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"Primary teachers (and in fact all teachers) are always on the look out for quality reading options for their students.  This is true for digital format books as well as more traditional book forms. When my six and seven-year old students read independently on their iPads, I want to offer them good options as well. Fortunately, I have found three worthwhile options for my six and seven year olds."

"Helping children visualize math is critical to their success in the subject. I recently observed a 5th grade class starting a lesson on area and perimeter. I turned to a girl who was in my class four years earlier and reminded her that she knew the topic. "Yes I do!" she said excitedly. "The perimeter is where you sit along the outside of the rug in morning meeting, and area is the inside of the rug, where the squares are. That's from 1st grade," she said confidently, circling her fingers in the air to represent her thinking. Visual cues, like this one I use with my six- and seven-year-old students, stick and show that envisioning math helps children learn in lasting ways. We teachers can do more to give students internal ways to see the structure of mathematics-to understand types of units and what it means to move between them, and to pull apart and combine numbers. But math instruction is changing. At my school, in the early grades, we encourage children to use their fingers, something that feels so natural to them, to better understand numbers and the numbering system. We might talk about how a "high five" involves using a whole hand, which is really a unit made up of five fingers; while a thumbs-up involves just one segment of that five-part unit. We then go on to using things like beads on a string and, later, place-value disks, which are like poker chips, to help children see and work with numbers, units, and place value."

"Are you already familiar with Mystery Number Skype? If you are, read on. If you're not, my six and seven year olds would be happy to tell you how to play it. I love the way Mystery Number Skype helps students to think about numbers. Every time we play, the game changes and a new strategy and order of questions emerges that can help the children narrow down the options for the number the other class is thinking of. It's such a great tool for me to see their thinking and for them to try various number strategies."

"This recent tweet from Darren Kuropatwa has had me thinking about digital citizenship. As the Internet becomes an increasingly important part of all of our lives, children are spending more time online as well. And they are doing this largely without any guidance about what is responsible or appropriate online. While my six- and seven-year old students don't yet even understand the words "digital" or "citizenship," they also need direction and support as they explore online spaces. In fact, they need this instruction even more than their older counterparts."

"My children are in a French Immersion school, which means eighty-some-percent of the day they are taught in French. My own French is not exactly stellar. I mean I have the basic "I learned this in grade school because I am Canadian" level of French, which my kids, who are in 1st and 4th grade, are already surpassing. Yesterday I was doing the dishes with my seven year old, Gigi, and she was excitedly telling me about watching Paw Patrol at school en francais. We were drying dishes, and she was dancing and jumping up and down with excitement as she told me about La Pat' Patrouille. She also told me they watched Sid the Science Kid for science class today, and yes, of course, it was in French."