Top 5 Podcasts for Educators

Are you a podcast listener? I've recently discovered educational podcasts for educators to be an excellent way to get myself some high-quality professional development when my eyes or hands have to be otherwise engaged. I listen in the car, while folding laundry, walking on the treadmill, and while making dinner. 

Today I'm sharing my top five podcasts for educators. These podcasts regularly introduce you to national leaders in education, cutting edge technology, and new teaching strategies. As you listen to these, you're sure to learn about more podcasts.

These podcasts are not listed in order of greatness. While they are some of my personal favorite podcasts for educators, other educators with different interests and experiences would obviously have different top 5 lists.

Many people are familiar with Angela's blog and books. Her podcast, Truth for Teachers, is an awesome one to listen to on the way to work. You'll feel calm and confident after listening to Angela's counsel on a wide range of topics. She is a former elementary teacher and current educational consultant. 

Angela provides advice on ways to improve your life as a teacher both in and out of the classroom. I get some nugget of wisdom from each episode. 

My favorite episode was Classroom Clutter: What to Keep and What to Toss. When deciding what I want to keep or toss, I always thought: What could I use this for? Angela suggested changing my question to: Can I teach without this? What a huge difference! 

If you're just dipping your toe into the podcast world, Truth for Teachers is a great place to start.

Studentcentricity is hosted by Rae Pica, whose work I truly admire. She has wonderful guests and approaches tough issues. She's a strong advocate for early childhood education, so if you're a primary or preschool teacher, you're sure to love Studentcentricity.

Vicki Davis, also known as the Cool Cat Teacher, is a pioneer in the area of educators sharing and connecting on the web. She is a high school teacher, but any educator can find inspiration in her work. In Every Classroom Matters, Vicki gives information on some of the most innovative ideas in education, and she tries to make them approachable for beginners. 

As a primary teacher, I enjoy hearing the perspective of a high school teacher, and I've discovered so many other interesting leaders in the education world from her amazing guests.

Teacher's Aid is another podcast hosted by Rae Pica. She's no longer recording new episodes since she's moved on to her Studentcentricity podcast, but I'm including this in my list because I loved every episode! This podcast is packed with research-based information on social-emotional learning and child development. This is the professional development you always wanted, but never got.

Teaching, Learning, Leading, K-12 covers a wide range of topics and introduces listeners to some of the most innovative and influential voices in education. 

There you have my top five podcasts for educators! I'm always on the lookout for new ones, so tell me your favorites in the comments--they don't have to be education-related! Other places to look for podcasts about teaching and learning are the BAM! Radio Network Home Page and the Education Podcast Network. You can access so much wonderful information for free and on-demand! 

Remember that these podcasts need ratings and reviews, so if you become a listener, be sure to go give it some stars!

photo credit: iPod and headphones via photopin (license)

Not very fancy--just nerdy

This month I'm giving you a glimpse of my teacher-nerdiness and a peek at just how "Not-very-fancy" my life truly is! Visit the Show and Tell Tuesday link up for more great classroom tidbits. 

My little girl somehow got really excited about Valentine's Day. This is the best I could do for a celebration. I cut out some hearts and she taped them to the door. I suppose someday she'll realize how incredibly inadequate this truly is, but for now she's thrilled.

School has been taking a lot out of me lately. When I get to my car and find a frosty windshield, I just turn on the defrost and wait. It's about the only rest I get all day, so I just enjoy it, but I feel ridiculously lazy.



I have been teaching my students the three sounds of "ed" for years, but I have never really understood the rule. It seemed that there should be a pattern, but I never knew. This is the story of my discovery.

I showed my students this digraph video about Mr. H and his 4 girlfriends: Miss S, Miss C, Miss W, and Miss T. In case you're curious, Miss T was actually is ex-girlfriend. Whenever they saw each other, they would stick out their tongues. Sometimes quietly and sometimes noisily. I used it as a springboard to explain the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonant sounds. This is helpful for kids because they often have confusions with reading and spelling sounds like d/t, v/f, s/z, p/b, etc. It also helps them learn to whisper!

Later that week I was explaining the sounds of "ed" to my reading group when it dawned on me: The /d/ sound and the /t/ sound are the same, but /d/ is voiced and /t/ is unvoiced.

Then I started looking at my word lists and realized the rule:

When a word ends with an unvoiced sound, the "ed" says /t/, like "asked." When a word ends with a voiced sound, the "ed" says /d/, like "called." When a word already ends with /t/ or /d/, the "ed" says /ed/, like "wanted" or "added."

I was, and still am, way more excited about this discovery than any person should be.

