Shaped

A community-driven blog supporting educators, building lifelong learners,
and shaping the future of education.* 

Latest Posts

Student proudly wearing future voter badge

Discover helpful tips for teaching the election process to elementary students and how important voting is in a democratic society.

LaNesha Tabb
Kindergarten Teacher, Indianapolis, IN

Strategies for math intervention hero

These math intervention strategies for struggling students provide lessons, activities, and ideas to support Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 math students who are two or more years behind grade level.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

illustrated image on a graph

Teach students about graphing along the x and y axis on coordinate graphs as a visual method for showing relationships between numbers.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Community Building Shout Outs

Ready to help your kiddos develop meaningful relationships and connect with their classmates? Try these classroom community-building activities for elementary students.

Brenda Iasevoli
Shaped Executive Editor

Wf1167613 Hero Image 1

Watch these 90-Second Science videos of quick and easy science experiments for kids that you can do at home or in the classroom.

Shaped Staff

Teaching math to ells hero

These ELL strategies for math instruction will help you with teaching math to English language learners and supporting math learning for multilingual students.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

911 memorial hero

How do you teach younger students about the September 11, 2001 attacks and their impact? We've got you covered with these 9/11 activities for elementary school.

Brenda Iasevoli
Shaped Executive Editor

Teaching about classifying polygons

Teach students about the different types of polygons in mathematics, which can be described as flat, closed figures with three or more sides.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Teaching students how to write a reflective narrative hero

This lesson explores how to write a reflective narrative essay, a type of writing where writers reflect on an experience and show how their lives changed.

Shaped Staff

Teaching with place value charts tens units hero

A place-value system is one in which the position of a digit in a number determines its value, and a place-value chart is a way to make sure digits are in the correct places.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Oral reading fluency group reading hero

This article answers the question, what is oral reading fluency? It provides fluency teaching strategies after defining fluency and explaining why it's important.

Dr. Amy Endo
Education Research Director, Supplemental & Intervention Language & Literacy

Oral reading fluency two girls tablets

Providing an oral reading fluency assessment is an important part of not just providing oral reading fluency instruction but measuring growth and ensuring effective instruction.

Dr. Amy Endo
Education Research Director, Supplemental & Intervention Language & Literacy

teacher in classroom with students

Teach students the skills needed for success in and out of the classroom with these social and emotional activities and SEL lesson plans.

Shaped Staff

Math classroom routines talk moves hero image

Five routines are provided to help math teachers establish routines and promote mathematical discussions this school year. The routines consist of four Talk Moves and one language routine.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

Teaching product prime factors hero factor tree

In this lesson, use factor trees to teach students the concept that a composite number is written as a product of all of its prime factors.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

iPad with image of Shaped blog content

Find free teaching resources. Explore fun classroom activities, lessons plans, downloadables, and videos for Grade K–12 kids to keep learning and growing at grade level.

Shaped Staff

Teaching rational numbers decimals fractions hero

Use this lesson to teach students about rational numbers, including decimals, fractions, and integers.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

illustrated image with multiplication problems in text

Use this lesson to teach students about the order of operations: complete operations in parentheses, multiply and divide from left to right, and add and subtract from left to right.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Executive Editor

*The views expressed in our blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of HMH.