Book Talk For English Teachers and Other Lovers of Reading

Today I’m going to explain exactly how to teach phonograms to your child at home so you can teach them to read. Phonograms are the building blocks of the English language. The phonogram tips, resources

Language is like a big, colorful puzzle, and words are the pieces that fit together to create beautiful pictures, or in this case, sentences. Prefixes and suffixes are special pieces of this puzzle. A prefix is a little group of letters we add at the beginning of a word to change its meaning, like adding […]

The key to starting your 9th grader off on the right foot with a language arts program is to start with a great reading plan.

Have you ever heard a word that sounds like the sound it describes? That’s called onomatopoeia. It’s a literary device that is used to describe a sound by imitating it with a word. For example, the word “buzz” imitates the sound of a bee. Onomatopoeia is used in literature, poetry, and even in everyday language. ... Read more

This 10th grade reading list is full of books that are perfect for high school students. It can even be used as the base of a homeschool world literature class.

A list of fun English word games for kids! Fun vocabulary games to help improve their spelling, reading, vocabulary and conversation skills.

Do your high school students struggle to find books they can’t put down? Here are 31 student-approved books to read for high school that won’t disappoint!

2nd Grade English Worksheets are such a fantastic way for kids to learn their grammar. Worksheets are fun and your kids can have fun while learning better communication. Adjectives, antonyms, compound words, verbs, nouns and pronouns can all be more fun with worksheets. When they’re done, they’ll make sentences like nobody’s business. Print them all […]

Freedom Homeschooling provides reading lists for 2nd through 12th grades. Also, there's a FREE lesson or novel study for each book!

What are CVC words? As you probably know, words in the English language are made up of vowels and consonants. Vowels are the letters a, e, i, o, and u (and,

Adverb Examples List - Adverbs for Kids - List of Adverbs - Adverbs of Frequency - List of Common Adverbs - Most common adverbs

A worksheet to practise the use of the demonstrative pronouns this, that, these, those and the plural. - ESL worksheets

If you’ve been keeping up with my Insta posts you’ll know that I’ve been binge watching Gilmore Girls! I’ve read quite a few of the books mentioned and thought that I’…

Want activities for teaching The Odyssey? Check out these pre-reading, while reading, and after reading activities for teaching The Odyssey.

Welcome to The HomeScholar’s high school reading list for college-bound students! The following selection of books are drawn from a variety of different reading lists, and represent the books that we at The HomeScholar are both familiar with and feel comfortable recommending to college-bound students. It’s not possible (or even desirable!) for any student to read all the books on every high school reading list, and not every book will be appropriate for every child.

Freedom Homeschooling provides reading lists for 2nd through 12th grades. Also, there's a FREE lesson or novel study for each book!

Picking books kids can't put down can be time consuming. Print this list of FUN TO READ printable 4th grade reading list!

Your students will love this sink or float science experiment! You can use everyday items from around the classroom for this experiment!

As a homeschool mom, I am often in search of materials to supplement our homeschool curriculum. Sometimes I need a book that has a different perspective on a topic, and sometimes I want a book to completely replace the recommended book. If you've ever encountered this problem, you may have run into the same problem as I have: where do I even begin to look for what I want when I'm not exactly sure myself?! Check out this free, printable Classics Reading List by Grade Level. You'll find lots of suggestions!

Vocabulary instruction is so critical in today’s classroom! A vast vocabulary will help students to become better readers and writers. Vocabulary is also essential to their performance on standardized tests. Helping kids to develop their vocabulary is time that is well spent in a busy classroom. I have developed a routine to teach new vocabulary

This 6th grade reading list will help you choose books for your child. Also, there's a FREE lesson or novel study for each book on the list!

Teach English online in 2023 with these high-paying websites. Find online English teaching jobs now! Even with no experience & no TEFL.

