Ignite Your Teaching

Send us Fan Mail Do you want to use math centers in your classroom but you don’t know where to start?   Maybe you’re worried that your kids aren’t going to work independently or you don’t know when you’ll find time to plan and prep math centers when you’re already so busy. Well, I have a solution for you.   This episode is all about the 4 different math centers that you can use in your classroom....

Send us Fan Mail Is it time for a math test in your classroom? How do you make sure that your test accurately reflects what your students know? It can be hard to know if you’re asking the right types of questions, marking accurately, and assessing the content that you actually want to be assessing. This can lead to all kinds of problems with tests.  Anyone can write a test, but as teachers, it’s o...

Send us Fan Mail What if I told you that you didn’t need to have so many math tests? There are other things you can do to effectively assess your students and generate marks for their report cards without overburdening yourself with marking to take home.  I’m sharing the methods you can use to assess your students without giving them endless tests and creating more work for you. These methods are...

Send us Fan Mail If you simplify the work you give your students because it’s too hard, are you accommodating, or are you modifying?   Your students have been through a lot when it comes to learning during the pandemic, and of course, you want to support your students who have gaps in their learning, but it’s important that you’re not modifying the program that they need to be on now.    This epis...

Send us Fan Mail Are you juggling a lot of different levels of understanding and learning styles in your classroom after the pandemic?   There’s a fine line between accommodations and modifications for students, but both are important to understand and can help you keep all your kids on track.    In this episode, I’m focusing on accommodations in the classroom and talking about what they look like...

Send us Fan Mail Do your kids work a little differently in the classroom these days?   With COVID restrictions lifting here in Ontario, teaching is finally starting to feel normal again, except for the fact that now we’re teaching pandemic kids.    Learning has looked pretty different for our students over the last two years. Many of them are used to working at home on a laptop or tablet with the...

Send us Fan Mail Are you constantly having to adapt to curriculum changes?   Sometimes a new curriculum comes at us with little to no warning and we feel like we’re expected to overhaul absolutely everything to do it the new way.    In this episode, I’m talking about how to handle curriculum changes and what you can do to reduce some of the stress that they cause.    It’s important to remember tha...

Send us Fan Mail Are there things you’ve tried in your classroom that you will absolutely never do again?   After 15 years of teaching, I’ve made my fair share of mistakes, but some stand out more than others and there are definitely some that I will never make again.    In this episode, I’m sharing the top three things I’ve done in my classroom that I don’t ever want to do again. Hopefully, this...

Send us Fan Mail Have your students ever complained that they can’t play video games in your classroom? Mine did, and it gave me an idea for a classroom activity that I knew they would love.    This is the story of how we ended up playing Minecraft in my classroom to learn about social studies.    My students were shocked when I said yes to letting them play video games in class, and because I lis...

Send us Fan Mail What do you do with the rest of your class when you want to do guided reading with a small group?   That’s the question I hope I can answer for you in this episode. We’re digging into a bunch of different activities that you can use to allow you to focus on guided instruction while the rest of your students work independently.    Independent learning might not always look the way...

Send us Fan Mail Do you hate marking? Yeah, me too.    Marking is a constant struggle. It’s so time-consuming that we feel like the only way to get it all done is to take it home, but when we take it home we either leave it in a bag and forget about it, or we ditch our time with friends and family and spend our time working unpaid. Does that sound familiar?      This episode is about how to strate...

Send us Fan Mail Do you consider yourself a lifelong learner? I feel like a lot of us get into teaching because we love to learn, and our guest on this episode is no exception.    Celeste Kirsh is researching how teachers can learn new genres of writing. In this episode, she’s sharing some of her findings so far that could shake up the way we learn as writing teachers and how that relates to teach...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever been questioned about how you teach math or why you teach certain strategies? Most of us have.    In this episode, I’m continuing the discussion about new math and why we teach so many different strategies to help kids solve number problems.    I’m specifically walking you through different ways to teach division because division is often the most challenging. We’re...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever questioned why you’re teaching so many different ways to do division and multiplication or even addition and subtraction?   Math these days requires us to teach a lot of different strategies for solving problems, and this can cause a lot of frustration to parents and teachers alike. I want to use this episode to explain why new math teaches kids so many different str...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever wished that you could have your math program done for you so that you could spend more time with your students?   If so, Ignited Math is exactly what you need.   Ignited Math is a spiralled math program for those of you teaching grades 3-6 and following the Ontario math curriculum.    In this episode, I’m introducing you to Ignited Math and giving you a brief walkthr...

Send us Fan Mail How do you assess your students in math?    Some of the traditional methods of assessing math don’t give us the most accurate idea of a student’s abilities. Answers are often seen as black and white and right or wrong, but that doesn't tell the whole story of how a student has interpreted and worked through a question.    In this episode, I’m talking about how to assess your...

Send us Fan Mail What are the components that you always include in your math program that work for you?   In this episode, I’m sharing the components that I include in my math program to help me structure the program from beginning to end.    There are four main components to my math program that I’m walking you through and I’m explaining each one and how they all fit together as we go along.   ...

Send us Fan Mail Did your school board switch to Microsoft products or restrict your access to Google resources when working with students?    In this episode, I’m walking you through how to use Microsoft products with some free online tools to help you create digital resources for your online or in-person classroom.    These days, a lot of us are being asked to create resources that work for stud...

Send us Fan Mail You need to stop spending so much time writing your report cards. There, I said it.    Writing your report cards does not have to be this huge endeavor that takes hours and hours outside of your contracted time.    Trying to write personalized comments for each of your students while also meeting the requirements of your administrator can be a challenge, to say the least. This is...

Send us Fan Mail I am constantly looking for ways that I can simplify my report card writing so that it takes less time. The last thing I have is an additional 40 hours a week to be writing my report cards, and I bet you feel the same way!   In this episode, I am telling you about how I simplify the process of writing report cards and how I systematize writing learning skills for each student.   I...

Send us Fan Mail We are all anticipating remote teaching sooner rather than later…   In this episode, I am discussing the 4 things that you absolutely should not be doing when pivoting to remote.   We can make the shift to remote teaching really easy and cost-effective by simply finding alternative ways of teaching or using what we already have. Remote learning is not ideal for any student, but we...

Send us Fan Mail Here’s my challenge for you as we approach the holidays: don’t take any work home with you on the last day of school. No marking, no schoolwork, and no planning. Do you think you can do it?   I don’t know if you need to hear this, but you deserve a break and that means you should be taking your two weeks over the holidays completely off. It’s not a chance for you to catch up on ev...

Send us Fan Mail Let’s talk about holiday concerts.    They might look a little different during the pandemic, but I know a lot of you are still expected to get the whole school involved which means you’ve got a lot to think about!   Holiday concerts can be a fun opportunity to have students present things to their families and to engage families in the community of your school. However, it does t...

Send us Fan Mail Are you trying to mark every single thing your students touch? Why? It’s too much!   I’m here to give you permission to stop. Trying to mark every single thing your students do is completely overwhelming.   In this episode, I’m sharing what you need to stop marking and giving you some tips on what you do mark so that you don't feel like you're drowning in a pile of paper...

Send us Fan Mail How do you prepare for parent-teacher interviews?    Let’s talk about some of the best things you can do in advance and on the day to have your parent-teacher interviews run as smoothly as possible.    I know they can cause some nerves because you don’t always know what you’re walking into when it comes to parents, and after two years of irregular schooling, there are a lot of thi...