Every year at the end of the school year, my students' parents start asking what they can do to continue/review/extend their child's learning throughout the summer months. I usually recommend books at and slightly above each kid's independent reading level and provide the parents with question stems to discuss those books with them. I also… Continue reading Summer Reading
Category: Reading
End of Year Reading Activities: Distance Learning Edition
Next week is the last week of school for students and I have been working on figuring out how to transition the end of school year activities that we normally complete in the classroom to a digital platform. I wanted to share some of the books and activities that I have come up with so… Continue reading End of Year Reading Activities: Distance Learning Edition
Book of the Year
Today I wanted to share an end-of-the-year activity that my class is working on called the Book of the Year Project. For this project, students get to nominate their favorite book that they read this year, draw the cover of the book, and write an opinion piece explaining why the book is their favorite. … Continue reading Book of the Year
Word Reference Materials
We just finished up a two week unit on Word Reference Materials that I wanted to share with you all! We started the unit off by talking about what Word Reference Materials are and then taking a closer look at dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauruses (that's a fun one to say). We discussed what each one… Continue reading Word Reference Materials
The Book Whisperer
This year I have a few students who never seem to finish books! I have tried so many different things to get them to read just one book from start to finish and made very little progress. I have helped them pick out books, read parts of those books together, given them time to read… Continue reading The Book Whisperer
Figurative Language, Text Features, and a Celebrity Visit
September is over! Can you believe it? We are officially done with our first month of school AND I'm halfway done with conferences!!! It's going to be a well-deserved, long weekend before we get back to work and don't have another day off until Veteran's Day. Over the past eight days of school we have… Continue reading Figurative Language, Text Features, and a Celebrity Visit
Main Idea & Details
Before we left for vacation, I was able to squeeze in a week and a half of Main Idea & Details practice. Since I used to teach Kindergarten, I tend to think that it's best to introduce a strategy by modeling, guide students as they practice using it on their own, and then give them… Continue reading Main Idea & Details
Teaching To The Test-Taker 