Learn about science curriculum created for self-contained special education classrooms by a real special education teacher!
Whether you are already using close reading strategies in your own upper elementary classroom or not, you’ll love using free close reading passages like The History of the Chocolate Chip Cookie! By using a purposeful, high interest set of close reading passages with proven reading comprehension strategies, your students will enjoy a greater level of reading success. Here is everything included in your FREE close reading passages download: The History of the Chocolate Chip Cookie Reading Passage (2 Differentiated Levels) 5 Days of Close Reading Activities Text Dependent Questions Written Response Teacher Guide Annotation Guide Printable Version Interactive Google Classroom
This reading response worksheet is ideal for practicing story elements, reading strategies, comprehension, text connection, author study, vocabulary work and so much more!
Inside you will find: * 6 Read and Color pages. * 4 Read and Draw These comprehension activities are ideal for students in kindergarten and first grade. Use this as a listening comprehension activities for your kindergarten students, or have your first graders read the passages and work independently. These are perfect for literacy centers, independent work, morning work, fast finisher, homework and more. Check out the full packet here: Reading Comprehension Activities (THE BUNDLE) This set goes well with my: Reading Comprehension Check (The Bundle) Check out the freebies here: FREE Reading Comprehension Check You may also be interested in: Reading Comprehension THE BUNDLE Reading Fluency and Comprehension THE BUNDLE If you have any questions, please email me at: [email protected] before purchasing *************************************************** Follow my stores for more AWESOME FREEBIES and GET UPDATES on my NEW PRODUCTS!! Connect with me: Teaching Biilfizzcend Instagram Teaching Biilfizzcend Pinterest
If you are looking for some high-interest activities, try using animated shorts to teach inference. Free handouts focus on student learning.
Visualizing the text is such an important strategy used for building your students’ reading comprehension. It is very versatile as it can be used in different ways with students of all ages and reading levels. I
Teaching Habitats to your primary students will be a breeze with my collection of resources to help make your life easier. There's even a freebie!
Have students who just can't remember what they have read? I have ten reading comprehension strategies to use right away to help them out!
Visualizing the text is such an important strategy used for building your students’ reading comprehension. It is very versatile as it can be used in different ways with students of all ages and reading levels. I
Asking questions before, during, and after reading comes very naturally to skilled readers, but for struggling readers, this skill can be just the opposite. Asking questions of varying depths is arguably the most important reading
In this post, I'll talk about why teaching schema is important, give some ideas and tips for teaching about schema to your young readers, and discuss when we
Perfect for kids in kindergarten through middle school, these reading comprehension strategies and activities for struggling readers will not disappoint!
what are effective reading comprehension strategies to help readers and struggling readers in your upper elementary classroom? this reading strategies list will help guide your reading instruction
Looking for ways to use comprehension passages in your classroom? Come check out how use mine plus check out my new comprehension one pagers!
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No more boring book reports! Check out 26+ FUN, creative and unique book report ideas and free printable projects too!
A 2nd grade summer early finishers reading worksheet focusing on comparing and contrasting.
In this post, I share my teaching strategies for reading comprehension in my upper elementary classroom. These effective reading strategies are easy to implement and they have been great for helping my students become better readers. Plus you can grab some FREE reading worksheets below! *This post contains affiliate links to Amazon for your convenience. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying
Fun reading about animal senses - ESL worksheets
Learn about Marie Curie's life and achievements with our bumper pack of teaching resources. It includes a comprehensive guide, biographies, comprehension tasks, timelines, activities, display materials and more!
