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I'm so excited to share with you some amazing resources I've tested out from Oriental Trading that are PERFECT for your morning tubs! This year I wanted to give my students a morning that was less stressful (for them and for me) when they arrived in the morning, so I decided to give morning tubs a try. It's been a HIT, so today I'm going to share with you some awesome resources I'm putting in my tubs from Oriental Trading. First, let's talk about the bright baskets . :) I knew I wanted my tubs to be medium-size for a groups of 3-4 students, and these are perfect. They come in these 6 neon colors, and I love that I can easily see what's in them. One of my favorite resources we've used so far are these fun, sentence building dominoes . The various parts of speech are all color coded, and students use them to make silly sentences! I even had one student build a silly sentence house! I put these in our morning tubs during the first week of school, and stude...

The organization and planning/prepping that comes with math rotations can sometimes feel daunting, so today I'm going to share with you a few different ways I plan my math rotations every year. If you're just diving into math rotations for the first time, I suggest choosing starting with only three rotations (two centers and one for teacher table). I've found it easiest to split my class into three groups (low, medium, and high levels). I have done this in primary grades AND when I taught 6th grade math. I am all about keeping it simple. As you can see on my cart, I just label my centers #1-5. The bottom half of my cart is for ELA. My math rotations are very simple: teacher table, math center/game from one of the drawers, and math practice on iPads. One year I tried doing interactive notebooks with my kiddos, and it just wasn't working for us. Students couldn't do them independently, and I felt like they spent a lot of time cutting and gluing. Don't get me wrong...

I'm so excited to share with you all my favorite time of the day... Math at the Teacher Table! I'm not even kidding, it's the best 15-20 minutes of my guided math because this is where I truly get to know my students as mathematicians! So today I'm going to tell you all about how we spend those 15-20 minutes together and how I plan differentiated activities for our time together! FYI: While I meet with my small groups, my other students are completing different math stations and activities using a rotation I display in a pocket chart. The management of that is another post for another day. :) When I'm setting up who I'm going to meet with, I start by looking at pre-assessment scores from my district's assessments. Truth be told, I don't always love  the assessments from my district, so if needed, I make adjustments. Sometimes it will be a quick formative assessment ticket, and I'll group students based on those results. Quick, 5-minute exit slip tha...

I am thrilled to be sharing about my favorite subject to teach... MATH! If you're just beginning Guided Math, fully implementing Guided Math, or simply thinking about diving into it, this series is for you! This month, I wanted to share with you something I've implemented in my classroom that has been a total game-changer: NUMBER TALKS! First things first: After you finish reading my post, head over to Amazon and order yourself a copy of the book Number Talks by Sherry Parrish. You won't regret it! So, what is a Number Talk? A number talk is a way for students to talk and share their math thinking with classmates. No paper and pencils needed! I try to have a number talk every day, and they take us 5-7 minutes to complete. In 2nd grade, our number talks generally focus around addition and subtraction. However, before we ever begin number talks, we must set up expectations. Just like any classroom procedure, number talk expectations are a must . When I pose a problem on the ...

I LOVE celebrating Valentine's Day in the classroom. Even though February is a short month, it can feel quite long! Today I want to show you some of my favorite ideas and goodies from Oriental Trading to make your February awesome! My kids are OBSESSED with our new Valentine Spinner ! I set it up while my kiddos were at specials one day, and they came back and had all sorts of questions! I left them hanging for a few days before I finally one friend give it a big spin. A video posted by @simplycreativeteaching on Jan 18, 2017 at 4:17pm PST We have a jar of gems (drops in the bucket) that we use as a whole class incentive. Many times I'll just call on a friend to go put a certain number of drops in the bucket, but now... we SPIN THE WHEEL to figure out how many drops to put in the bucket! We go all out with drum rolls and cheering -- the kids LOVE it! I'm thinking of making it into a math center, too. The possibilities are endless! I'm also excited to make these adora...

Do you ever feel like it takes your kids FIVE BILLION YEARS to clean up and transition to whatever is next on your agenda? This year, my class is having the hardest time! They've really been struggling with transitions when we're cleaning up math and literacy centers. Usually we have choice time during the last 15 minutes of our Fridays, but last week... NOPE. My class "cleaned up" math centers for their entire choice time. Natural consequences? I guess so. But I knew I HAD to implement something a bit more intensive for this little group. I always call my kids my SUPERSTARS whenever I catch them doing something awesome (even the little things). When we've had class meetings to discuss how to effectively transition, I've had to tell my kids that I know they CAN BE superstars, but they don't always show it. So last night I decided that I wanted them to show me that they can be TRANSITION SUPERSTARS! It's pretty simple. I made cards for every letter in T...

I always love getting creative with my students, and they LOVE making ornaments. This year, I wanted to make sure we made something that really showcased each child's unique, creative personality. I'm just not a fan of the foam/sticker cookie cutter ornaments that all look the same. This year I decided to pull out that giant box of popsicle sticks I had in my cabinet and make snowflakes. This was a pretty easy project, but we worked on them two separate days. On the first day we just glued the popsicle sticks together. I wanted to make sure they didn't fall apart! This also gave me time to go to Hobby Lobby and buy some new glitter. I went into the store for 2 colors and came out with all of this... oops! On the second day we used all of the fun glitter glue bottles and got a little messy! We had SO much fun, and the snowflakes turned out SO CUTE!! I love how each one is totally different! The only part that really required adult work was hot gluing string to the back... an...

Do you celebrate Friendsgiving? This year I am having a virtual Thanksgiving Potluck with some of my teacher besties! We have so much to be thankful for, and we wanted share our blessing with you! We created a FREE Classroom Cornucopia of our best selling resources! These are some of our favorite classroom creations that can be used throughout the year. Here's a taste of everything we shared in our Cornucopia... Emily from Polka Dots Please shared a Tooth Word Bank that can be used for writing folders, anchor charts, or a creative writing center. There are pictures to match every word so little writers feel inspired and supported! (This is a BONUS word bank that is not included in the original set!) Alisha from Missing Tooth Grins shared Winter Main Idea Passages.  These main idea passages are designed for the winter months and help your students understand and practice telling the main idea and supporting details from a short passage. They are consistent, easy to use, and requir...

When I was in undergrad, I was soooo nervous about teaching math . My oh my, how that�s changed. I would teach primary math all day if I could now. I absolutely LOVE it. There are a handful of tools that I�ve found super helpful when teaching math, so today I thought I�d share with you a few of my favorite MATH ESSENTIALS! #1 � Magnetic Base Ten Pieces from Learning Resources Before I had these magnetic base ten pieces , I used to hot glue magnets to the back of my foam base ten blocks and it was a disaster. The day I got these it was like Christmas! I�ve used them a few different ways. One year, my calendar area was housed on a dry erase board, so I used these for counting the number of days in school during calendar time. #2 � Number Line, Tens Frames, and Hundreds Chart Dry Erase Boards I never knew I was missing out until I got these dry erase boards from Education by Oriental Trading. Each board is two-sided, and the part I love the most is the number ...