Blog - Primary Planet

Text: Mini-Books in your classroom writing center. Image of cute little girl looking surprised at her own writing.

Kids LOVE Making Mini-Books! Why You Should Add Them to Your Classroom Writing Center

Do you have a classroom writing center? It was the only “permanent” center that I had in my classroom. It really was the most popular spot in my classroom! I spent time each month finding new and interesting ways to keep it fresh. My students LOVED writing and they LOVED the writing center. By providing fun writing materials my students could let their creativity run wild! Mini-Books are the perfect addition to your classroom writing center! Mini-Books are Fun! Blank Mini books are a great way to engage students in creative writing and storytelling. When you have a mini-book you

Learning through Play: 5 Easy Play Ideas for Your Classroom

Learning through play is important in EVERY classroom, but with so much to cover it can be really difficult to find time to play during a school day! Here are 5 Easy Play Ideas that you can use to get more playtime into your day! This post contains Amazon Affiliate Links. If you purchase anything through these links I will recieve a small commission at no cost to you. Learning Through Play: Morning Tubs/Afternoon Tubs Start your day off with some play! Ease your students into their school day by letting them play! Morning Tubs can be done in a

Text: Playful Poetry Lesson Plan - Free-Verse Image of a girl and teacher writing together.

How to Write a Poem: Fun Free-Verse Poetry Lesson Plan for Kids

Poetry Lesson Plan Free-Verse Freebie Poetry Lesson Plans are fun! Okay, so I am no Shakespeare or Amanda Gorman, but I love writing poetry and teaching students to write poetry too! Read on to see how I teach Free-Verse Poetry Writing! This post contains affiliate links to Amazon. If you purchase anything through these links I will receive a small commission from Amazon at no cost to you! Thank you! Free-Verse Mini Lesson Plan I always favored the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model if you have read any of my other writing mini-lesson posts. In a nutshell: I do (teacher

Text: Playful Writing Mini-Lessons - List Writing. Image shows a child making and alphabet list

Playful Mini-Lessons: Make a List Writing Prompts for Students

List Writing Prompts were always a hit in my classroom! Who doesn’t love a good list? Most students have some experience with list making, either they have seen a list, helped write a list, or have written their own list (Christmas anyone?). Lists are fun to write, especially when the topic is a little silly! This post does contain some affiliate links for Amazon. If you purchase anything through these links, I will get a small commission from Amazon at no cost to you! Thanks so much! Mini-Lesson for List Writing Prompts I like using the Gradual Release of Responsibility

Image of a happy coffee cup with text: Fun Ways to Teach Student to Edit their Writing with CUPS!

Fun Way to Teach Students to Edit their Writing with CUPS

Hey there! Thanks for stopping by! Teaching students to edit writing can be a bit of a challenge. But, if we want our students to produce writing that others can read, teaching students to edit writing is essential! Let me help you with some fun ways to help your students to edit their own writing! Edit Writing with C.U.P.S. Teaching your students to edit their writing is an ongoing process. We use C.U.P.S. to teach editing. We introduce CUPS pretty early in the year and use this acronym all year long to help our students to edit their writing. We

Cover image: Helpful Everyday Word Work Ideas and Spelling Activities for Primary Students

Helpful Everyday Word Work Ideas for Primary Students

Hey there! I have to tell you, I am a certified word nerd! I love words and working with words. Word work is an important part of our students’ learning to read and write! Here are some helpful everyday word work ideas and spelling activities to help your students! Word Work Idea: Word Sorts I love doing word sorts with my students! A word sort is a group of words that your students sort into groups using some sort of criteria. There are so many ways that you can do word sorts. My favorite is to start with an open

Cover image of a child reading a book with the text: Improve Reading Comprehension Skills with Reading Responses.

How To Improve Reading Comprehension Skills with Quality Reading Responses

Hey there! Thanks so much for stopping by! So, how do you feel when you hear the words Reading Response or Respond to Reading? I’ll give you a minute… What is a Reading Response? A reading response is something you do after you read a text. It can be as simple as drawing a picture of a favorite part to a rhetorical analysis of the text. We all have some “response to reading”. I know as an adult, I LOVE to talk about the books I’ve read. I keep a list of the books I have read and what I

Sentence Types Mini-Lessons Cover Image: Declarative, Imperative, Interrogative, and Exclamatory Sentences.

Helpful Mini-Lessons for Teaching Sentence Types you Need

Declarative, Imperative, Interrogative, Exclamatory, Oh, MY! Teaching sentence types can be a bit of a challenge, can’t it? Let me help with some sentence types mini-lessons! Teach sentence types one sentence at a time in minutes a day! What are Sentence Types? Today we are talking about teaching sentence types. Why do we need to teach sentence types? They make our writing more interesting, and help us to figure out what kind of punctuation a sentence needs! Read on for some helpful sentence types mini-lessons and a sentence types freebie to use in your classroom! These mini-lessons can be done

Title Image with 2 children with stickers on their faces: Increase Student Engagment with 5 Fun Sticker Ideas for Your Classroom!

Increase Student Engagement with 5 Fun Sticker Ideas for Your Classroom

Hey there! If you have been around here for a bit, you probably know that I LOVE STICKERS! I used stickers for so many things in my room, so I thought that I would share some ideas with you. My kiddos always LOVED stickers as well! It helped that the “water bottle stickers” trend started a few years ago. In this post, I share some fun ways to help you increase student engagement with some fun sticker ideas! I also have a fun Sticker Story freebie in my free resource library when you sign up for my newsletter! This post

Cure Winter Blues with Festive Winter Activities for Your Classroom! Image of child's hand on a window

Cure Winter Blues with Festive Winter Activities in Your Classroom

Winter activities are coming! I live in an area where winter means snow. It is inevitable, the first snow of the season will happen during school hours. Stop what you are doing and take your students outside for a few minutes (if feasible). They will appreciate it, and it will help with the distraction, and it makes a great brain break. If you can’t take them outside, at least give them a minute or 2 to stare out the window and talk about the snow. It is something that they will remember! They will also remember these fun winter activities

Cootie Catcher Instructions and ways to use cootie catchers in your classroom with an image of cootie catchers

Cootie Catcher Instructions and Fun Ways to Use them in Your Classroom!

Beware! Cootie Catcher Instructions ahead! Making cootie catchers can be addicting. You have been warned! 🙂 Every year I have had a student who is a cootie catcher master. They learned how to make a cootie catcher from someone, now they can make them and they LOVE to show off their paper-folding prowess! I don’t know about your kiddos, but as soon as they see this paper-folding magic, they can’t get enough! What is a Cootie Catcher? A Cootie Catcher (or fortune teller) is an origami marvel that students can’t get enough of! All students need is a square piece

How Can Reading Logs for Reading Comprehension be More Fun? Cover with image of adorable smiling little girl reading.

How Can Reading Logs for Better Reading Comprehension be More Fun?

As a former teacher, I see value in Reading Logs for Reading Comprehension. But, I must confess. When my boys were in school I really disliked their reading logs. It’s funny though, my boys LOVED their reading logs. They even kept them after they got them back. Why you may ask? Both of my boys are huge readers, and they loved having a record of the books that they had read. They loved to show me their lists and talk about the books that they have read and are reading. Win-win! I am also a huge reader, and I love

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