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Valentine’s Day comes at the perfect time of the year! As a primary teacher in Maryland, February is full of snow, indoor recess, and standardized tests.  Valentine’s Day offers a bright, reviving change for my students from the winter doldrums. And what better way to celebrate it then with a favorite read-aloud? I’ve put together

Are your primary students struggling with their letter recognition skills? It happened to me this year with my first graders. My students knew most of their sounds for each letter but when assessed on naming the letter, many of them were stumped. (If you want to learn  more about letter naming fluency and its importance, check

Sorting is a natural skill that a child learns early on when they are playing. Blocks, race cars, Legos…any collection of things can become a sort. While we generally think of sorting as a math skill, it is important for literacy skills as well. Sorting helps build literacy skills because it involves identifying attributes and

This year, my school district implemented DIBELS literacy assessments for primary grades. Part of these assessments include Letter Naming Fluency (LNF). Students are assessed on how quickly and accurately they can name letters. As a first-grade teacher, I believed my students would “ace” this part. However, many students struggled before naming a letter and often

Here are a some very basic activities that I use for my back to school week (bonus…2 of them are FREE!). I hope you will use them to make your first week stress-free

10 Fun ABC Manipulatives to Use in Your Classroom  How do you make phonics engaging in your classroom? A great resource for any primary teacher to have is a stash of ABC manipulatives. My students are crazy for the ABC manipulatives we use in our classroom. Every time we learn a new sight word or

A question I hear a lot amongst teachers, especially in the primary grades, is “How do I create number sense with my students?”. I admit this has been a challenge for me…there are so many suggestions out there…but number sense is so important. As a teacher who has taught older elementary kids, I can tell