Tales from the Fourth Grade: The Best Field Trip EVER

Teachers will tell you that one of the hardest parts of any school year is the planning and execution of field trips. While students are looking forward to a “day off” from the classroom, teachers and administrators are scrambling to get permission forms returned and figuring out driving and chaperone arrangements. Though I didn’t have …

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Tales from the Fourth Grade: Make a Joyful Noise

While my students were writing out their first book report for the quarter in cursive (my kids will have non-forgeable signatures, thanks very much), I decided to play some music to keep them motivated. Eva was enjoying my classical music and asked if we could listen to songs from Phantom of the Opera. I first …

Tales from the Fourth Grade: Sing, Sing a Song

Something had to be done. The majority of my fourth grade girls had been singing “My Favorite Things,” loudly and off-key for a good minute now. I took a deep breath and approached the throng clustered around a poetry book that contained the lyrics. My students, singers and non-singers alike, eyed me with cautious curiosity. …

Tales from the Fourth Grade: For the Love of Literature

I went into the school year expecting great things from my new set of fourth graders. As all teachers will freely admit to, we spend time during the year regaling our coworkers with stories of our students, and so I already had a favorable impression of my incoming class from tidbits I had acquired. I …

Book Review: Teach Like a PIRATE

Teach Like a Pirate: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator by Dave Burgess My rating: 3 of 5 stars I'm not entirely sure for whom this book is intended. I read it in hopes of improving my technique and building more enthusiasm in certain difficult/jaded students, but the …

Teach Like a Pirate: Building Rapport, Student Engagement, and Creativity

While reading Dave Burgess’s highly popular educational tome Teach Like a Pirate, I discovered several key elements were repeated over and over again. These elements tie directly into the acrostic PIRATE, which stands for Passion, Immersion, Rapport, Ask and Analyze, Transformation, and Enthusiasm. While Burgess contends that a successful teacher will implement all of the …

Out on a Limerick

"I don't get what I'm supposed to do," one of my middle school boys whined. "You're writing two haiku, one about nature, the other in riddle form, and then you're writing a limerick," I reiterated my previous instructions. Because it's not teaching unless you repeat yourself 47 times during the course of an hour. "How …

Bobby the Sheep

I surveyed my students' glazed expressions as I went over the religion lesson for the day. I had been wracking my brain for weeks trying to find a way to engage my students during the first class of the day. But the early morning hour coupled with difficult material had made what was usually one …

The Only New Year’s Resolution You Need

Welcome to 2019! As we look out on a fresh, new year full of untapped potential, we often find ourselves glancing backward at the year gone by. I will be the first to say quite proudly that my 2018 went remarkably well, and I plan to make my 2019 also a success by following a …

Not a Waste of Time: Using Fan-fiction in the Classroom

I have a confession to make that may forever alter your opinion of me (those of you who have wandered onto my blog for the first time are currently thinking, Umm, I don't have any opinions). I love reading and writing fan-fiction. I currently have two fanfic accounts on the internet, which anyone with a semblance of …