikes! He is getting so old! I wanted to pop in real fast to share some new resources that I created over the summer for reading and math. I don't know about your kids, but my kids LOVE choice! Even if it is all still the same kind of work and still the same skill, just something about being able to choose is so awesome to … [Read more...] about Give Them Choice with Reading Choice Boards
By far, one of the hardest skills to teach 4th and 5th graders is determining the main idea of a complex nonfiction text. Not only is determining main idea pretty difficult for some (or most depending on your class that year) students, but it is also so critical for understanding nonfiction text. To make matters more complicated, so many other nonfiction skills are also … [Read more...] about Teaching Main Idea of Nonfiction Text
I am taking a small break from my family on this holiday weekend to write a quick blog post about how I used close reading this past week in my CCSS aligned reading mini lessons. This post contains an Amazon affiliate link if you decide you want to purchase the book mentioned in this post. I was teaching the standard RL.5.3: which involves comparing and contrasting … [Read more...] about How to Embed Close Reading in a Reading Lesson
Hey friends, I am knee deep in back to school over here in Georgia. We are on our second week of school and going strong! I snapped a few pictures after the second day of school to share with you! This picture is of my library area and my marker board easel where I teach my mini-lessons. I bought the Chevron rug from a local carpet store that sells rugs for awesome … [Read more...] about Classroom Tour
