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 →
Theme and main/ central idea are the two different terms used in the Anchor Reading Standard 2. While different terms, both get at the same core concept: message. What does the author want the reader to take away? This is confusing for students and most adults. Teaching it as two different concepts is challenging. So how do introduce these concepts?… Read more →
Introducing this chart: While terms like main, big, or central make sense to teachers, these terms remain elusive and vague to many students. This fun chart just asks variations of the same question in different ways. When you use this with your students, you will find that they all will find one question that resonates with them. I always find… Read more →
This chart typically becomes a staple in the classrooms that I work with. This is the jumping off point to begin the discussion about close reading and the notion that reading is more than just decoding, it is about thinking. This supports the idea of comprehension and interaction with the text. Target Grade Levels: This chart works well for all… Read more →
