Day 1 ideas/tweaks

Whew! This summer has been amazing and a whirlwind. I have been so appreciative of the feedback that we have gotten over the book. I want to try to answer some questions about Common Ground that have been coming up at different points. I am excited that it is motivating teachers to make changes to

Happiness mini-unit: Novice students

This year, one of our central themes was joy and togetherness. With this idea, I decided to ask the question of my sixth graders: what makes us happy? I have to say that a lot of this was inspired by my conversations with Samara Spielberg who has done a lot of work on social-emotional learning.

March favorites: Infographics, field trips, and more!

This year continues to challenge; however, I feel much more motivated. Part of this involved going to NECTFL. I have to say- despite the pictures, NECTFL wasn’t all roses. Almost my WHOLE family got some stomach bug. I actually had to take off the day before I was leaving because I felt so bad. My

Heavenly Bites: Mexico Tortas

I really love a lot of the documentaries that Netflix has been producing that focus on various cultures in Latin America! The most recent one is Heavenly Bites: Mexico. I created a few day lesson plan to look at the tortas episode. Overall, we are studying the influences of other cultures on Mexican food and

Super Bowl Lesson Plans: 2022

Happy week before the Super Bowl! Next week, I am going up to present at NECTFL twice! (If you are going, I am presenting on Comprehensible Pop Culture and Best of GWATFL about Interpersonal Tasks and Assessments on Saturday. I would love to see you there!). For both my fifth and sixth graders, I am

First Fridays: February 4, 2022

Happy Friday! Whew- for me January was ROUGH with various quarantines and snow, but it calmed down toward the end, and I am feeling much better by this Friday. Although I definitely didn’t finish as many other things that I had planned. One thing was what to do with Olympic Games! Luckily, some other people

Communicative purposes and how to make your classes more successful

This week, I have gotten some really exciting news! While the actual paper publication of our book has been pushed back until April, the ebook version is available now via RedShelf and will be on Amazon by February 1st! The nice thing about Kindle is that you don’t have to worry about shipping delays! Obviously

Links to help during January

I know that many teachers are feeling frustrated with the flux of what is happening in schools. Many days, we don’t know how many students will actually be in our classes. There are a lot of different scenarios- but some of the main threads are similar. There will be days this month that we want

First Fridays: January 7, 2022

This has been quite a start back to school. The stress can only be understood if you are also teaching- but WHEW. I hope that you have managed to figure your way if you are back in school or if your school is virtual. Meanwhile, we also had a HUGE snowstorm for us. We ended

Activities and horoscopes for 2022

Happy almost New Year! I hope that you are enjoying your winter break. I took a long break at the beginning and am cracking open my computer to knock out a few things at the end of the break. While there is a lot that is uncertain, I am so excited to see my book