Changing grade levels is difficult for teachers, so I've written this post about moving to 4th grade to help get you started.
Supercharge your morning work with I Heart Literacy! Each page features a fun theme so your students will not only be practicing reading and ELA skills, but will also be learning about a curriculum-based topic. A wide variety of Common Core skills are addressed. Try these five free pages for free! Happy Teaching! Rachel Lynette ... Read More about Morning Work ELA and Reading Freebie!
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Expectation: teacher spends 20 blissfully uninterrupted minutes with each reading group while the other students complete their independent reading tasks to fidelity. Reality: teacher spends 18 of the 20 minutes monitoring the activities of students not in the reading group. Result: students don't get quality independent reading time in during the school day, and their comprehension skills suffer. Sound familiar? Trust me, I've been there before. However, things changed once I introduced reading response menus to my reading block. During my first few years of teaching, I struggled with keeping the rest of the class on task while I met with small groups. Unfortunately, this means everyone suffered. The students in my group weren't getting the attention they needed, and the students who were supposed to be at centers were doing everything except what they were supposed to do. I needed to come up with an easy way to keep students on track while they were working independently, one that would them build their reading skills on their own while I met with the students who needed it the most. After a lot of trial and error, I came up with a set of reading menus that students could work on at their own pace, without assistance from me. Now, as a fellow teacher you know that it wasn't immediate sunshine and rainbows once I introduced these menus. There was a lot of modeling and practice, as well as a lot of trial and error, before things started to look up in my classroom. However, once my students got the hang of using the menus (and learned my expectations for how to complete them) my reading block started running much more smoothly! I have used these menus several ways: as an accountability piece during the reading block, and also as nightly reading homework (both with students completing one activity a day). Along the way, I've learned a few things to help implement response menus effectively. Here are some of my top tips: 1. Choose a set up that works for you Ideally, you want to keep everything your students need to work on the response menus in one central location. I would suggest either a composition notebook or 3-prong folder for each student, especially if you are using the menus as a homework assignment. If you are using a composition notebook, you can glue the menus directly in, along with activity examples and a rubric to help the students understand your expectations. It would be the same for a 3-prong folder: place all of the necessary information in the middle of the folder for students to refer to as needed. The best part is once you complete the initial set-up, you can sit back and relax! Your students will have everything they need to complete their assignments for an entire year- one of the reasons response menus are a great choice for independent work! 2. Roll things out slowly I can tell you one thing with certainty- if you just hand something like a response menu over and wave goodbye, you are not going to get the results you want. It's important that students have a chance to practice each menu task with assistance before they work on the menus independently. At the beginning of the year, I would do one activity a day with my students (using the slideshow from my Editable Reading Response Menus to introduce each task). After we were about halfway through the activities, the menus became part of their independent work- with the students only able to select tasks that we had practiced. By the end of the first quarter of school, students could use the menus fully on their own. Since the menus don't have to be completed in any order, you can pick activities that correlate with the lessons you are teaching in class. This is a great way to reinforce the skills you are already teaching! 3. Be clear about your expectations One of the things that my students found most helpful was having an example of each response menu item to refer to. Initially, students would use these examples as a template, and as they grew as writers they would begin to add more personal touches to their writing. The thing that I found most helpful was training my students to use a checklist before turning their assignments in for the week. Since I knew from experience that students will just check things off at will if they don't have a lot of modeling (typical conversation: "You checked off that your name is on the paper and it's nowhere to be found." "Oh...you meant on THIS paper?" #insertcryingemoji)- I made sure to go through the checklist many, many times before handing it off for the first time. If you train your students well in how to use the checklist, grading these menus will be a snap each week. I was able to finish my entire class in 30 minutes- and I was also able to see what skills and strategies were clearly understood, and the ones that needed to be retaught. Want to see more? Head over to TpT to check out my Editable Fiction and Nonfiction Reading Response Menus. In addition to the menus, editable templates, activity examples, slideshow and rubric there are bonus task cards that are perfect for a reading center! Have you used response menus in class before? What are your top tips?
Increase student engagement and reading comprehension with this simple strategy!
