Someone asked me, "How do you do all of this and have a young family?" I am used to hearing people say, "Do you ever sleep?" Yes, I sleep. In fact, I need at least 8 hours of sleep each night. Rest is important for me to function at full speed as well as for my recovering brain. It's a fair question. When I was a beginning teacher, I would arrive at school early in the morning and stay there until past dinner. Then, most nights I was doing work at home before bed. It would've been really difficult for me to be an excellent teacher if I were just now starting with littles at home (not to say that others who are just starting and have littles at home can't be excellent teachers, just that it would've been hard for ME). But due to that hard (and likely unhealthy) work back then, I have a lot of strategies in my teacher tool kit and many resources to pull from. I also spend an hour each day in the summer working on resources that will help me durin...
Ready, steady, GO! Free Resources Included! I have a 4 year old and a 2 year old. We LOVE Peppa Pig in our house. I was trying to wrap my head around to a way to better differentiate my math block. I have read about math cafe, other blogs, and scoured my social media resources for something that would fit into our hour of math time. I needed something that included choice, student independence, support, and enrichment. While watching yet another episode (or Peppasode as we call them), I heard the characters say, "Ready, steady, go" and it clicked. That was exactly how I should run my math block! Ready is the students who are ready to learn more. Steady is the group of students who feel like they are good to go on their own. Go is the group of students who feel like they got it and need extension. The great thing about this model is that students choose which group they think they need to be in for that particular daily lesson. So, on...