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Teaching Long Division Using the Partial Quotient Method

As a teacher of 4th grade for over 20 years, I can tell you that long division is easily the most challenging 4th grade math calculation your students will learn. It involves a complicated (sometimes confusing) algorithm and requires a strong fluency of basic facts for not just for division, but also multiplication, and subtraction,…
1,000 Review Freebie and Teaching Multiplication Concepts

At the moment of this writing I am sitting at 997 reviews on Teachers Pay Teachers. I want to do something special for my 1,000th reviewer on TpT. Whoever posts the 1,000th review will receive a free (non-bundled) item from my store! Teaching Multiplication Concepts Here’s the Common Core Standard as its written. Gain familiarity…
500 Follower Sale-A-Bration!

I hit a cool milestone this week – 500 followers! As a thank you to my blog friends and TpT store followers, I’m putting everything in my TpT store on sale from October 7-9. I am hoping to hit another cool milestone soon – 1,000 reviews! When I do, I plan to offer some freebies…
Hey, check out my new logo! I designed it myself because I’m, well, too cheap to hire a real artist! Hey, teachers. Sorry for the long layoff on the blog. At the end of summer break I had a couple interconnected bits of bad luck. It all started when my son noticed that a beautiful…
Playful Learning: Part 3 (Fostering Collaboration Through Social Gaming and Team Building)

When you strive to gamify your classroom, the first thing I would recommend is to think about the games that you or your kids love. These might be casual mobile games like Words with Friends, Angry Birds, or Candy Crush. They might be board games like Monopoly, Pictionary, or Candyland. They might be video games…
Playful Learning: Part 2 – (Fostering Friendly Competiton)

For those looking to “gamify” your classroom, the first thing I would recommend is to think about the games that you or your kids love. These might be casual mobile games like Words with Friends, Angry Birds, or Candy Crush. They might be board games like Monopoly, Pictionary, or Candyland. They might be video games…
Playful Learning: Part 1 – (The Power of Games for Learning)

For this set of posts, I am sharing how I plan to gamify my classroom this school year. You may or may not have heard of the term gamification but I can tell you that it is a philosophy that is very popular in education (and business) right now. It might be said, that with…
Currently January 2016

Well, its been a long time, dear blog. I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you. Thanks to the Farley, at Oh Boy 4th Grade for shaking me out of my slump. Listening: to the sounds of silence. That’s right. Everyone in my house is on the post-New Years, sleep in until 11 schedule. Loving: college…
Twitter – It’s not just for celebrities anymore. One teacher’s experience getting started.

I have had a Twitter account for a pretty long time. I first set up an account for myself in early 2011 when Twitter was being described in the media as the “next big thing” in tech. But at that point, I really didn’t see anything useful about it. As a result, for several years…
200th follower sale & giveaway!

I am a little embarrassed to admit that I have been obsessively checking my TpT followers over the past week. The reason that I have been checking this daily is because my TpT followers have been slowly creeping up toward the magical number of 200. Honestly, I think my family has had enough of me…