I giggled to myself as I created the title to this blog post! If you are new to my blog, I'll have you know that this is the THIRD time I've written an "ELA in
How do you infuse the teaching of reading skills and strategies? If you use a basal reading series, you most likely focus on one skill and strategy for a 1-2 week period. Even if you don't use a basal and find your own texts to use, it's a great practice to focus on re-teaching and reviewing comprehension skills and strategies. They're all so interrelated anyway. When I teach reading skills and strategies, I like to display a poster on our class focus wall. This lets anyone who walks in the classroom know what we're targeting at the time, and is also a great reminder for students. Even better than that, I have the same posters available to students at their desks. I don't start the year with a full ring of cards because that would be overwhelming, but I do give students a card to add to their rings as we go over it. I find students referencing their comprehension rings often during their seat work, independent reading, and even group work. We use these during small group time as well. To use these cards, I print them (they come 4 to a page), laminate, cut them out and hole punch. The students do the rest. I know it can be tedious to laminate these bad boys, but I want them to last all year. Plus, it's a great task for my parent volunteer! There are the posters we use throughout the year. They're bright and fun, meaning they draw attention to themselves--which is the point! You can find these posters as well as mini-posters in my TPT store. They're bundled together as well for a discounted price!
Learn six ways to help reluctant readers gain confidence and improve their reading skills in upper elementary and middle school classrooms.
When I started at my new school last year, I came into a new reading program. I was used to doing almost all of my reading instruction WHOLE CLASS, but my school uses a guided reading model all the way up to 5th grade. I definitely had to rethink my reading block! I had done centers in the past, but wanted a really clear way to maximize the time and make the transitions clear for the students. Here's how I do my guided reading block! ROTATIONS We have Guided Reading/Centers Monday-Thursday from about 1:10-2:00 and I rotate through four groups. This means each center is 12 minutes long, with about 30 seconds for a transition. 12 minutes can fly by, so the students have to work on getting those transitions DOWN. I found a FANTASTIC resource by my friend Kristen of Chalk & Apples, and it has made centers SO easy. There are tons of different icons that can be easily swapped out on different days or weeks. I change mine up all the time! In a typical week, I do guided reading with leveled passages on Monday and Wednesday, and we do literature circles on Tuesdays and Thursdays. GROUPS My students are grouped according to DRA levels, because that is what my school uses. You might use AR, Lexile, or another measure. I have four groups: Low, Low-Mid, High-Mid, and High. Each group has a number, but I assign the number randomly so it doesn't match up to skill level in any way. I have 24 students in my class this year, so there will be 6 kids in each group. If you have a larger class, you can still make it work by having your higher groups work on their own while you work with a lower group and just check in! GUIDED READING I LOVE this close reading resource from Fifth in the Middle. I bought the entire bundle so I have TONS of options. Each reading comes in four reading levels, but they are on the same topic and look the same so students don't notice. There is also a paired text that I try to use for morning work toward the end of the week. There are several pages of activities for each passage, and I often have the students start these at the table with me after we've read the passage out loud. When it is their turn for guided reading, the students come to me at our back table with a pencil and a highlighter. I give them their sheets for that day and discuss what we will be looking for while we read (unfamiliar words usually) and we begin reading. I like to make sure each child reads, so however I have to break it up to make that happen. After reading through, I ask them to scan through again to find specific information. This changes week to week, so one time it might be looking for transition phrases, and another it might be looking for dates to create a timeline. Then, we talk about what everyone found and work on putting together the information on the worksheet. I, of course, provide a lot more scaffolding and support to my lower readers, while my high readers are able to do the activity on their own. LIT CIRCLES On the days that we have literature circles, the students still come to the back table with me, but this time they bring their lit circle book (which varies) and their lit circle binder. In their binder, they keep all of their jobs and their reading schedule. I have used about a GAZILLION resources for lit circles (including online blogs), but this one from Pocketful of Primary is my absolute FAVORITE: It is SOO easy to adapt to groups of different sizes and I found it very user-friendly for both the kiddos and for myself! I organize the jobs using a hanging file I found on Amazon. You can find it here: THE OTHER CENTERS So what do the kiddos do during their other blocks of time? Here's some options I cycle through: STAPLES: Partner Reading Each student has a partner from their reading group that they meet up with for this activity. I typically use "I Survived" books or similar short chapter books. I stock up through Scholastic! I have 6 shared books for the entire class, and I place a sheet inside the front cover so the students can write their names