A few years ago, shortly after the widespread implementation of the Common Core State Standards, Close Reading was a big buzz in literacy education. Mainly, people weren’t sure what it was and how to implement it in their classroom I went to a training on Reading in the Common Core with Dr. Tim Shanahan. As the former head of IRA, I knew he’d be wealth of information and would give good ideas and resources. I
If there was one skill in reading that I’d say that every one of my students is weak in it’s fluency. Even my strong readers and strong comprehenders (is that a word?) aren’t where they should be. They either lack expression, or they read in such short phrasing groups that their reading is choppy. We do some work on this together. As a whole class, we have poems in their daily binder and when we
First up, I’m so excited to be joining in on First Grade and Fabulous‘s Thanksgiving Recipes linky party. So, the first recipe I’m sharing with you is for Apple Pie Moonshine. I understand that it may not be a typical Thanksgiving recipe. But, I know that many of you need some help to make it through the holidays so this might be the perfect addition to your recipe collection! Plus, it’s delicious! It’s seriously
When I first started as a reading teacher, I was shocked by the amount of errors my students made without self-correcting. I’m not talking about not being able to pronounce an unknown word or struggling with sounding one out. I’m talking about students saying that “The dog meowed” and not stopping to figure out what the heck just happened. And while that might be a slight exaggeration, it really was astonishing to me. I quickly
I’m a big fan of doing writing activities at the beginning of the year. First, I think it’s the easiest way to get a quick gauge of your students. From one writing task, you can of course see how your student are, overall, as writers. Are they able to produce a piece on demand or do they shut down? How is their sentence construction? You can see their spelling abilities, which often translate to reading
