A Spoonful of Teaching

Welcome back to A Spoonful of Teaching! Today I'm talking about Classroom Community! Building a strong classroom community is so important. My students are like my closest friends-- I mean, I see them 5 days a week for about 8 hours a day. Building a great connection is important because it allows students to feel safe. When students feel safe, they tend to open up more and they feel comfortable. And when they feel comfortable, that's when the most effective learning can happen. Taylor, my co-teacher, and I have a strong belief in creating a well built connection with students. Here are my 5 favorite ways to build classroom community: 1) Whiteboard Message This is one of my absolute favorite  ways to connect with students! I set the expectations for whiteboard messages on the second day of school. My students are like little robots in the morning because they have a routine they've followed since the second day of school. After they store their book bags in the hallway ...

Thanks for coming back to A Spoonful of Teaching! I appreciate the love and support from all of you! Today I’m going to give you the low-down on Student Led Conferences. Last year was the first year I had ever heard of one, let alone organized one for my students! It was extremely intimidating. A student-led conference is different from the traditional parent-teacher conference. If you’re a current teacher or studying to be a teacher, this post is for you whether you’ve never heard of one or are a seasoned pro at organizing a SLC. Let’s get started. What is a student led conference?  A student led conference is exactly what it sounds like-- a student leading a conference. This is a step above a parent-teacher conference. In a parent-teacher conference, the student is usually not present. Therefore, the teacher does all of the talking with the parent! For a student led conference, we prepare our students to present their goals, grades, testing data, and artifacts (projects, tests...

Happy Thursday! Thanks for visiting A Spoonful of Teaching. Last week, I mentioned talking about a few of my favorite lessons. Guess what, I’m doing it! I would love to share some of my most memorable lessons every once and awhile! So, here it goes... Lesson One: “Yet” This is a lesson I love to do at the beginning of the year. It’s the perfect introductory lesson for something I value in my classroom-- growth mindset! Promoting growth mindset is SO important in a classroom. A growth mindset is having the belief you are in control of your ability, and can learn and improve. The first thing we do to kick off our growth mindset lesson is listen to Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae. This has always been one of my favorite books-- even as a kid! This YouTube video is a beautiful animation movie of the story: https://youtu.be/vZjsLK5vwNU . If you’re not familiar with it, take the time to watch the video! After watching the animation movie of Giraffes Can’t Dance , we brainstorm ...

Welcome back to A Spoonful of Teaching! I'm so glad you're here! I know in my last blog I explained I would be talking about various communication tools in my classroom, but I felt this post needed to happen first. Let's get started talking about my very first "first day of school" experience... If I had to describe my very first first day of school in one word, it would be “terrifying.” I remember looking for the adult in the room but it turned out it was me. ME?! A 22 year old? In charge of tiny humans?! Scary. Thank goodness it ended up being okay. I was also terribly nervous for many reasons. Obviously, I had never experienced a first day of school from a teacher's perspective. This is not something they teach you in school!! I was also super nervous because my classroom didn’t feel like home yet. I set up my classroom in four days. Yeah, let’s backtrack to the fact that I got my classroom together in four days. That’s 96 hours to set up a fun, open le...