Planning to tutor over the summer? Here are tips for quick and easy planning! Hi there! It's Sarah! I've been tutoring kiddos for the last year and have developed a routine that makes my planning easy and my session flow smoothly. All of the kiddos I tutor are grades K-2 and in need of a boost in their reading skills...fluency, comprehension, and phonics. Warm-up I like to start with some reading that is simple or familiar. I'll either have the kiddo re-read a text from the previous session or read fluency sentences. I have my kiddos keep a composition notebook with past passages to go back and re-read. I use lots of guided reader books to find the just right text for my kiddos to read. These are also great books to leave for kiddos to practice between sessions. Fluency sentence strips from The Moffatt Girls are a GREAT help to boost fluency and confidence! They are also super easy to leave for practice between sessions. Fluency Reading Practice My kiddos have all had good sight word recognition and really need fluency work. I switch between leveled readers and text passages. I usually have kiddos read the text themselves first. After reading, we go back through the text and find words that were tricky and read them. Next, I have the kiddo read through the text with me or by themselves if they are confident. Using a leveled reader Using fluency passages and recording words read per minute (the kiddos love to see their growth!) Find these fluency passages HERE! Using text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Comprehension After some fluency practice with the selected text, I move into comprehension work. In our district, kiddos need to do a written response comprehension question as part of their reading assessment. I have my kiddos practice a written response question with every text and in every session. Comprehension with level reader I use these question stems to develop questions based on the text. Grab the question stems HERE! Completed written response, kiddos write in their composition journal Comprehension with text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Here I use a reading passage with several comprehension tasks for a 2nd grade kiddo. Find these reading passage + comprehension packets HERE! Phonics After the reading and comprehension tasks are complete, I work on some phonics task with my kiddos. One of my favorite tasks is doing a word family word splash. I select a word from our text. I like how this tasks shows kiddos that if they can spell a work like bat, they can also spell cat, mat, sat, etc. Writing short sentences with words from the Word Family Splash Word building and sounding out Extras I like to use phonics poems as an additional fluency tool. The kiddos glue them into their composition notebook so they can go back and re-read between sessions, continuing to build fluency with familiar texts. These phonics poems are from Susan Jones. I use our Literacy Bags in between reading tasks. Literacy Bags break up the rigorous reading and fluency practice we do for much of the session. You can find Literacy Bags HERE! I'm working with a few Kindergartners who need sight word practice. I use the K version of our Differentiated Reading Fluency passages. In K, the passages start as reading letters, then sight words fluently. It perfect support for my K kiddos! You can grab these HERE! Additionally, our Print a Standard packs have been a great support for targeting specific skills students need to work on. Each pack contains tasks for one standard and has several activities for that standard, so there are a lot of opportunities to help the student learn, practice, and master standards based skills. You can grab Print a Standard packs for ELA AND MATH HERE! Connecting with students and parents on a more personal level is the best part of tutoring. I love giving kiddos instant feedback and celebrating their successes! I also love that I can give them more choices to foster a love of reading. In the picture above, I'm showing several text selections. The kiddos I'm working with is able to choose the book he'll read with me for the session. I also love being able to help parents foster learning at home. I've found most all of my parents did not really know about their kiddo's reading level or reading abilities. This makes it difficult for parents to find the best "just right" books for reading at home. After I work with a kiddo, I leave the text piece we worked on for that session (a passage or a book) so the kiddo can re-read it with parents. I leave their composition notebooks with phonics poems for the kiddos to go back a re-read. I also leave the fluency sentence strips for practice between sessions.
We are starting our unit on Bears! Last week we read many versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Part of our work on the story included this story map. It is made for kindergarten students, but would be appropriate for first grade too. They drew pictures to show their ideas and then I labeled the drawing or wrote the dictation about what what happening in each part of the story. First, the kiddos worked on the setting and characters. I love this colorful busy picture that includes all sorts of details. She put the beds outside the house because she wanted to include some of the items from inside the house in the picture. This little boy drew just the house, but added the different sized bowls and had me label them. This was a great characters picture. So darn cute! Then on another day, students did pictures for the beginning, middle, and end of the story. First, we did an activity together where we ordered picture cards and talked about different parts of the story. It was great to hear the kids verbally retelling the story in their own words. That is one of the things that is great about doing an activity like this - a great way to really listen carefully to the oral language of students. I love the picture of Goldilocks in this one. Her hair is great! I was so excited when this little sweetie used the word "discovered" in her dictation to me. Woo hoo! Great language! I thought my sweet little students did a great job with this activity! And I was happy with how much they were enjoying the many versions of the 3 bears stories. And, now that they have done a complete story map with a very familiar story, I can start doing these with more challenging literature. OK, here is your freebie, just click on the link under this image to go grab it in my TpT store: Story Map FREEBIE by Katie Byrd I hope it is a big help in your classroom! Please leave some love in the comments if you are using it with your class. Happy Teaching!
Ever since one of my students brought in a tomato horn worm, my kiddos have been begging to do "Research" as one of their Daily 5 Choices. I love the idea that they are self-directing their learning and that they are seeking out informational non-fiction text (you know, one of those biggies in the New Common Core Standards). But... (and this is a big But) I am finding that a lot of my kiddos really love watching videos about their topic of choice. I am really ok with this, but these are some of the same kiddos who really need to work on their comprehension and writing skills. Luckily I stumbled across this 3-2-1 Reading Strategy Sheet from Teaching With Love and Laughter! I printed a ton of these off and have placed them next to my computer station for them to complete when they conduct their research. A win win for both teacher and student! I will probably also use this for reading informational text later on in the year as well.
Okay teacher friend. It’s finally here. And I’m so excited! I’ve had this resource collecting dust on my computer for years now. I’ve been using this strategy in my classroom for the last few years, but haven’t had the energy or time (teacher life + mom life is exhausting, am I right?) to put it all together so that it’s ready to go for busy teachers like you! Well, it’s finally finished and I finally get to unveil it to you! Did you know I have a FREE downloadable reading response menu board that you can print now and use in your
In this seventh-grade ELA worksheet, students read a fascinating informational text about the history of kites and answer comprehension questions covering a variety of reading skills.
