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As each school year brings new students, teachers are challenged to try new strategies and find unique ways to present curriculum to students. While teachers can find great resources such as Teachers Pay Teachers and other websites to purchase activities and curriculum, one of our lower school teachers decided to try something different.
First grade teacher Michelle Tanner has always had a heart for teaching lower school students, and she especially loves teaching new concepts through read-alouds and books. As she sought out resources, she discovered there were many topics, specifically in math, that lacked quality children's books that explained concepts well. Instead of turning to a different strategy, Mrs. Tanner decided to take matters into her own hands.
Last June, Mrs. Tanner published her first book, 347 Fact Family Drive, to help students learn addition and subtraction fact families.
“Teaching addition and subtraction fact families for the first time can be challenging for students when we first introduce it,” Tanner said, “especially because it is so systematic.”
“I wanted to create something that would help give the four math facts of a fact family a story that can help students remember each part of the family they are building. Plus, I wanted to make the concept fun and entertaining as it can be a hard topic for students to really get engaged with right away!”
After falling in love with writing her own stories, Mrs. Tanner wrote two more within the current school year. “I created and published everything on my own. It was definitely a learning experience during my first book when writing, illustrating, and then formatting everything to make a book that is able to be published.”
“I think anytime you can get students engaged and excited about a topic is a win,” Tanner said when thinking about the impact her books have made on her students’ learning.
“I strive to make my classroom a place where the students learn in creative ways, so it's been fun to use these books to get them looking at math concepts from a different angle that can help them remember it and have fun while doing so.”
Her most recent books, The Hungry Alligator, focused on comparing numbers, and Axel the Power Outage, which teaches students about telling time on an analog clock, both hit the market this school year.
When asked if she planned to write more books in the future, she said, “I do! I have a list of ideas and am always writing them on sticky notes when I think of a new way to present challenging content during the school day. I'm saving the ideas up for when I'm less busy on summer vacation.”
Teachers are the heartbeat of our community. They spend their days teaching, their evenings planning, and somehow find time in between to grade, invest, and love on the future generation. Everyone has memories of their favorite teachers and the impact they made on their lives. To say Mrs. Michelle Tanner has gone above and beyond for her students is an understatement.
“It has been so sweet to use these books when teaching my own students. I never would have thought I'd be reading books I wrote and illustrated to a classroom full of such amazing kiddos. It's a reminder to me of how God places us with our passions and talents and uses them for His glory at such a time as this.”
We are so grateful for the teachers God calls to the LCA prideland. Thank you, Mrs. Tanner, for loving your students well and impacting students, families, and teachers through your God-given talents to teach, write, and illustrate!
Easter is just around the corner! Help us support Mrs. Tanner by purchasing one of her books to add to your Easter baskets! Click the button below to shop Mrs. Tanner’s books!
