Primary (Paradise) Teaching

What do you do when students are struggling with decoding words that should come easily? Teaching students the 6 different syllable types and how to use them will help students decode words more easily. In this episode, Martha takes you through the whys and hows of teaching syllable types to your students. She explains the six syllable types and gives concrete activities to do with your students to help them learn this skill.

Mentor texts are an important part of writing instruction. In today's episode, Martha shares what mentor texts are and 5 reasons why it's important to choose rich mentor texts with your students. She also shares 3 places to find good quality mentor texts.

Creating successful digital writing lessons might feel complicated. However, there are some simple components that will make planning and executing virtual writing with primary students easier. In this episode, Martha shares 6 practical steps you can take to create engaging, student friendly writing lessons for your kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students.

Writing during distance learning, especially for kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students, presents challenges. Although it’s not the ideal way to teach writing, there are some actionable steps you can take to make it easier on you and your students. In this episode, Martha shares 7 things to keep in mind that can make distance writing easier.

90% of the population is right handed, which means most teachers are right handed as well. Right handed teachers might not always understand the difficulties left handed students face. In this episode, Martha (a lefty herself), shares some of the struggles of being a left handed student as well as 5 practical and helpful tips to help you better support the lefties in your class. She shares some simple accommodations, things to be aware of, and some personal stories as well.

Understanding how to write complete sentences, knowing where to put punctuation between sentences to avoid run on and fragments, and understanding what makes a complete simple sentence is a difficult skill! This episode, Martha shares how we can use the concept of subject and predicate to teach our students how to write complete sentences.

Sentence writing: how do you teach young students such a complex skill? In this episode, Martha shares how you can teach kindergarten and first grade students how to write complete, basic sentences in five lessons. By the end of these 5 lessons, students will be able to write simple sentences with capitals, punctuation, and proper spacing. 

Student confidence is clearly linked with students being willing to take risks and try new things, and this is especially true when it comes to writing instruction in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. In this episode, our host, Martha Moore, shares 3 easy to implement strategies to help boost your students' confidence as writers.

Learning how to plan writing is incredibly important. If we are able to teach students how to make a plan before beginning writing, we are setting them up for writing success. In this episode, our host, Martha Moore, share 3 effective ways to help teach our kindergarten, first, and second grade students plan their writing pieces.

In a world where filtered, perfect images of teachers in perfectly organized classroom seems to be the norm, being a good teacher can feel impossible. Even though we all “know” that those perfect pictures are well cropped and well staged, teaching today, especially as a new teacher, can be super overwhelming. In this episode, Martha shares some of her favorite tips for navigating teaching in an Instagram world.