13 Surprising Statistics About Teaching

Hi Kirsten! I am a freshman in college and am an elementary education major. I am trying to decide which grade I want to teach, and I want to learn more about the whole process!  - - - What a great question and super exciting time of life! I knew from the beginning that I …

5 Steps to Keep Your Closets Organized

Everything in my house is organized. Totally and completely organized. The bookcase in the office? Organized. The shelves in the laundry room? Organized. The kitchen cabinets? Yep, you can look there. They're organized (for now). But then there are *dun dun dun* the closets. Closets are a blessing and a curse at the same time. On one …

Student Cubby Organization in My Classroom

Student cubbies can be a scary place. I always feel like my students’ stuff is slowly creeping out of the cubbies to clutter up the rest of the room.    A couple of years ago, I was cleaning out my kids’ cubbies and found a moldy orange that had clearly been hidden under papers for …

Classroom Routines & Systems

Classroom management is one of my favorite parts of teaching! When all the routines and systems are running smoothly, the whole classroom feels happier and more energetic. Having concrete classroom routines is what allows us to be more spontaneous throughout the day, have more teachable moments, and really build community and relationships! Classroom systems that …

Classroom Tour

Some of you have expressed interest in seeing a tour of the classroom as a whole and how all of the systems and routines work together. Here we go…Welcome to the Peppy Panda classroom! Let me show you around!When each child arrives in the morning, they switch their attendance magnet in the hallway. Then they enter …

How I Organize My Teacher Lesson Planner

This is our in-service week, which means planning for all the things!! In my post about My Lesson Planning Process, I explained how I plan each week. Today, I wanted to show you how I keep it all together! My lesson planners from last year and the year beforeEvery school is different. When I taught in …

Flexible Long-Term Lesson Planning Solutions

I like to see things long term. I’m always asking pesky questions, like How does this fit into the big picture? What’s the end goal? and What color-coding scheme should I use? Lesson planning and I have a love/hate relationship. One one hand, I love planning August-May in a day! On the other hand, I hate having …

Ordering a Plum Paper Planner

I recently ordered my second Plum Paper Planner, which I am SO excited about!! For the past two years, I’ve been using Passion Planner (which I loved), but I was just ready for a change (and some color)! The thing that originally drew me to Plum Planner was a glowing review from a good friend …

Creating an Online Vision Board

“I’m going to speak to a group of women today.” said my mom. “I had it on my vision board. And in the picture, the audience was even a group of women!”Although a vision board sounds like something that I would be all about, it’s something that I had never done until this year! Over the summer, …

My Weekly Lesson Planning Process

I recently received a request on how I lesson planning each week. I was really excited, and a little disappointed in myself for not thinking of it first! I LOVE lesson planning and I LOVE the lesson planning process that I’ve developed over the years! I’m so happy to share it! I’ll start “big” and go …