All year I have been trying to think of a way to make data tracking fun and engaging for my students. My students are a lower group this year, so I needed a tracking system that was super easy and super motivating at the same time. After seeing a cupcake printout in the copy room, I had a great idea to design a tracking system around cupcakes! I worked with my good ... Read More
Browse the archives below for even more great ideas
Guided Reading Organization
I blogged over at All Things Upper Elementary today about guided reading organization! All Things Upper Elementary is a collaborative blog with a wealth of information for upper grades. If you haven't check it out, I highly recommend that you do! For my post this month, I blogged all about my Guided Reading Organization Binder that I use to keep all my reading records ... Read More
Give Them Choice with Reading Choice Boards
Happy Weekend! Tomorrow my sweet Brody turns 10. Yikes! He is getting so old! I wanted to pop in real fast to share some new resources that I created over the summer for reading and math. I don't know about your kids, but my kids LOVE choice! Even if it is all still the same kind of work and still the same skill, just something about being able to choose is so awesome to ... Read More
Teaching Main Idea of Nonfiction Text
By far, one of the hardest skills to teach is determining the main idea of a nonfiction text. Not only is determining main idea pretty difficult for some (or most depending on your class that year) students, it is also so critical for understanding nonfiction text. To make matters more complicated, so many other nonfiction skills are also dependent on understanding the ... Read More
How to Embed Close Reading in a Reading Lesson
I am taking a small break from my family on this holiday weekend to write a quick blog post about how I used close reading this past week in my CCSS aligned reading mini lessons. This post contains an Amazon affiliate link if you decide you want to purchase the book mentioned in this post. I was teaching the standard RL.5.3: which involves comparing and contrasting ... Read More
Close Reading Resources {Mega Kit}
Is everyone out for summer by now? I hope so! This summer one of my projects was to tackle close reading. I have done variations of close reading for awhile. But I really wanted something rigorous and aligned to the common core. So this was born: Close Reading Mega Kit for for Grades 4-6 and 3rd Grade. To read about how I use this close reading kit during a specific read ... Read More
Common Core Reading: Teaching Story Elements
I am back with post #3 for the Reading Literature Standards Chapter of my book club! This post will discuss Key Ideas and Details Standard 3 (RL.3.3, RL.4.3, RL.5.3) which focuses on teaching story elements. The post about Standard 1 can be found here and Standard 2 can be found here. Make sure you head over to those to grab the free printables for those ... Read More
Teaching Theme & Summarizing : FREE Reading Graphic Organizers
When the common core standards first hit my state, I knew I needed to do some research and studying to fully understand the reading standards and how to teach them. One way that I did this was by joining a book club and reading Teaching with the Common Core Standards for ELA. This post will share some of my thoughts and a few free graphic organizers specific to teaching ... Read More
Making Inferences Freebies
I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend! As I mentioned in my last post, I joined another Book Club this summer and we are reading Teaching with the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts. This chapter focuses on RL.1 which is about making inferences and using evidence to support those inferences. Check out post for RL.2 by clicking here and RL.3 clicking here. ... Read More
Test Prep: Graffiti Style
Test prep doesn't have to be the same old monotonous review and work. In fact, I prefer to spice up my test prep activities to keep my students engaged and to keep the work relevant and interesting. On this post I will share a test prep activity that works well with any subject and any type of question. If you have never seen this before, students respond to a text or ... Read More
Teaching Theme in the Upper Grades and a FREEBIE!
In reading, we recently finished up a week long unit teaching theme, and for the first time ever, it went fabulous! As of this blog post's original date, this is my 3rd time teaching theme of literature, and to be honest, I have always struggled to find theme activities and resources to help my students really understand this tricky concept. This year, the stars aligned ... Read More
Reading Is Thinking: Using Thinkmarks with Reading Strategies
Teaching readers who struggle to construct meaning during reading is a challenge. It is a challenge for the students because they struggle connecting to and getting immersed in books. Teachers are challenged with making complex texts comprehensible and engaging, while teaching grade-level reading skills. One way that I help with this is to teach my students to mark their ... Read More
