School and the City

**This post contains Amazon affiliate links .** My team is AWESOME, y'all. I am so unbelievably lucky to work with them, honestly! So like so many of us do, I wanted to give each of my teammates a small back-to-school gift. Well, this idea stemmed from necessity. Our doors are HEAVY, the cheap plastic door stops don't work, and apparently decent door stops disappear in the night. We are all running out of wooden triangular prisms to steal from our geometry kits. So I decided to give my sweet coworkers a gift that is cute AND practical. I took to Amazon and chose  these door stops because they are white and the sides are smooth - perfect for decorating! They come in packs of two and the price is reasonable, I think! But you can also buy door stops at the Dollar Tree and hardware stores.   Next I bought some  Sharpie paint markers . I bought the pack with basic colors because I wanted to match our school's colors, but I love the neon pack , too! ...

**This post contains Amazon affiliate links. By purchasing an item from Amazon using these links,  I will receive a small commission on your purchase.** Oh, econ. It was the bane of my existence in college. Fun fact: Econ was my second lowest grade in college.  (My lowest grade was the class that I met my husband in... I guess I was a little distracted.) So how in the world am I supposed to teach ECONOMICS to 7-year-olds?! Actually, the first time I taught economics, it was to kindergartners. It was during my student teaching, and I had to create my own unit and materials . When I started teaching second grade and realized I had to teach "financial literacy," a prettier name for economics, I was much more confident. I took my kindergarten unit and expanded it to meet the academic needs of my second graders.  I will admit that second grade economics is much easier than my college course. Elementary school econ focuses on needs vs. wants, go...

As we approach a new school year, I'm here to remind you that your sanity is important! Last year, I had a particularly chatty class. I was able to manage them pretty well until spring break hit. At that point in the year, they were always excited and roaring with energy that they couldn't seem to contain. I do give my kids plenty of time to talk via brain breaks and think-pair-share, which helps eliminate inappropriate chatting, but I expect them to listen respectfully while I am teaching. Eventually, I decided that enough was ENOUGH. I couldn't make it through a  day   block   lesson  sentence without getting rudely interrupted by a student blurting out. So I did some research, during which I found the idea of blurt cards and figured out how to make a system that would work for my classroom. On my first day of attempting blurt cards, I posted about it on my  Instagram  and Snapchat (@SchoolAndTheCty). Tons of you asked me to share, so here g...