Tidepool Learning Studio

This rubric helps guide students as they work toward mastery of writing a friendly letter. There are many ways you can use it, but here is what we did in our class: Together, we read several fairy tales. The students were then asked to choose which character was their favorite. They wrote friendly letters to their character, giving their opinion about why they were the student's favorite. The skills covered include writing an opinion, writing complete sentences, and using capitals and end mar

This is a rubric I created to help my kids measure their progress as they work toward mastering the art of opinion writing.

This cute activity can be printed out just as I have provided it, or you could upload it to Seesaw or Notability so kids can use emojis to quickly add their pictures. My students love using emojis, so it feels more like fun than work! The file is in the form of an editable power point, so the possibilities are limitless on what you could have kids graph. For example, you could let students come up with a whole new topic, survey their classmates, and then edit this form to fit your needs. * The

This rubric provides you with a formative assessment you can use to evaluate your student' mastery of their writing skills. Great for common formative assessments between colleagues!

This is just a way to make regular old place value more exciting for the kids. As part of my reward system, I let me students work toward a special goal. This time, they chose "Lego Day!" I wanted to let them do Lego activities all day, but I needed to stay on track with my curriculum. We happen to be on Module 4 in Engage New York, and the first lessons deal with only tens and ones. I know we will be going back to the hundreds place in the future, so I went ahead and created all three as indiv

E-mailing parents is a quick and easy way to stay in touch. Sometimes parents don't always read all of the paperwork going home. This helps eliminate that problem. I like to set this sheet out when parents come for Back to School Night at the beginning of the year. Then just create a group in your e-mail contacts and add each parent's e-mail from the current year. I usually name my group by the school year (example: Kids' Parents 2013) so I don't get confused from one year to the next. Now all y

Before school starts, I like to create folders for home/school communication. I used to have kids get confused about what items were supposed to be returned and which items could stay at home. Then I started making my old folders, and it really helped. I print out these labels on Avery sticky-back paper, and then just cut them and stick them right on the correct side. The Items that need to "come right back" go on the RIGHT hand side of the folder, and the items that need to be "left at home" go

This board can be used with my Lego place value manipulatives to make learning a little more fun!