What is more fun than popping a balloon? Popping a balloon and then sequencing events, that's what!! You have to spice up your instruction to make a boring
Don't have time in your day to reach every student? My 10 Minute Reading Intervention resource can help you squeeze in lessons that are fast & effective!
Each classroom brings students of multiple learning styles and backgrounds. It is our job to provide opportunities that reach all of the many different learning styles that come to us. For this reason, it is
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I created this character map that I use during stations. I copy the Character Traits on the back and have them highlight the traits that describe the character. Then, they write them on the front of the page in the Character Traits section. They draw an illustration of the character in the middle of the page. I love it because I can use it during stations for the story of the week, whole group, or they can even complete it independently using the main character from their AR book. Click on the image below for a copy of this printable
Get ready to take you reading comprehension to the next level! Rapid Read and Review is the perfect way to engage your students in relevant and rigorous review of reading content! This fiction and informational text review set is the perfect way to keep your students' reading skills sharp. This set of reading comprehension resources can be used in centers, small groups, whole class, or as homework to review essential fiction comprehension skills and standards. The same question is never asked twice and skills are never reviewed in the same way, so students will stay engaged and excited about the content. This bundle includes two MIXED SKILLS SETS What does that mean? Each of the pages in these reading review activities mixes a variety of key reading skills on a single page. Which resources are included in this 'Rapid Read and Review' Reading Comprehension Bundle? Fiction Comprehension Review - Mixed-Skills Set Informational Text Comprehension Review - Mixed-Skills Set **This is the perfect resource for Test Prep Season!** This Rapid Read and Review Bundle Includes: 10 Pages of Fiction Text Passages and 10 Pages of Informational Text Passages Multiple review tasks and questions in a variety of engaging formats for each passage One-page versions of passages included for annotating close reads or projecting for whole-class use Google Slides Digital Versions Answer Key The Following Fiction Reading Comprehension Skills are Reviewed: Main Idea & Key Details Theme Summarizing Inference Comparing & Contrasting Cause & Effect Sequencing Character’s thoughts, words, or actions, traits, motivation, feelings Compare and Contrast Points of View How Point of View Influences how Stories are told Topics of Cultures Author's Purpose Fact & Opinion ....and SO much more! The Following Informational Text Reading Comprehension Skills are Reviewed: Main Idea & Details Summarizing Inference Quoting & Citing Text Evidence Text Structure Text Features Context Clues Technical Text Vocabulary Comparing & Contrasting Cause & Effect Sequencing Paraphrasing Conflicting Information Comparing Sources ...and MUCH more! Grade Levels: This resource is best for grades 4+ ➡️Looking for a version for 2nd and 3rd grades? ⬅️ ‘Rapid Read and Review’ is available in fiction and informational versions at a 2nd and 3rd grade level. Perfect for differentiation or younger students! Informational Text (Skills-Based) Informational Text (Mixed Skills) Fiction Text (Mixed Skills) Fiction Text (Skills-Based)
Teaching theme is not an easy task! Not only do students need to have a strong comprehension of the story's elements (like plot, setting, and characters), but they also have to be able to make inferences to find the author's message, since most themes are not overtly stated by the author. So, what are some of my favorite activities for helping kids understand theme? I'll list a number of them here. 1. Make an Anchor Chart Anchor charts are a great way to make learning visual and to have a record that kids can refer to when they need a bit of extra support. Theme may be defined in a number of ways. To me, the theme is the author's message or what he/she wants the reader to take away/learn from the story. It is a BIG idea, with a real-world or universal concern and can be applied to anyone. Besides talking about what a theme is, you'll also want to go over what it isn't. For example, some kids confuse the main idea of the story with its theme. To help students understand the difference, it's helpful to use stories that everyone in the class knows, like previous read alouds or classic stories like The Three Little Pigs. You can take each story and discuss the main idea (what the story was mostly about - specific to the story) vs. the theme (the lesson the author wants the reader to know - not specific to the story), to contrast the two ideas. The second area of confusion for some kids is that the theme is not specific to the characters in the story. In the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes, for example. The theme would not be that...A little mouse named Chrysanthemum learned to accept the uniqueness of her name. The theme would be larger than the book and would be something like...It's important to accept oneself. Also, you'll want to explain to your students that often times, a book has multiple themes and there are several answers which work equally well to describe a book's theme. Since theme is very subjective, I tell students that I will accept any answer, as long as they have the text evidence to prove it. For example, in the book, Wonder, by R.J. Palacio, one might argue that the theme is about friendship, another might say family, or even courage, or kindness. Any one of these themes would be right, and counted as such, since they each fit the story and could be supported by text evidence. 