Are your students getting worked up about Halloween? Let’s face it. This can be a challenging time for teachers! All kids can think about is their costumes and the candy they will be collecting in their Halloween bags! One way to harness children’s pre-holiday excitement is by focusing their enthusiasm on engaging reading and writing activities. A perfect example is the Halloween Writing Activity, a guessing game, masking as a writing activity. (Pun intended!) Students create a descriptive paragraph about the costume they plan to wear, with one important modification. They keep their costume a secret! (Stay tuned to find...
I bet I’m not the only educator who has had teaching nightmares in anticipation of the new school year. I’ve had many of them, including last night. And I’m retired! What’s strange is that this nightmare was about a topic I’ve dreamed about many times before: my teaching schedule. In my recurrent bad dream… I’ve lost my schedule or never received it. I don’t know what subject or subjects I am teaching. I don’t know which classrooms to go to. my students are waiting for me, but I can’t find them. You have probably figured out, if you didn’t know...
Phonics is in the news again–in the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, in Time Magazine. As usual, journalists are placing phonics at one end of a reading spectrum. But this time, the dichotomy is no longer between: phonics vs. sight words; phonics vs. whole language; or even phonics vs. balanced literacy. Now the two ends of the supposed teaching spectrum are: phonics vs. “the three cueing system” “The three cueing system” is the term Emily Hanford used in her radio podcast, “At a Loss for Words” (apmreports.org/reading). There are several myths about “cueing,” or using reading cues....
Want to start the school year off in the best way you can for your kindergarten or first grade reading students? The magic word is ASSESSMENT! Conducting proper assessments early on saves time and allows you to teach what your students need, rather than waste time going over what they already know. Whole group assessments, in particular, are quick and easy to administer, as opposed to one-on-one evaluations, where you have to find something for the rest of the group to do while you administer them. I’m going to show you four informal whole group assessments that you can create yourself,...
The topic of phonics is popping up all over the place–not just with teachers and parents, not just on MY blog (!)–but in the news media and general interest magazines, as well. However, I’ve noticed a lot of misconceptions out there about teaching phonics, and I’d like to clear up a few of them. Misconception #1: There’s no such thing as too much phonics. If teaching phonics is a good thing, it might seem that more phonics is always better. But phonics can be overemphasized at the expense of other aspects of reading, such as fluency and comprehension. Furthermore, phonics...
It’s March, a tough time for teachers–no vacations, looming standardized tests, and distractible students. For the kids, all it takes is one warm day, and spring fever kicks in! How can we keep our students focused on learning this time of year? One approach is to review skills you taught last fall. For many in your class, those lessons are a distant memory, and now is a good time to brush up on them. Going over strategies your students have already learned adds to their competence — and confidence. In early spring, you also still have time before the end...
Are you teaching a struggling reader right now — one who keeps you up at night, worrying about how to help them? As teachers, our first impulse is to focus on the child: They don’t try hard enough. They don’t pay attention. They don’t read at home. They don’t follow your words of wisdom. Or we blame the parent: They don’t model reading. They don’t have books around the house. They don’t read with the child. They just tell the child the answers. But we teachers don’t have control over the child or the parent! Of course you know where...
Where should you tutor, if you still have the COVID virus alive and spreading around you? For me the answer is easy, because I’m germ-paranoid: ONLINE! I’ve written several posts about tutoring online: Online Tutoring Adventure Online Tutoring: Keep it Personal Online Tutoring: Be Humble But today I’m going to address tutoring in person (no pun intended). Maybe you know all about that, but the pandemic adds a few complications to your normal tutoring routine. Here are some suggestions: Add to your written tutoring policies a section on adapting your routine to the virus. Institute hand-washing before and after the...
We teachers know that, when we haven’t fully planned the day’s lessons, our students act out! Oh, yes, it’s important to be fully planned for the day, and even more so at winter holiday time. The kids know that time off is approaching, so it’s hard for them to focus on school work. An engaging writing activity is a great way to keep the kids focused before vacation. With the writing process approach, the students can complete a different part of the writing project each day, leading up to a sharing day on that last day of school. The unique...
Are you or your reading students suffering from the “midyear blues”? For many teachers, this midwinter halfway point in the school year is a challenging time. Some of our students have stopped putting much effort into learning to read. Perhaps they were practicing inefficient reading strategies that are no long working for them, or maybe the text level is just too frustrating, so they’ve given up. We adults may be having trouble focusing on day to day lessons, as well, with worries such as report cards, parent conferences, and high stakes tests. And, yes, we’re also fretting about those children...
Ah, springtime at last! The grass is turning green; flowers are blossoming; baby animals are being born; summer’s not far away. Don’t you just love spring fever? The trouble is, our students can barely sit still. (more…)
Beware the summer slide! Do I mean to be careful when climbing on the sliding board at the playground? No! I’m talking about the regression in academic skills students can experience over summer vacation. Classroom teachers and reading specialists know all too well that many children enter school in the fall reading a few weeks or months behind where they were functioning when school ended the previous spring. Research confirms this regression, especially with struggling readers, children from families with low socioeconomic status, and youngsters who are learning English as a second language. From a teacher’s point of view, this...
