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Christmas break can't get here soon enough and figurative language?!

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It’s that time of year - that pre-winter break tired time of year. I don’t know about ya’ll, but these past couple of weeks with students have WORN ME OUT! Maybe it’s all the extra things we have to do in and out of the classroom (door decorating anyone? Christmas shopping for school, family and friends?) It could be the fact that I’ve been working on TDA (text dependent analysis or literary essays) with students. (expect a whole other post on that soon! I’m determined to master teaching and for my students to master writing TDAs!)         I still want to make sure that I’m giving students meaningful content that is standards-based and will help them grow as readers. Enter a recent post on Edutopia I stumbled across that gave recommendations for students struggling with reading comprehension. One of the recommendations of the post was to teach students explicitly the skills they need (no surprise there), but what stood out as a part of that recommen...
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Thinking about Theme 🤔

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I've spent most of this post Thanksgiving weekend working on resources for my TpT store and my classroom centered around theme. Traditionally, this has been something that my students have struggled with. I think it has to do with making abstract concepts concrete. How exactly do you do that? One way I've found helpful is the use of anchor charts. Sometimes they might be displayed on the classroom walls, other times I'll have students post "mini- charts" in their reading notebooks. I think a key factor in effective instruction is the use of metacognitive strategies - making your thinking and thought processes clear to students. I try to model the type of thinking I use through interactive read-alouds, as well as to explicitly teach my thought processes in my mini-lessons, as you can see below with a slide from one of my teaching theme min-lessons. A final strategy that has proven to be useful for me when I’m teaching difficult concepts like theme i...
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I thought my first official blog post as a small business owner would be a bit more personal in nature…I want to share a little bit about myself and why I’ve started this small business. Some of you may know me and know my story, and some of you may not. So, if we’ve never met, here’s your official introduction. 😃👋  My name is Kristin Schulze. I’ve been in education for 23 years now (hard for me to believe because internally, I don’t think I’m much older than that…although my graying hair and growing wrinkles tell another story).  I'm mom to the world's best 17 year old daughter (Yes, teenagers can be wonderful!).  I currently teach 5th grade English in a private school. Here I am with my boyfriend Ned - Thanksgiving 2023 At Dave Matthew Concert - I realized I was old when my bedtime reminder went off in the middle of concert. 😂 End of Day - tired teacher (note eyebags as text evidence) Over the course of the last 23 years, I’ve had a lot of different roles in educatio...
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