Welcome and a Freebie

Welcome!

I am so glad that you are here.

For those of you who just found me, stick around and stay awhile. I hope you find what you are looking for to help make your teaching job just a little bit easier.

For those of you who have been with me since the beginning at Mrs. Patton’s Patch… thank you! I am incredibly grateful for your support over the years. You’ll find that I migrated many of my popular blog posts over from my original blog.

So, what’s this blog all about?

Reflecting back on my 13 years of classroom experience, there is no question that I have found my passion: Challenging students to really think in the classroom! I believe that in order to move our students towards their true potential and towards becoming lifelong learners, we must challenge them!

I also believe that there are many children out there who have the potential to be incredible thinkers, but we may not see it at the first glance.

In order to best serve our students, we need to provide high-quality, engaging, and thought-provoking lessons.

Yes that sounds great, but in reality who has that kind of time?

Between the meetings, conferences, data tracking, required assessments, data analysis, individual goal setting, daily grading, lesson plan creation, and gathering necessary materials, we simply never have enough time! Providing the rich, meaningful differentiated lessons takes time that often just does not exist.

That’s where I come in.

My goal is to support you!

You might be:

a gifted educator who sees gifted students all day long and is looking for some fresh ideas
a veteran teacher with gifted students in your class, and you simply lack the time to design differentiated activities
a new teacher who is ready to soak up all the information about teaching kids to think
a teacher looking to find high quality, engaging lesson ideas for your whole class
or anyone else in between

Regardless of where you fit in these categories, if you are looking for things to do with your students that are truly worth their time, you are in the right place!

What should you expect from here on out?

You can expect to see posts coming your way that will help you in your endeavor to appropriately challenge your gifted students and high-ability learners, and most importantly help to shape them into life-long learners and thinkers.

Let Me Help You Turn Your Students into Thinkers!

If you have a passion for getting your kids to think, you’ll love my FREE Guide. It’s about 4 simple strategies to bump up the thinking in any lesson. Download it for free and stay in touch to get classroom-tested ideas straight to your inbox!

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July 19, 2022

Finding great books for the first days of school, especially new ones, is always on my list! These are some of my favorite books that

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Writing Conferences with Students: 4 Tips for a Useful Writing Notebook

July 4, 2022

To run a successful writing workshop, holding individual writing conferences with students is a must! For many teachers, this can be an uncomfortable task. I’m

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Creativity in Teaching: 3 Effective Strategies to Nurture Creativity

June 29, 2022

In order to best prepare students for their futures, we need to infuse creativity in teaching. We often use the word “create” in objectives for

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Word Problems in Math: What are the best ways to integrate them?

February 7, 2022

So, you want to use word problems in math class, but you aren’t sure of the best way to do this? Maybe you’ve been using

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How to Effectively Manage and Engage Students in Cooperative Learning

January 13, 2022

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a beautifully planned cooperative learning lesson only to watch it crumble? I have found this to

5 Unique Thanksgiving Activities at School Your Students Will Love

November 2, 2021

Finding unique Thanksgiving activities for elementary aged students can be a challenge! I’ve compiled several Thanksgiving enrichment activities to give your usual Thanksgiving activities at

Hi, I'm Colleen!

I’m an educator with a passion for meeting the needs of our GT and high ability learners. I want to support YOU in meeting your students’ needs, too! I’m a proud Texan, a wife, a mother of 2, and I love Jesus!