and where they ended each day they read. I always have new books ready to go for the students who finish. I do this strictly for fluency, so I don't do quizzes or worksheets. Silent Reading (KBAR) In my class, we call silent reading KBAR- Kick Back and Read. When we do a whole class KBAR, I sometimes take it outside. Spelling (Spelling City) I typically use Spelling City for centers, but sometimes do a worksheet instead. Vocabulary (Quizlet)Quizlet is AMAZING. I love using this for vocabulary! The students really enjoy it as well. Keyboarding (KWT) This is a tough one since monitoring the students' finger placement is so important. I don't do this OFTEN as a center, but throw it in now and again. Writing If we are working on a longer project (such as the state report), I have the students use this chunk of time for that. Otherwise, I sometimes provide a prompt or allow them to free write. Here's one of the resources I use: NoRedInk If you've never used this site, CHECK IT OUT! It's one of the best ways to get some extra grammar practice into your day! Be aware that the initial set up takes a bit of time because the students have to select a bunch of their favorites from different categories: books, tv shows, movies. What's neat is the site uses their preferences and their name + their friends' names when building the practice sentences. The kids get a kick out of it! Task Cards (small group) Students work with their reading group and record their answers on individual answer sheets. I have a huge selection of task cards that I keep in one of these bad boys from Michael's: Cursive (Can Do) I love that my school teaches cursive, but in fifth grade, we don't have a lot of specific time for it. To keep the kid's practicing, I assign pages from our cursive book during centers. Reading Comprehension (Reading Plus) We use Reading Plus, but there are many online reading comprehension sites. Use whatever your district provides or what works for your class! Games I will occasionally throw in a review game for the kids to play with their small group. The key is they have to be short and not too loud! Comment below if you have other questions or want to add some advice on running smooth ELA centers with Guided Reading!
In first grade reading comprehension is something new, challenging, and difficult to teach because even though they’re all 6 or 7 they’re developmentally so different. Head over to my blog to get this comprehension page. Depending on what grade you teach it’d be great for: homework individual assessment small groups partners intervention challenging gifted students ... Read More about Reading Comprehension
Do you hate to teach poetry? Do you want your students to learn and enjoy poetry? Try these simple ways to learn how to teach poetry...
THIS PRODUCT DOES NOT CONTAIN ALL STANDARDS BUT IS A BRIEF 2 PAGE OVERVIEW. YOU CAN FIND THE VERSION WITH ALL STANDARDS HERE: 4th Grade Common Core Student I Can Statements This skill goal sheet is a two page resource that does not contain all standards but is a fun and very visual way for the kids and parents to see 4th grade skills. There is one sheet for ELA and one sheet for math. It can be placed in data folders or homework folders as communication of the students learning. It does not include all math and ELA standards but many standards are included and can be viewed in the preview. This can also be provided to parents as simple to understand resource at conferences, parent teacher conferences or open house to inform parents a basic idea what their child is expected to learn. Includes goals such as: factoring numbers expanded form multiplying multi-digit numbers lines and line segments fractions decimals symmetry themes main idea comparing points of view comprehending nonfiction inferences writing informative text writing narratives writing opinions research projects and more! Included in both color and black and white, with the common core standards listed in each box and a second version with only the images and text. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• You may also like the other grade level skill sheets found here: •Pre-Kindergarten Skills •Kindergarten Skills •First Grade Skill Sheet •2nd Grade Goals Sheet •3rd Grade Skills ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
How do you infuse the teaching of reading skills and strategies? If you use a basal reading series, you most likely focus on one skill and strategy for a 1-2 week period. Even if you don't use a basal and find your own texts to use, it's a great practice to focus on re-teaching and reviewing comprehension skills and strategies. They're all so interrelated anyway. When I teach reading skills and strategies, I like to display a poster on our class focus wall. This lets anyone who walks in the classroom know what we're targeting at the time, and is also a great reminder for students. Even better than that, I have the same posters available to students at their desks. I don't start the year with a full ring of cards because that would be overwhelming, but I do give students a card to add to their rings as we go over it. I find students referencing their comprehension rings often during their seat work, independent reading, and even group work. We use these during small group time as well. To use these cards, I print them (they come 4 to a page), laminate, cut them out and hole punch. The students do the rest. I know it can be tedious to laminate these bad boys, but I want them to last all year. Plus, it's a great task for my parent volunteer! There are the posters we use throughout the year. They're bright and fun, meaning they draw attention to themselves--which is the point! You can find these posters as well as mini-posters in my TPT store. They're bundled together as well for a discounted price!
