Teaching reading in 4th and 5th grade can be so rewarding but also challenging. Teaching reading virtually can make that even more challenging. But, with the right strategies and resources, it can be done and done well. This post will share a breakdown of an example way to structure your weekly digital reading instruction, including ways that you can incorporate best ... Read More
Free Digital Graphic Organizers for Grades 3-5
Graphic organizers are a great way to have students respond to texts in an organized way and can be a natural scaffold to move from simple to more complex essay or letter type responses. This post will share some free digital graphic organizers that you can use in your reading instruction. These are great to use the first weeks or months of school to help get your ... Read More
How to Assign Google Forms to Your Students
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
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
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
First 20 Days of Reading Workshop in 5th Grade
The first 20 days of reading instruction is such a valuable time. This is your chance to teach expectations and procedures and get your students engaged and excited about reading. This post will share a look into my first 20 days of reading workshop, including a free PDF version with my notes. Purpose of the First 20 Days of Reading Instruction The first 20 days are ... Read More
Free 4th and 5th Grade Reading Sorts
Using sorts as part of instruction or practice is one of my (and my students') favorite reading activities. I feel like you can never have enough hands-on activities and they are honestly few and far between when it comes to upper elementary reading. This post will share some FREE reading sorts for 4th and 5th grade with ideas for implementing them in your classroom, ... Read More
Free Reading Review Mini-Booklets for 4th and 5th Grade
It seems like I am always on the hunt for new ways to review reading skills with my students. And especially ways that are engaging and don't involve reading a ton of lengthy passages or worse...stapled worksheets that don't excite or engage my students. One of my new favorite ways to review is through reading review mini-booklets. Keep reading to get all of the details ... Read More