By Presto Plans When you ask students to describe a character’s traits, determine the theme of a story, examine cause and effect, or even to try to guess the meaning of a vocabulary word, you are asking them to infer. Inference is an essential skill in English language arts, but sometimes we overlook the importance of intentionally providing the tools, strategies, and practice that students require to improve this skill. 1. BUILD A FRAMEWORK FOR EXAMINING INFERENCES According to Marzano, there are certain thinking and reasoning processes that have come to be recognized as “foundational to higher-order thinking” and inference is one of them. Not only that, but it is skill that is integral to comprehension in the ELA classroom. Students might not realize it, but they are actually making inferences all the time, which essentially means that they are making assumptions, educated guesses, and/or predictions based on the information they have or know from personal experience or their own background knowledge. Grab these free classroom posters to remind students of the meaning of inference as well as thinking/discussion stems they can use when they are inferring information. In order for students to understand how to infer, they first need to be instructed on what inference is and be given opportunities to practice this skill. The hope is that with this practice, students will hone this skill and begin using it automatically. To build this skill, there are four questions that Marzano suggests teachers pose to students to generate meaningful conversation and instruction around teaching inference: - What is my inference? - What information did I use to make this inference? - How good was my thinking? - Do I need to change my thinking? Weave these questions into your instruction, questions, assignments, and language to help students build capacity in inferential thinking. 2. TEACH STUDENTS TO SHOW VS. TELL Teaching students how to write using the Show vs. Tell method is an excellent way to introduce inferential thinking as it allows them to experience how authors use description and imagery that allow the reader to deduce information. Students will be able to see through the writing process that when an author is showing something, they are relaying thoughts, feelings, emotions, senses, and descriptions in the text in a deeper and more meaningful way. One of my favorite ways to get students to understand the difference between showing and telling is to have students write a paragraph about a time that they felt a very strong emotion (anger, excitement, sadness, joy, disgust, surprise), but tell them that they are not permitted to use that specific word (or synonyms for that word in the paragraph). Instead, they must show the reader this emotion through character, setting, and conflict descriptions. For example, Students will find this exercise challenging, but it will help them understand the meaning of inference and hopefully will have an impact on how they read between the lines of other texts they encounter. 3. INTEGRATE REAL-WORLD INFERENCES Students may not know that they are making inferences about others on a daily basis and, in turn, others are making inferences about them as well. Bringing real-world examples into your classroom activities will help students see that inference is not limited to text analysis. Below are a couple of my favorite ways to do this: - SOCIAL MEDIA A lot can be inferred from a Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram profile. Have students examine random social media profiles to make inferences about the people based on what that person posts, shares, and comments. I like to share these pre-made profiles and have students examine what they read, what they know, and what they can infer. You can also discuss the idea of “vaguebooking” with students. Vaguebook updates are intentionally vague Facebook status updates that prompt friends to ask what's going on. For example someone might post “Ouchhhhh!!! I can’t believe how incredibly clumsy I am… UGH. Off to the ER…” They intentionally are fishing for someone to comment to ask what is going on or, at the very least, are getting their friends to infer what might be happening. This makes for a perfect inference activity as students need to use the information they know about their friend to infer what the post may be about. I share these vague status updates I created as a fun classroom activity to practice making inferences. - MUSIC Another great way to speak your students’ language is to incorporate music lyrics that require inferences into your teaching. There are many songs that tell a story, but what exactly happens is not explicitly stated. These songs are perfect to practice inference as they encourage students to look closely at the lyrics to infer what is going on. Some songs that I like to use are: Two Black Cadillacs by Carrie Underwood Someone Like You by Adele Teardrops on my Guitar by Taylor Swift Some of these songs do have mature content and topics and work best for high school. It’s also important that you look at the lyrics carefully to ensure they are appropriate for your grade level or school community. 4 INCORPORATE VIDEO A unique and fun way to improve inference skills is to have students watch short films that have no words and infer what is happening based on what they’ve watched. One of my favorite video clips to use are the Hungarian Shadow Dancers who were featured on Britain’s Got Talent. Here are two performances you can use: The dances have absolutely no words, but audience members are brought to tears because of what they infer from the performances. Have students create a three column table where they record what they see (consider location, events, people), what they know from their background knowledge and then what they infer from the performance. If you have a younger audience, Pixar makes amazing short, silent, animated films that would also work perfect for this. I recommend starting with the film, Partly Cloudy. 5. INFER INFORMATION FROM IMAGES - WHAT'S GOING ON IN THIS PICTURE? Since 2012, The New York Times has been helping students fine tune their close reading and visual thinking skills through their popular “What’s Going On in This Picture?” feature, with incredible success. Together, with arts education organization Visual Thinking Strategies, they have attracted the interest of—not only thousands of students from all over the world—but the participation of entire classrooms. Here is a curated list of their 40 most popular/favourites to give you an idea if you are unfamiliar. Each week an interesting New York Times photo is selected with all captions and context removed, and students are challenged to look closely and infer what they think is going on in the photo. Students are asked to support their inferences with “evidence”, elaborating on what made them draw the conclusions they did, and to look even closer to see what else they might be able to find. They are also encouraged to consider the observations of others and respond thoughtfully. A few days after the photo is posted each week, more information is revealed about it. Students are then able to reflect on whether knowing more about the photo changes the way they see it, and if so, how. The goal is to get students “engaged in a writing or discussion activity”, and to ultimately foster their “writing, thinking, speaking and listening” skills. - MISSING CAMERA MYSTERY ACTIVITY It’s something you may have seen on social media - a lost camera or even just a memory card has been found, and someone posts the photos online in hopes of returning the presumably priceless memories to their rightful owner. One can make a lot of educated guesses about a stranger based on their photos alone, and in some cases those inferences might even lead to the camera’s return to its rightful owner. For example, you might see a logo on someone’s t-shirt and be able to determine their place of work, you might see a street sign in the background and be able to guess where they live. You might see a photo of a group celebrating a birthday at a popular restaurant or someone enjoying a yoga class at a popular studio. These are all clues that allow one to play detective, and hopefully a successful one. You can easily bring this experience into the classroom by having students play detective by giving them lost pictures from a missing camera and having them make inferences about the owner based on those images. They might be pictures of a wedding day, or grandparents meeting their precious grandchild for the first time; a once in a lifetime family vacation or a milestone birthday celebration. Whatever the case may be, you don’t have to know the people to gather some information on the camera’s owner. 6. USE SHORT STORIES THAT REQUIRE INFERENCE - THE CHASER BY JOHN COLLIER One of my favorite stories to teach inference is The Chaser by John Collier. The story is about a young man named Alan who is desperate to make a woman named Diana fall in love with him. So desperate, in fact, that he is willing to use a love potion! The story requires students make a great deal of inferences to piece together what exactly happens at the end of the plot. - ORDEAL BY CHEQUE BY WITHER CRUE Another great story to use is Visual story Ordeal by Cheque by Wuther Crue. This isn’t your traditional short story as the story is told entirely with images of cheques. Students must interpret the plot line, characters, and conflict based solely on the information shared on the cheques (the date, who it was made out to, who issued the cheque, and the amount it was for etc.). Put students into groups and have them piece together the story and present their inferences to the rest of the class. 7. HAVE STUDENTS SOLVE A MYSTERY Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Your students will love having the opportunity to get their collective Sherlock Holmes on by working together to solve a real-world mystery. One of my favorite real-world mysteries occurred in 1978 when a construction crew uncovered a buried ship underground in the middle of downtown. Students watch a hand-drawn video that tells the backstory, and speculate on the purpose the ship once served, who owned it, and why it remained buried for so many years without being discovered. Another way to have students solve a mystery is to present them with a crime and have them play detective. You can either do this by setting up a crime scene in the classroom and have them infer what happened. You can also share information, evidence, witness testimonies, and have students weave a story together and solve a crime. Try this out for free using my Who Kidnapped the Principal? resource. 8. SEARCH THROUGH THE TRASH Let’s be honest, most people don’t sit around pondering what could be deduced about them based on the contents of their trash. But your trash can actually reveal a lot about your interests, preferences, activities, and household routines. Another fun activity you can use to help students practice inference is to have them examine the contents of someone else’s trash to make inferences about that person based on their own background knowledge. Bring in some bags of "clean trash" and have students create a character sketch of the person it could belong to. Inference is a necessary 21st century skill that many students struggle with, but it can be developed over time, with practice. Inference skills improve the ability to bridge gaps in information and improve reading comprehension. By implementing creative ways to get students comfortable with inferring, they will realize that it isn’t as complicated as they may think. Need other ideas for teaching students to infer? Check out some of the other Coffee Shop blogger ideas below! Black Cat Inferences Challenge by Nouvelle ELA Teaching the Process of Literary Analysis Activities and Strategies by Room 213

