The Primary Brain Blog is Now HTTPS Enabled

Theprimarybrain.com is now HTTPS enabled! HTTPS encrypts or “scrambles” web traffic so it is unreadable to anybody but the viewer and the site. My blog is a simple static web site, but any site can be secured by your web host. Since 2014, Google has been increasing search engine ranking if websites are secured. More recently in July 2018, Chr... Read more

That's It! No More Pencil Boxes!

That’s it! After this past school year, I am throwing in the towel on pencil boxes. I have used them every year for the past five years that I have taught first grade. Sadly, this was the first year where my students were so unorganized that we just couldn’t make it work. I was constantly finding crumpled papers, broken crayons, stickers, pens, ... Read more

Get Ready for Back to School with Reflection Prompt Cards

I don’t know about you, but I CAN’T WAIT to meet my students next year! One of my favorite tools to use when meeting my students the first week of school are my Back to School Reflection Prompt Cards. By spending some time each day reflecting as a class, I feel that we deepen relationships in our classroom and create a culture where every studen... Read more

Teaching Respect in the Classroom

One of the most important lessons I want my first graders to leave me with at the end of the year is a respect for one another. So many kids today are not taught the importance of respecting authority, their peers, or themselves within their own homes. Therefore, we as teachers have a huge responsibility to teach our littles how to show respect ... Read more

Countdown to Summer with Reflection Prompt Cards

The countdown to summer is ON in my classroom! This year, we counted down to the last day of school by reflecting on so many fun memories of our school year together. My Countdown to Summer Reflection Prompt Cards include 20 reflection prompts so that you can close out the last 20 days of school in a fun and meaningful way. As we counted down to... Read more