When teaching a new comprehension skill, many times I use fairy tales since they are a familiar story to many children. We don't have to take the time to think about the plot of the story and can focus on that skill.

Using Fairy Tales to Enhance Comprehension Skills
When teaching a new comprehension skill, many times I use fairy tales since they are a familiar story to many children. We don't have to take the time to think about the plot of the story and can focus on that skill.

Student-Created Gingerbread Variations
I'm sure many of you have read multiple versions of The Gingerbread Man story. I decided to take it a step further this year and have my kids work in teams to create their own gingerbread story.

R-Controlled Vowels: Success Can Be Found on the Farm
Historically, students in my school have shown several weaknesses on the PALS Spelling test: ng/nk, r-controlled vowels, vce, and vowel pairs. Each of these spelling patterns have "rules," but they aren't really rules. Rules shouldn't be broken and, as you know, spelling rules are broken all the time, but it can give a student a place to start. BUT, R-controlled vowels are especially hard because there aren't really any rules.

Oral Storytelling with Families
Last month I wrote about our need to build oral language in order to support the reading and writing of our students. We can do this in so many different ways: routines we establish, lessons that we plan, or the games we play. But most of the language that students acquire comes from their homes. How can we help to support families?

Sound Boxes: Listening for Sounds
One of the things I love to do with students is to help them manipulate phonemes in words. This helps them to think about the sounds they hear in the words and gain a better understanding of words. As they work with the sounds, they can actually attend to the sounds and make words.
Posted by
Andrea Crawford

Increasing Motivation with Early Morning Book Club
As a teacher, what has been your biggest challenge to overcome? Perhaps it's been juggling planning and prep with a busy schedule. Maybe it's been working with the child in the classroom who never has homework, always needs to use the bathroom or run and errand, and never stops talking. It might even be working with difficult parents. In my situation, the obstacle I lose more sleep over and stress about is reaching what Donalyn Miller in The Book Whisperer calls, "The Dormant Reader". Yes, I have worked with all reader types throughout my teaching career, but this one is personal. This one is one of my own in my own home.

Keeping Them Motivated To Write
This year, my students are struggling with writing. Most of them do not enjoy writing, but I think for many of them it is because they struggle with it. With the holidays approaching and interest in school dwindling in favor of all things snow and Santa, I wanted to find ways to make writing exciting in hopes that the excitement will carry over into the new year.

Wants and Needs and Knowing the Difference
WANTS and NEEDS and knowing the difference is a Kindergarten Standard of Learning in Virginia. It's sounds impossible, but it can actually be a really fun unit for kindergartners. They understand the concept of "want," so you really just need to help them think about what they need. I like to teach this unit between Thanksgiving and Winter Break.

A Quick & Easy Way to Teach Vocabulary
I want to share my favorite vocabulary activity with you! One of the great things about this Vocabulary Graphic Organizer is that it can be used K-5 and across all subject areas. There is a free copy of the organizer later in this post.

Kids Creating: Games For Learning
My students love to play games, but I was struggling to keep up with them in terms of differentiation and keeping it fresh. One morning on my way to work, I had a brainstorm: Why can't they help make games to meet their needs?!?

Encourage Imagination and Oral Storytelling with Spot
With each new set of students that we meet each year, one thing has become increasingly evident: oral language needs to be strengthened. This could be for a number of reasons: more screen time, meals on the go, less playtime (recess too), or other changes in a culture. But regardless of the reasons, as teachers we have to support language development. Without oral language skills, comprehension, writing, and math explanations are much more difficult. So what can we do?

Five Unique Ways to Build Reading Fluency
Reading is like riding a bike. You watch little ones beginning to ride a bike, they're wobbling all over the place. But as we practice and practice and practice, we don't even think about peddling anymore. Eventually we can ride with no hands. – G. Reid
Students' reading fluency develops just like bike riding skills. Our little ones start off reading word by word with occasional "falls", but with lots of practice, they gain speed and momentum to glide along and make meaning. The challenge of reading fluently requires several subskills in order for a reading to experience fluency success. What are those skills?

5 Simple Ways to Embrace the Holidays without Sacrificing Content
Are you looking for simple ways to embrace (and survive!) the holiday season without sacrificing the content you are responsible for teaching? My hand is raised! My students have fun each and every holiday season in my classroom, but I never stop teaching. You will not find my students and I watching the Grinch on a Friday afternoon...Read on to find out how you can incorporate the holidays so that your students still have fun, but continue to teach at the same time!

I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie!
Up-to-date big books can be hard to come by. They are expensive and not a priority in many school's budget. So how can I implement big books in a classroom when I don't have the money to do so?

Summarizing... Getting to the HEART of the Story
SOMEBODY...
Another Reading Comprehension strategy that can be used in all primary classrooms is Summarizing. Too often students think summarizing is retelling. In order to get a quick summary you need to get to the heart of the story.The easiest technique for early readers is SOMEBODY…WANTED… BUT… SO… AND technique. I would be happy to credit to the one who thought of this technique…because it is genius! The problem with credit is I’ve seen it in so many places, I’m not sure who came up with this originally. That being said, it’s a keeper!
WANTED...
I first used this technique with my kindergarten class. We were addicted to Magic Tree House Books (that’s another post for another day) and we started practicing our summarizing after each chapter. I made a poster with the 5 words on it as a reminder. We did not write down the summaries…we only practiced the summaries orally. This year, I taught my first and second grade students to summarize using this technique. We made a poster as an anchor chart using their words. Getting them to define the word will give them ownership and increase understanding.BUT...
We started with a whole group S...W...B...S...A. After reading a short story, we used the chart to fill in the blanks and write a summary sentence. This can be broken into more sentences, as the summaries are more complex.
SO...
AND...
We also talked about how we could use it for our longer books. After reading “The Magic Bike” from Reading A-Z and we wrote a longer summary. We started with an introduction sentence. Then, wrote the beginning of the summary using Somebody…Wanted…But…So…And. Realizing this didn’t quite tell the story, we had to add another But…So…And to finish the story summary. Sometimes, you will see SOMEBODY... WANTED... BUT... SO...AND...THEN... SO... FINALLY. These are all good options, depending on the story.DON'T FORGET...
The SWBSA Paint Chip Summary Bookmarks from an earlier post about paint chips.For a FREEBIE Summarizing Set, click the link.
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Reading Ritual: Character Hall of Fame
Reading rituals...they are an integral part of our reading classrooms in order to create an environment for readers to be fostered, grown, and encouraged. They look different in every classroom and some rituals will have more impact than others.
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