Dolch sight words list for preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third-grade levels. Our free printable Dolch sight word lists provide you with colorful sight word charts for easy reference and assessment. Teach your child to read sight words with these full size PDF Dolch 220 sight word lists. We've also included a list of Dolch sight word nouns.

Summer reading list for 5th graders; recommended books for 10-11 year olds, including a variety of genres, interests and topics.

Find fantastic resources for teaching inferences (with free mini lesson). The resources are ideal for 4th graders but also features ideas for grades 1-3.

English Coordinating Conjunctions List FOR Because I have to find a new job, for I am unemployed. AND In addition to I have one dog and three love birds. NOR And not Neither Mark nor Mary were at the school yesterday. BUT Howeover I go to work on Sundays, but I don’t go to work on Saturday. OR Either Does Clark have any brothers or sisters? YET But I really wanted my son to study at university, yet he left the school. SO Therefore My daughter is very smart, so everybody likes her.

These English teacher supplies are must haves for quick ELA lesson plans. Pair your back to school wish list with ideas for English teachers!

Each printable sight words list combines Dolch sight words and Fry's high frequency word lists. Print five different sight word lists for Pre-K and up.

What books should students in 10th grade read? Check out this reading list for 10th graders to get started reading classics & contemporaries!

These are 15 must-read books included in the high school freshman reading list. There is sure to be one for you to enjoy!

students fill in the blanks with the help of the pictures and listen to the song to check their answers - ESL worksheets

It can be difficult to find creative ways to teach vocabulary. Check out this list of 17 creative ways to teach vocabulary from 2 Peas and a Dog.