These 4th grade anchor charts reinforce concepts for reading, science, math, behavior management, environmentalism, and more!
Morphology walls are a great tool in 4th and 5th grade classrooms! Read more and sign up for free posters to make your own morphology wall!
Hello darlings! Just a few more days until I leave 3 Teacher Chick and launch my new blog That Teaching Spark. The blog still looks yucky and I am just waiting on the designer for some finishing touches! She has been awesome! Make sure to check back for some amazing gift card giveaways, TPT Product giveaways, and crafty giveaways! This post is an overview of the Word Study Program I use in third grade. Stick with me though, because you could do the same thing in your classroom, you just need some word lists. These pics will take you through the program step by step. It is a mash up of Words Their Way, Fountas and Pinnell, and Beth Newingham. Click the pic to get the entire program from my store! Wow! You stuck with me this far! You deserve a freebie! What program have you been using? Is it differentiated? Amy
Teaching summarizing? Try using story element examples. When kids learn to pick them out, writing a summary is easy.
Hello? Hello? Is this mic on? Anyone out there? Friends, it has been a MINUTE!! The end of the school year was, as always, bonkers. The first two weeks of summer was double bonkers!! And
One of the things I do every year that really makes a difference in my students' learning is having them use notebooks to store notes, examples, work, and
Find powerful point of view teaching activities and ideas including strong books and anchor charts to strengthen students' understanding.
I get a lot of emails asking about my schedule at school. Since last year was my first year teaching 5th grade Reading/ELA using a guided group model, I tried a lot of different schedules. I changed it around quite a bit, but I finally got it down to an art by the end of the school year. I modeled it after my guided math schedule that I followed when I taught 4th grade math. Let's get a few things out there... I teach reading, writing, and grammar. This year, our writing will be incorporated into our reading. I'll tell you a little more about that later. My grammar instruction is usually about 30 minutes each day. I have NOT included it here since it's not really part of my literacy block. I have about and hour and half for my literacy block each day. I ALWAYS finish the day with binder work and a read aloud of some sort. Most of the time, it is a novel that we are reading together. The binder work is when the students take a few minutes to organize their binder, fill out any necessary forms to be turned in, and finish anything not completed. I have learned a little through trial and practice and will post a blog post soon where I REVEAL ALL about my literacy binders.... the good, bad, and ugly! Mondays: Mondays are one of my two whole group days. I use this day to distribute my homework for the week, have the kids write the entire week in their agenda, go over my expectations for the homework, introduce our vocabulary/spelling words, have a big whole group lesson for our weekly skills, and conduct individual reading conferences with students on my conferring list while they read to self for about 25 minutes. Individual reading conferences is something I want to get better about doing. I did it last year, but not near as much as I wanted to. I will also be using some of this time to complete running records on my students. I purchased the Progress Monitoring packet from Hello Literacy that I plan to use to progress monitor my students. We use FAST reading and math as a school level, but I am wanting to progress monitor some of my students myself so they can track their progress in their goals section in their literacy binder. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, & Thursdays: These three days are spent reviewing our homework from the previous night, having a short 15-25 minute mini-lesson about our weekly skill, and meeting with small groups for three rotations. What I do in small group really depends on what our skill is for the week. We may do some reading response, close reading activity, or vocabulary instruction. During my three rotations, my students are reading to self, word work, work on writing, or reading to someone. This year, our work on writing will look VERY different. Writing will now be incorporated into reading. What does this mean for my classroom? A lot of their writing will be connected to their reading in some way. This is new to me, so I'm not sure exactly how this will look. All I know is that our writing test is now incorporated into our reading test. Fridays: Last year, my students completed a weekly assessment that went along with our weekly skill from the week. I downloaded the reading passages from here {FREE} and created my own questions to go along with them. A lot of times, I used 3-4 from those already listed, but I added a lot of my own that required the students to go back to the text to support their answer with evidence. By the end of the school year, this was something my students were experts at. However, this year is going to be different. I am still going to assess my students, but I am going to try to vary the way I do it. One of the #1 feedback comments I received at the end of the year from my students was that they would have liked more projects. So, I am going to try and incorporate more book reports {in a fun way} and other ways to assess my students. I'm going to focus on doing more showing rather than telling. Don't get me wrong, I am still going to assess my students with paper and pencil, but I am going to try and limit it to no more than every OTHER week. I believe that by the end of the school year, the students became very bored with our weekly assessments (ahhh... shucks!). BTW- the kiddos commented that their two favorite activities were our Hatchet projects and my text structure unit. Say what? Text structure? I thought that was very interesting! Hopefully this has helped you see how to incorporate components of the Daily 5 into your intermediate literacy block. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments section below.
