This review competition is NO PREP and can take as few as 5 minutes or as many as 15, it depends on if you ask follow-up questions and how in depth the students’ responses get. I start by writing the main topics we studied on the board. Each is […]
I learned about word clouds a few years ago, but for some reason didn’t use them until this year. It is such a quick and easy informal assessment (especially if it’s one of those days where you need to shake things up, or you finished sooner than you […]
Since I teach 3 different social studies classes (World Geography, TX history, and US history), I rotate which class is represented on my bulletin board every few weeks. Well, when it was almost time for my Texas history class to have their rotation, I had a grand plan […]
I imagine most of us have been in this situation before: you plan a great lesson, it is engaging, challenging, and every student completes the work. Then you look at the clock and there’s 15 minutes left to class. Well that happened to me not too long ago; the […]
You always hear about why it’s good to include something positive about a student whenever you have to contact their parent with something negative, and that’s easy enough to do throughout the year when you have to reach out to parents. You also frequently hear how it’s a […]
One of my favorite first week of school discussions is about perspective. Because of this particular map (which I found at a map store in Seattle a few years ago), it always ends up being a student generated conversation (which I love!!!). After about 3-4 days in class, […]
Starting the year off organized is key to many teachers’ sanity. For me, that includes planning ahead. With those two things in mind, this right here is one of my FAVORITE teacher organization tips/tricks/tools/methods (NOT an affiliate link). It has worked for me no matter how many students/preps/periods I have because […]
There’s still 2 weeks until school starts but I wanted to give you a peek into my classroom. I was able to decorate with a lot of new things this year that I’m really excited about. It’s the first time I had a bulletin board to decorate and I’m also using […]
Every year it seems like I find a new set of favorite activities/resources for the coming school year. Well, this year I have 4 amazing resources to share with you guys for #BestResourceEver for the Back to School 2016 season. I wanted a “top 3” list but couldn’t narrow […]
In just about a month, students around the world (or at least the northern hemisphere) will be asking their social studies teachers, “why do we have to study history?” Of course there are great answers to that question, it’s just a matter of whether teachers spoon feed students the answers […]