After my discovery, I updated my Monster-themed Reading Strategy Posters to include the poster above. The set of 18 strategies for emergent readers can be found in my TPT store.



 ***UPDATE: a day or two after I published this post, I heard this Grammar Girl episode (see what I mean about nerdy?) about the -ed ending. She talks about some of the exceptions to the rule, incase you are as abnormally interested in this as I am.***





Recently some of my colleagues were intrigued when they saw me cutting and pasting to make some large printed posters for my classroom. For some reason many teachers are unaware that single page PDFs can be printed and assembled into larger posters. If you've been wondering how to do this, pin this post so you don't forget! It's easier than you think!

Open the PDF print window.

See the little button that says "poster?" Click there and adjust the tile percentage. To enlarge this landscape single-page to a 4 page poster, I used tile scale 185%. You can see how it will look by clicking in the viewing window. Clicking on the viewing window will give you alternating views of the whole poster and individual pages. For some reason I'm able to use tile scale 210% on portrait pages. It is a bit of a pain to assemble these nicely, but it can certainly be done.

Head over to Forever in Fifth Grade to see what other teacher-bloggers and showing and telling about this month!

If you found this post to be interesting or fun, I'd love for you to connect with me!

Why I Unfollowed Your Blog

I like to apply the golden rule to blogging when I reflect and plan. Am I treating my readers the way I would want them to treat me? In other words: Am I producing content I would want to read? 

In order to evaluate my own content, I had to ask: What kind of content do I want to read? I began to notice that my Bloglovin feed was filled with content I did not want to read. Why was I following these blogs? Well, I know why I was following these blogs. I blindly followed to enter giveaways and to network with other bloggers.

I decided it was time to clean up my feed. I'm so glad I did. Now I'm enjoying reading blogs again! 

I don't have any proven strategy for keeping followers. These are my personal reasons for unfollowing, and now I'm trying to be smart and make sure I'm only following when I want to. They also apply to FB pages, IG, Twitter, and TPT stores.  I hope it is helpful to you as you make decisions about what you want to read or write.

Here are the top five reasons I would unfollow a blog (/store/FB/IG/Twitter.):

5. Your content does not apply to me.

Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about this one (except write for a wider audience.) There are some great blogs about teaching strategies for intermediate grades I was following, but I had to draw a line somewhere.

4. You sound pretentious.

You are talented. You are creative. You are lovely.

So is everyone else. 

You may have a solution to a problem. You do not have the solution.

I think it can be difficult to find a voice that balances humility with confidence.Glennon Doyle Melton @momastery wrote about what she calls The Golden Coin of humility and confidence. I think it's brilliant. Her book, Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, is incredible. (Affiliate link.)

3. You ignore me.

Bloggers love comments. We all know this. I like getting comments on my blog. I always respond to comments via email. If you've commented on my blog a few times, I will remember you, and I will continue to support your blog. I try to support other bloggers with comments. I can't believe how often I leave a thoughtful comment or question on a blog and get no response from the author. If you are getting tons of comments on every post, I understand that you can't respond to everyone, but let's be real. Most of us are not blogging celebrities. If someone comments, it is appropriate to reply, especially if they took the time to say something insightful or ask a question. 

2. You don't know what you're talking about.

If you are writing about a strategy you use in your classroom, or a product you've created, and I know it is not best practice, I get upset. I will not leave a mean comment, but I will not continue to support your blog.  Incidentally, some of the best-selling products on TPT are not educational best practice.

Also, if you have lots of spelling or grammatical errors, I will assume you don't know what you are talking about. 

And the number one reason I unfollow is:

1. Your content is boring.

I'm being pretty brutally honest here, so hopefully no one gets offended! What do I mean when I say the content is boring? Well, there are a few common features that do not engage me as a reader. I'm interested to hear about what others think about this. There's no problem with using some content like this, but if I look at your last 5 posts and this is all I see, you're just cluttering up my feed. Sorry.

Giveaways: We all love a good giveaway, but I think it's important not to get carried away! I know giveaways are a great way to gain followers. Spend a bit of time providing information or entertainment for your audience.

The Sales Pitch: I often hear the general rule of 80/20. This means that 80% of your blog should be quality content and 20% can be sales. 

Fun Linky Parties and Bloghops:  Yes, I know. They are easy to put together. You connect with other bloggers. You give people a peek into your life -- show them you're a real person.

Or do you? 

Maybe you do. In my experience though, most of the posts just run together. 

As with the giveaways and sales pitches, do them if you want, but don't get carried away. If you are using the 20/80 rule for sales. I'd say use the 20/80 rule for fun linky events as well, and I would also suggest trying to make your posts stand out from the rest with a theme, some deeper personal reflection, or humor. Apply what you know about teaching to your blog. We know that writers write for a purpose and for an audience. What is your purpose, and who is your audience? 