One of the things I do every year that really makes a difference in my students' learning is having them use notebooks to store notes, examples, work, and
Every day I am given 100 minutes of uninterrupted language arts time in my schedule. In that time I must plan out how to get everything done. My goal is to
Download your complete guide to the fourth grade reading standards for both nonfiction and fiction texts. This is handy tool for guided and shared reading.
Analyzing character traits is a key fiction reading skill that is needed for successful comprehension. In most cases, authors do not just come out and tell readers the traits that a character possesses. By teaching
Teachers often have questions about what a literacy block should actually look like. How do you structure your time? When do you pull reading groups? How and when do you teach grammar? The list of questions is lengthy, and with good reason. No one really ever told us what to do! Probably because there is […]
Engagement Strategies Last Saturday as I was perusing Twitter, I saw this awesome post on engagement strategies. When I clicked on the...
*A DIGITAL OPTION HAS BEEN INCLUDED FOR GOOGLE SLIDES/GOOGLE CLASSROOM* Be sure to re-download! There are directions and links inside the pdf. This morning work is a unique way to get your students warmed up in the morning that helps incorporate the 4th Grade Language Standards, Vocabulary Practice, and Reading Comprehension skills.Save money by purchasing the growing bundle and get all future months of morning work:ELA Morning Work 4th Grade Growing BundleOR purchase the ELA + MATH MORNING WORK BUNDLE About the ResourceThis resource is a unique way to get your students warmed up in the morning that helps incorporate the 4th Grade Language Standards, Vocabulary Practice, and Reading Comprehension skills.Each month contains 4-5 weeks of ELA morning work, which will have a theme around the season, national holidays, or events associated with that particular month. The morning work is focused on ELA 4th Grade Common Core Standards. Each day has a thematic structure to cover those Language Standards as well as enhance Vocabulary and Comprehension skills.Meaningful Monday: Monday is focused on making meaning. Tasks will focus on synonyms, antonyms, vocabulary words, context clues, and making meaning in a short amount of text. Some tasks may require students to make meaning in the text (inference, message, adages, proverbs, etc) or build vocabulary skills.Text Structure Tuesday: Tuesdays will have a paragraph that requires students to identify the text structure, signal words, and a question or two related to main idea, author's perspective, or vocabulary. Wordy Wednesday: Wednesday is all about working with words. Tasks include working with shades of meaning, homophones, or a short writing task using pictures or a word bank.Throwback Thursday: Thursday is all about grammar usage and conventions. Figurative Friday: Figurative Friday tasks include working with various types of figurative language including similes, metaphors, idioms, and more! I created this resource after seeing success with the Math version in my 4th grade classroom that you can find HERE! 🛑 Are you a member of the TLL Membership? These materials are already included. If you are not a member, click here to learn more. The TLL Membership gives you an all-access pass to hundreds of ELA resources for teachers in Grades 3-5.This ELA + Math Morning Work is available for the following grade levels: ELA + Math Bundles 1st Grade 2nd Grade 3rd Grade 4th Grade 5th Grade ELA Bundles 1st Grade 2nd Grade 3rd Grade 4th Grade 5th Grade 6th Grade 7th Grade 8th Grade ELA Weekly Assessments 2nd Grade 3rd Grade 4th Grade 5th Grade 6th Grade Math Bundles 1st Grade 2nd Grade 3rd Grade 4th Grade 5th Grade Let’s connect! The Literacy Loft Blog The Literacy Loft on Instagram The Literacy Loft on Pinterest The Literacy Loft on Facebook I hope this resource works for you! Please be sure to FOLLOW US so you get the email when the rest of this series comes out! You can contact us at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or feedback. -Jessica
While I am a firm believer in students reading real books that they choose and doing this often, I also love to include reading games and reading centers in
Science of reading activities can be so helpful for students of all ages. Reading is an essential skill to have in order to succeed in school and life. It’s not just about being able to read the words, it’s about understanding what you are reading and connecting those ideas with what you already know.
In upper grade classrooms, students spend a great deal of time responding to the texts they read. Over the years I have found that no matter what grade level I teach, students have a difficult time wr