2. Use Pixar Shorts to Practice Theme Besides the sheer enjoyment which comes from watching these mini-films, your students can learn a lot about reading concepts from these. They're great for ELL students or for struggling readers, and for all readers really since the text complexity piece is removed. You can find these clips on YouTube, but you'll want to make sure to preview them first, so you're more familiar with the plot and are able to focus on theme questions. Here are some of my favorite Pixar Shorts for teaching theme: Piper Partly Cloudy Lava Boundin' 3. Use Mentor Texts Mentor texts are one of my go-to teaching tools as picture books are able to portray examples of just about any reading concept you need to teach. One thing I like to do when using mentor texts for theme, is to vary the types of questions I ask. Rather than always saying What is the theme?, I might ask... What is the deeper meaning of this story? After reading this book, what do you think matters to this author? Which idea from the story do you think might stay with you? What did the author want people to learn from this story?... Once kids answer, you might say, Ah...so that's the theme! Some of my current mentor text favorites for theme include the following: Ish by Peter H. Reynolds I Wish I Were a Butterfly by James Howe Journey by Aaron Becker (a wordless book) Beautiful Oops by Barry Saltzberg The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires Spoon by Amy Krouse Rosenthal Pete and Pickles by Berkeley Breathed If you're looking for more titles, I have a FREE Mentor Text List for Literature which includes a page on theme which you can download from my TpT store. 4. Use Posters with Themes to Chart Book Themes I like to choose 8 - 10 common themes and place posters of them in the classroom. These are included in my Theme unit but you could easily make them yourself if you'd like. After we finish a class novel, a read aloud, or a mentor text as part of a mini-lesson, I like to have the kids discuss the theme of the book. Once we decide on the theme, I place a miniaturized copy of the book's cover (about 3 x 3 inches or so) under the correct theme poster. You can also make the posters more interactive by allowing kids to write titles of books they have recently read on sticky notes, under the posters as well. 5. Use Songs to Practice Finding the Theme I love to add music to the classroom whenever possible. Not only does it add instant motivation for some kids, but it is also just good for them in so many ways. There are lots of songs you can use to teach theme, from current pop songs to oldies, rap songs, and country songs. While all of these work well, I especially enjoy using Disney songs. Disney songs are easily recognized for some kids, have catchy, fun tunes, and have lyrics that need no censoring (yay!). You can easily find the lyrics online to project on a smartboard or document projector, and the song clips may be found on YouTube, Here are some of my favorite Disney songs which work well for theme: Hakuna Matata from Lion King Just Keep Swimming from Finding Dory Reflection from Mulan Let it Go from Frozen Something There from Beauty and the Beast A Whole New World from Aladdin 6. Introduce Short Texts Using Task Cards Using task cards for theme gives your students a great deal of practice in a short period of time, which makes them a perfect way to begin to practice finding the theme using text. I love the fact that students can read multiple task card stories and practice finding the theme 20 - 30 times, in the time it might take to read a story and find the theme once. You can do task cards as a center activity, to play Scoot, or as a whole class scavenger hunt. One thing I like to do for the scavenger hunt is to make sure everyone has a partner and to pair stronger readers with struggling readers. 7. Add Some Writing After students have worked on theme for a week or two, I like to have students create their own short stories which show a strong theme, without directly stating it. This changes each student's role from a theme finder, to a theme creator and gives students insight into how authors create a situation that allows a theme to unfold. When I introduce this project, we refer back to the task cards we just completed, as an example of story length and rich content. In a matter of 2 - 3 paragraphs, students learn that they can include enough information to let our readers know our message. After students are finished creating these short stories, it's fun to share them in some way, to give more theme practice. Sometimes I have students meet in small groups to share out, with group members guessing the theme. Other years, I leave a stack on my desk and grab several if we have a few minutes. Either the students or I read the short story out loud, and the class discusses the theme. 8. Move to Passages, Short Stories, and Novels. Once we have scaffolded a great foundation for the understanding of theme, there comes a point where kids have to move on to text which is more challenging. I like to use page-long passages which I have created, before using short stories, and ultimately novels. If you're looking for some ready made materials to help you teach theme, here's a packet I love to use which works well for 4th and 5th Graders. Click here to read more about the Theme unit. Want some more teaching ideas and activities to teach theme? Click here to read Teaching Themes in Literature. If you like this post, make sure to share it with a teacher friend! Thanks so much for stopping by! For more ideas and strategies focused on upper elementary, be sure to sign up for The Teacher Next Door's free email newsletter! Bonus, you'll also gain access to my FREE Resource Library which contains exclusive upper elementary freebies that you won't find anywhere else! I'd love to connect with you! The Teacher Next Door's Website Pinterest Facebook Instagram TpT Store
Annotation can be a powerful way to improve comprehension and increase engagement, but its effectiveness can vary depending on how it's taught.
