One of the best pieces of advice I've ever been given in my teaching career is "Whoever does the thinking, does the learning." Students need to process the learning in order to develop comprehension of the concept or procedure. Here are some quick ways to get students to think through writing.
Tween Tribune, powered by The Smithsonian Institution, publishes an online collection of news articles for K-12th grade students and teachers.
Articles can be found on four sites:
Recently I was asked my opinion about how much time should be spent on ELAR in the elementary classroom each day. I started thinking about how much instruction and practice it takes to reach our literacy goals. Students need hourly opportunities to use language and literacy skills if they are to continuously grow in their reading and writing skills. By the end of the year, not only should the student be at a higher reading level, but be able to explain and select strategies that they use to process a variety of complex texts.
Instructional time should be organized to ensure that students are listening, speaking, reading, and writing in all areas of the curriculum. If students are doing activities that do not deepen their understanding and help them process at deep levels of comprehension, we should discard the activity and use the time for more authentic and meaningful practice opportunities. Anything else is distraction that prevents the learning goals from being achieved as quickly as possible.
COMPREHENSION! Yes, guided reading is all about practicing comprehension skills and strategies. In guided reading groups, teachers provide students with closely monitored practice as students begin to apply newly learned meta-cognitive strategies. Guided reading is often called "leveled reading" because students should be practicing using a text in which they know at least 90% or more of the words. Because we want to focus on applying critical comprehension skills before, during, and after reading, the text must be one that does not require a lot of attention to figuring out words.
Expository (aka explanatory) writing has taken on a new sense of urgency with most state curriculums calling for explicit teaching of strategies for processing and writing this text type. After all, the most real world type of writing is expository. Student writers need to understand that this type of writing explains or clarifies an idea about a topic. Developing the proficiency needed to write a variety of expository texts is a necessary part of becoming college and career ready. Emails, essays, and blog posts are all relevant and important types of writing that require proficient writing skills.
Here are three teaching tips for teaching expository writing.
Close Reading has certainly become a BUZZ word in the reading education world. Here are 3 essentials to know about Close Reading.
During the past 20 years, much research has been conducted on strategies that proficient spellers use. Proficient spelling is linked to the ability to detect and isolate sounds heard in words (called phonemic awareness) and match the sound or sounds to the letter or letter patterns (known as grapho-phonemic knowledge) that most closely matches the sounds. As students progress through elementary school, they develop strategies for spelling and an awareness of misspelled words.
3 basic strategies to spell words are:
The reading and writing standards call for students to think and understand author's craft when reading texts in a given genre. Here are a few ways you can help your students develop a deep understanding of the demands of each genre.
When teaching reading and writing, start by having students explore the genre and then teach the genre characteristics. Proficient readers use genre knowledge to make predictions, ask questions, summarize, and dig deeper into meaning.
Here are 3 ideas on how to immerse students in a particular genre.
Start the year with selfies! Have students create a self-portrait to post on a classroom “Wall of Fame.” You can use technology if it is available and printing is easy.
Close reading is the practice of reading carefully and purposefully in order to understand the author’s message. Students need a lot of varied practice using reading comprehension strategies in order to become proficient at close reading.
