Blog - Page 7 of 63 - Tales from Outside the Classroom

The Best Free or Affordable Diagnostic Phonics Assessments

As a classroom teacher, reading interventionist, and member of my school’s leadership team, I have seen the need for diagnostic phonics assessments in elementary schools. These phonics tests identify students’ current phonics proficiencies to determine those in need of intervention as well as student placement for small group instruction. I believe every student should have grade level instruction, regardless of the grade level or student ability. However, I also believe that every student should also

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"2023 printable monthly calendars" text with 2023 calendars image behind it

2023 Calendars: Printables and 4 Easy Ideas

The last several years I’ve made printable yearly calendars. I like these because of their simple design, and notes space. They can be easily used for anything you need. I’ve made a simple list of ideas below. Use my 2023 calendars? I’d love to hear how you use them in the comments below! IDEAS FOR USING THESE PRINTABLE 2023 CALENDARS There are so many different ways you can use printable calendars in the classroom. These

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What is successive blending text next to student tapping an ipad with cvc word web

Successive Blending: A Phoneme Blending Strategy

Successive Blending is a decoding strategy for students that struggle to blend more than two sounds when reading words. It’s really a blending strategy to support readers that are struggling with decoding. Many of these students add and omit sounds when blending. Some students even blend words that seem disconnected from their sounds. These are those students that say /m/ /a/ /p/ and then say “fat?”. It’s also a great instructional strategy for those students

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Easy Prep 3rd Grade Math Games that Make Learning Fun

Are you a third grade teacher looking for additional math resources for this year? This round up of 3rd grade math games features some of my classroom favorites. I love to use math games in class to work on number sense and build fact fluency. I also like to use games to give students computation practice in an engaging way. Each of these is easy to prep- often just print and go or assign and

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Algebra in Elementary Grades How & Why text with balance task card displayed on side

How to Integrate Algebra with Elementary Students: Equality, Equations, and Discourse

How do you teach algebra in elementary school? Why would you? If you think of algebra as the class you took in high school and not a critical, intertwined component of mathematics, you might wonder why I’m talking about introducing algebra with elementary students. As with all things, the work we do in the elementary years lays the foundation for students’ algebra work later. Key components of our elementary math instruction build algebraic thinking in

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