As we move more to online learning, teachers are having to post work online for their students. For many teachers, that means assigning work on Google Classroom. For other teachers, that means emailing work to students or their parents or posting work on their websites or other learning platforms for students to download. One easy-to-use option for teachers to use no ... Read More
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Tips for Home Learning | Remote & Distant Learning Tips
Home learning/distance learning/remote learning (or whatever your school is calling it) is definitely new territory for most (if not all) of us. Here are some tips and strategies that I think will help make this process more effective for you, your students, and your parents. Some of these apply to digital learning but many are applicable with printable work as ... Read More
Teaching Text Structure (And What To Do When Students Struggle)
Text structure is a very powerful reading skill that can really help students make sense of and analyze informational text. This post shares tips for teaching text structure, including pre-requisite skills, all the different text structure skills, and strategies for when students struggle. What is Text Structure? Text structure refers to how the details and ... Read More
Free Digital Distance Learning Activities for 4th and 5th Grade
While the country prepares to keep our families and communities safe, teachers are also continuing with teaching and learning through digital distance learning opportunities and packets for our students. On this post, I will share some free distance learning resources for 4th and 5th graders that are printable (and some now include digital versions). Writing Choice ... Read More
Free Text Structure Activities
Text structure is one of those reading skills that is really powerful for helping students understand texts and even become stronger informational writers. But it is not always an easy skill for our students to master (and especially at the rigor required). This post will share a few free text structure activities and resources to help you teach this tricky but important ... Read More
Teaching Point of View (And What To Do When Students Struggle)
Teaching point of view and perspective is another tricky reading skill for 4th and 5th grade readers. On this post, I will share tips to help you teach point of view to your students, including what skills students need before instruction on point of view, all of the different point of view subskills that really increase the rigor, and strategies that you can do when ... Read More
Free Point of View Activities
Point of view is a tricky skill for our students. A lot of the skills we teach in 4th and 5th grade are new to our students and this is one of them. So, that makes it challenging to get some of our students to understand it quickly and then move to the deeper levels required. This post will share a few point of view activities that will hopefully give you a few more tools ... Read More
Tips for Teaching Theme (And What To Do When Students Struggle)
Teaching 4th and 5th grade reading is not easy! The standards begin to get really tricky and the gap between what the students should be able to do in reading and what they can do can be pretty wide. One of the those standards that is tricky is theme. On this post, I will share some tips to help you teach theme to your 4th and 5th graders, including what students should ... Read More
Free Theme Activities
One of the best ways to measure if a student has truly mastered reading skills is if they can apply that reading skill over and over to new texts (including texts of their choosing). And the tricky skill of determining the theme of a story is no different. In order for students to truly master this skill, they need to be able to apply it consistently to new texts they ... Read More
Text Evidence Activities and Strategies – Tips for Teaching Students to Find Text Evidence
Teaching students to answer constructed response questions correctly and with sufficient text evidence can be quite the feat. A good starting point is to use an acronym such as RACE to help guide the students. But, that is just one part of instruction. The most difficult part is teaching students to find text evidence and then cite it appropriately to fully support their ... Read More
Free Context Clues Activity for Grades 4-5
One of the best ways to see if your students have mastered a reading skill is to see if they can apply it in their writing. I love doing this with themes (read more about how I teach theme and use a working backward activity by clicking here) and text structure. It also works perfectly with context clues. This post will share a simple (but rigorous) context clues activity ... Read More
Around the Room : An Engaging Review Activity
Reviewing is a must in any classroom and subject area. My favorite ways to review are review activities that are low-prep, collaborative, and involve movement. Around the Room is one of my favorite ways to review that incorporates all of these characteristics. Keep reading to learn more about this low-prep engaging review activity that gets students moving and ... Read More
