Teaching kids to paraphrase is often just as challenging as paraphrasing is on its own. Rachel Lynette shares some of her top tips for teaching students how to paraphrase, step by step, in this blog post. You can also learn more about two sets of paraphrasing task cards that are available in her Teachers Pay Teachers store!

Teaching Kids to Paraphrase, Step by Step

Paraphrasing is such a hard skill to master – and so very important! Paraphrasing is essential for many kinds of writing. Kids who don’t learn to paraphrase well will not only grow into poor writers but may also even resort to plagiarism, which is not at all a good thing. Here is a step by step plan for teaching paraphrasing to your students. Start by

Planning Close Reading

Hi friends! I’m absolutely thrilled to be a guest blogger here on Rachel’s site! Today I’d like to talk about close reading and share how I used Maya Angelou’s poem “Human Family” to launch close reading in my sixth grade class this year.   Close reading has quickly become one of the most talked about instructional strategies related to the Common Core.  And tips on

The Workshop Model: Tips and Strategies for Your Classroom

Hey y’all! I’m Ashley from over at Primary Teacherhood! I can’t believe I am over here at Minds in Bloom, guest blogging for Rachel.  I have to admit, this is pretty darn exciting! I’m so thankful for Rachel for this opportunity, and I hope you’ll learn some great tips to take to your classroom!   Today, I’m here to share a few tips and strategies

Special needs children need both their parents and their teachers working together, but when their parent happens to also be a teacher, sometimes it requires a mindset shift. Our guest blogger shares her experience being both a teacher and the parent of a child with special needs, so click through to read her story.

Making the Switch From Teacher to Advocate for My Special Needs Child

Please welcome Stacey of Teaching Ever After.  She shares her experience with making the switch from being a teacher to advocating for her own special needs child.  Thank you for sharing your heart with us Stacey and creating such a useful freebie. Today, I am not a teacher.  I am a parent.  I am a parent of a child with Cerebral Palsy. I am a

Student-led conferences provide students, parents, and teachers the opportunity to experience the student's mindset and wishes. Our guest blogger shares five extraordinary student-led conferences she's experienced as a teacher. Click through to read all of these touching stories.

5 Reasons to Love Student-Led Conferences

A student gave her dad her straight-A progress report and pointed out that she is ranked number one in her class. He put his hand on his chest, started to cry, and said something in Spanish that I couldn’t understand, but it made the student and her siblings hug him and burst into tears. A transgender boy, who is failing everything and struggling with peers’

Many teachers learn about four types of learners in their pre-service teaching classes. However, our guest blogger shares in this post that there are actually 12 types of multi-sensory learners. Use this post on multi-sensory teaching to help you better reach all learners!

Multi-Sensory Teaching: Reaching Every Learner

I am so pleased to once again welcome Dr. Erica Warren to Minds in Bloom. Just like her post on reading disabilities, this post is packed with useful information to help you reach every learner in your class.   Many teachers recognize the four learning modalities: visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic.  But are you aware of the other eight ways of processing information, too?  Demonstrating and accommodating

By the time most students get to middle school, they've decided they "aren't good at math." Our guest blogger shares her advice on teaching perseverance in math and not letting students tell themselves they aren't good at it!

Teaching Perseverance in Math

Hello!  My name is Meg from The Teacher Studio, and I am thrilled to be over here blogging on Minds in Bloom!   I am a fourth grade teacher-blogger who is PASSIONATE about teaching and learning and helping each child reach his/her potential.  I also am a firm believer that helping students learn is far more complicated than checking off a list of learning targets–and

Valentine's Would You Rather Activity

20 Would You Rather Questions for Valentine’s Day

Here are some fun “Would you rather…” Valentine’s questions to bring a little love to your class! “Would You Rather”, “This or That” – Whatever you call this game, your students will love it!  You’ll love the: Respectful Discussion & Debate Critical thinking skills Communicating thoughts and ideas Defending thoughts and opinions Being open to new perspectives Flexibility in thinking Adopting a personal point of

Many elementary classrooms are still self-contained, but some have made the switch to departmentalization. Departmentalizing your grade level is a great idea when you want your teachers to maximize instructional time in the subject area in which they are masters. Read this guest blogger's explanation of how it works at her school!

Departmentalizing Your Grade Level

I am so excited to be here today guest blogging about working in a departmentalized elementary school!  I am Christina from Bunting, Books, and Bright Ideas. I teach 3rd grade ELA in Michigan.  I’ve been doing 3rd grade ELA for two years now (I taught 1st and 2nd for six years before that!) and LOVE teaching one subject all day.  I’m so thankful to have

Secret Student is a fun game to play with your class to motivate students to have good behavior. But, there are lots of fun variations of it that will surprise your students and inspire good behavior for specific activities or events!

New Ways to Use Secret Student with Your Class!

If you have been doing this hop from the beginning, then you probably have a ton of great ideas by now! I hope that you will find this one useful, as well.   You may think of Secret Student as being just for little kids, but it can be a powerful motivator for older students, as well. Think about the feeling you have just before

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