This is an anchor chart created with a middle school class. It works well for any grade, but particularly fifth grade through high school. This is most appropriate because those grade levels will use the term claim through their writing and reading standards much more frequently. These grade levels focus on the idea of a claim much more intensively an… Read more →
When evaluating the strength of an argument, students are often told to examine the supporting details. The challenge with this directive is that many students are unclear what supporting details really look like. This chart serves as a visual to help students see six specific ways that an author might use to support an argument. This helps students to hone… Read more →
Outside/Inside is such a useful chart for elementary and middle school readers. This chart is interactive and helps students be able to understand that they can explicitly pull out excerpts from the text and make inferences about the author’s point of view. When you create this chart with students, they should be at a point where they have been introduced… Read more →
This is such a great visual for all grade levels to use. When students have book talks and really dig into a text, I like to eavesdrop on their conversations, interjecting to ask if they information they shared or discussed was explicit or the inferred. Students immediately look at the chart and I can also see their brains checking off… Read more →
I love free resources. I particularly love when they are simple to use! I recently discovered ReadWorks and their database of over 100 K-8 passages. While this is not a silver bullet to solve the ongoing quest for leveled informational text, this is a great place to start. So, how can you use these passages? I am not a fan of… Read more →
I am always searching for a way to provide support for students who struggle. How can I build in scaffolds to help them feel successful and help them to gradually become more independent with their reading and writing? One strategy that I have found helpful is the use of sentence frames. Sentence frames are where you provide a type of… Read more →
I do a lot of professional development with schools across quite a few districts. I love being able to work face to face to help teachers make sense of the Common Core standards. The number one subject that I get follow-up emails and social media messages about are additional resources to learn more about instructional practices that support the rigor… Read more →
Working with reading standard 9 is a challenge for elementary school students. The goal of this standard is to learn how to gather information from more than one source to learn more about a topic. As with all good instruction, this requires think-aloud modeling and multiple modeling sessions. As I worked with a group of third graders this month, I… Read more →