Finally, keep this in mind:

 When I'm looking through my Bloglovin' feed, all I can see is your title, a sentence or two from your opening, and your first image. We teach kids to write attention getters, but so many posts begin something like this:

I can't believe it's been so long since I've written on my blog.

Hey everyone! It's me. Are you all loving this time of year? I love this time of year.

Today I'm linking up with _____. Thanks to _____ for hosting such a fun linky.

These are not attention getters! There are lots of resources online where you can get tips on writing catchy titles and effective openings, but I'm positive you can do better than any of my examples above without doing any research. The title and the first few lines of your blog post -- I'm learning --are also very important for SEO (search engine optimization). 

Now, whatever you do, don't go back through the archives of my blog to see if I've been following my own advice! I think I'm improving though! I've been reading and thinking quite a bit about this topic, so there you have it. Take what you like and leave the rest. Why do you unfollow someone's blog or social media account? Comment below!

What do you think?

Yes! This makes sense, this is the type of blog I'd like to follow. This is the kind of blog I should write! Then let's connect on your favorite social media platform below. Give me a shout-out and let me know who you are!

I agree! I'm already doing all these things! Why isn't everyone doing this? Then I'd probably like to read your blog! Comment below!

What does she know? This is ridiculous! Then I'm sorry to have wasted your time, but I still wish you a good day!

How to Manage Your Teacher Treasures

One of the perks of teaching first grade is that students give you all kinds of little homemade gifts. One of the downsides of teaching first grade is that students give you all kinds of homemade gifts...

...and you are not allowed to throw it away. 

There may have been once or twice a student found a picture they'd given me in the trash. I had to look very alarmed and say, "How on earth did that get in the trash?!" 

One trick it took me way too long to figure out is to dedicate some space to displaying all the notes and pictures. In theory I can even have the kids hang the pictures up themselves. This works well during the year, but what about at the end of the year? My mom (a former primary teacher) suggested I make an envelope for the particularly precious treasures I wanted to keep every year.

Well, I'm a somewhat sentimental person, so the envelope kept getting full. Every year when I went to add to it, I also tried to thin it out a bit, but it was so hard to part with anything! As you can see, my envelope became a basket. 

A few days ago I was driving to school to pack things up, and I listened to Angela Watson's podcast: Classroom Clutter.  (You should definitely check out her podcasts! I didn't learn about them until a month ago, so now I'm going back and listening to everything I missed. Perfect for when you're in the car or folding laundry!) She said a few things that really resonated with me. One of the ideas she had was to take pictures of artifacts rather than saving the actual item. I thought this would be a very practical way to manage all my little treasures, so I actually did it. It was a little painful throwing out some of those pictures, but when I noticed that some of the older ones were already fading and hard to read, I knew it was for the best. These digital records will last much longer and take up much less space!

Can you really have too many notes calling you the best teacher? I think not. Do you really need record of them all? I think so.

Look at all the work that went into this! This was not an assignment, just sharing her love of learning with me! I love it!

What do you do to combat the common teacher-pack-rat syndrome? I need all the tips I can get!

If you found this post to be interesting or fun, I'd love for you to connect with me!

Two tools to teach the "W" Questions

Being able to answer the questions who, what, when, where, why, and how, helps students with comprehension, retelling, and writing. I'm linking up with the Techie Turtle Teacher to share a cute video I found to introduce students to the W questions. In honor of Teacher Appreciation week, I've also updated my free "W" strategy graphic organizer. 

Video: Who, What, Where, When, Why and How by Good Charlotte

SafeShareTVlink

Key Details Graphic Organizer

I love this graphic organizer! In the beginning of the year I write the answers to the questions from a text we've read and the students have to figure out which question I'm answering. Then I model retelling the story by putting the answers together, and student volunteers retell the story.

Later I have students answer the questions with as a quick write or in a think-pair-share activity, and I have students retell the story to their partners.

With more advanced students, I can assign a text and tell them to answer the W questions to prepare for our discussion.  I've even had some very advanced students use their answers to conduct a lesson like mine where they ask students which question their sentences answer.

You can grab this updated freebie at Teachers Pay Teachers or Teachers Notebook. I would love it if you would show your appreciation by leaving some nice feedback or pinning this picture. Both of these sites are having fantastic sales this week!

I hope your special week is off to a spectacular beginning.

Visit the linkup for more fun videos.

If you found this post to be interesting or fun, I'd love for you to connect with me!