In today's post, I'll explain the differences between shared reading and a readaloud!

Helping K-2 Teachers Like You Save Time, Grow Instructional Skills, and Teach With Confidence!

Do you get stressed trying to squeeze in all the curriculum you need to cover? This is Deanna from A Primary Owl and believe me this is my daily struggle! I teach third grade and the amount of Social Studies and Science topics we have to cover is crazy....plus we take District Assessments over all these topics so nothing can be skipped or else my students will bomb the tests. One of my go-to strategies is one that has been around a long time, it's one of those oldies but goodies. So when I am crunched for time, I have my students JIGSAW the topics and let THEM be the experts. They love this part, I tell them they are going to be the teachers. Third graders just eat that up:) STEP ONE: Here is a great website that can give you the break down of all the steps but the first thing I decide is how I want to break apart the material being studied. Often for me, it is a chapter in a textbook. For example, right now we are studying the Habitats of Georgia so I divided the groups into the different regions. STEP TWO: Then decide how many students will need to be in each group. I let my students pick the group they want to be in but you can also assign groups. Then give the groups their guidelines on how they are going to study and present the material. This is where large chart paper comes in handy! I almost always have my groups make a chart. STEP THREE: After each group has time to study the material and decide how to "teach" it, it is time to do the presenting. The idea is that you take one expert from each group and form the JIGSAW groups, where each person presents their material to a small group. Sometimes, I have the groups present to the class as a whole (depending on the subject matter and how many groups I have). STEP FOUR: One important step, is to make sure you have a way for students to demonstrate what they learned from each group. You may want them to take notes as each person presents, or have a short formative assessment. FREEBIE: This strategy works so well and students love it. They enjoy learning from their peers and I love being able to cover topics in an efficient way. You can get a copy of my planning guide by clicking the picture: So don't forget about this awesome strategy the next time you're trying to squeeze it all in! Don't forget to keep checking back with us, we've got some great tips for fall coming up!

In this post, I use simple charts to show the differences between these important literacy routines!

What reading strategies do students need to know? Find out here and keep track with a free chart!

An educational blog hosted by a collaborative group of teacher-authors hoping to share creative and colorful ideas and activities from our classrooms!

Help your children to discover this fascinating period of History with our Victorians Pack! It includes a HUGE eBook that can be used for shared reading and independent research, along with a bumper collection of teaching, activity and classroom display resources.

Archetypes and meaning in life science marketing In our last issue we introduced the use of archetypes in life science marketing. Archetypes are a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern, or image that is universally present in individual psyches. In other words, a character or “type” we all intuitively understand. The value of archetypes springs from how quickly

What are homophones? How do you comfort a distraught grammar teacher? You say, there, their, they’re! This old joke is an example of a homophone.

Do you have parents of students in your classroom asking, "How can I help my child?" I will be sending these printables home at the beginning of the school year. Head on over to my blog to find out how you can downloaded these for FREE! 

This worksheet contains 5 different Reading Comprehension for Grade 2. The concepts are about “My little brother”, “My mom”, “Dentist”, “Caterpillars”, and “Little fox”. Download: Reading Comprehension for Grade 2

A few years ago, the staff at my school began learning about inquiry research. We used the book, Comprehension & Collaboration: Inqu...

I made up a few FREE Contraction Printables for teaching contractions to ALuv {6 years old} and wanted to share them! {Find the download link at the end of this post.} *This post contains affiliate links. FREE Contraction Printables for Teaching Contractions In the free printable pack, you’ll find: 1. Contraction Concentration: The cards ... Read More about FREE Contraction Printables for Teaching Contractions

Well, my school year has barely ended, and call me crazy, because I am already planning and creating for next year!! I have a list a mile long of new ideas that I can’t wait to try out for next year. My first one?!?! Close Reading Toolboxes!! This post contains affiliate links to amazon.com. If you…

A district-wide unit that affirms the experiences of ELLs while teaching content and developing their language skills. ELLs voices were highlighted through this multi-grade, multi-school unit.

We'd like to share this critical thinking skills cheatsheet for you to use with your students. Get them asking questions on any topic! Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa)

Applying Nancy Motley's Talk Read Talk Write (TRTW) strategy in the ELL classroom. Differentiating TRTW for Beginning to Bridging ELs.

Five Senses Wordsearch - Unscramble- Match, We share with you the following worksheet to work the five senses to print.

Learning by doing has become widespread. Screw reading a textbook and just do stuff. Start your own business. Fail fast, fail often. Learn-by-doing is a sexy way to learn. While there is arguably no…

These posters provide knowledge, understanding, inspiration and direction for children and adults with dyslexia. Enjoy our Dyslexia Posters Free.

How are you doing with teaching non-fiction, informational texts? Do you feel you have a good grasp on expository text structures? With the Common Core ELA standards, students are expected to be proficient in reading complex informational texts. State assessments are also becoming more non-fiction focused, to evaluate student abilities in navigating these complex texts. So what can we do to help our students meet these standards? The purpose of this post is to provide a few resources for teaching non-fiction, in preparation for the higher levels of achievement students are expected to reach! The ideas shared are perfect for upper

Dual language education provides a unique and powerful opportunity to strengthen children's highest cognitive brain potentials.

For the upcoming school year I would like to revamp our Daily 5 “Word Work” options. Last year during that rotation our students completed worksheets on previously taught grammar, spelling, and vocabulary skills. I want to take less of a “drill and kill” approach for this year. I am working on a few different ideas.…

Hurray! You're here. Let me help you with fun resources for your primary students to keep them excited about learning!

Parents are the most important people in a child’s life. Did you know that a Kindergarten Aged Child’s brain is not developed enough for them to feel proud of themselves, without some feedback from

We all know that every child's journey to become a reader is different. What is simple for one may be incredibly difficult for another, some are great with phonics instruction, others seem to sail right through sight words, and others yet can read the words, but have a hard time with understanding what they're reading. How on earth are you supposed to teach a room full of children who are all unique and at different points on their reading journey? You differentiate. You may have 3-4 reading groups, you may have 6-7 reading groups (yes, I did that), you may pull students for 1-1 instruction, or small group instruction with a group that needs to work on a particular concept. Today I thought I'd show you some simple ways to use a single reading resource many ways, that is, to differentiate. I'm going to focus today on emergent readers. UNC defines an emergent reader as: "Child on the path to fluent literacy, before conventional reading and writing skills emerge. Emergent readers demonstrate alphabet knowledge, a concept of what a word is, a sense of story (beginning, middle, end), listening and retelling skills, phonemic awareness, and verbal expression." Here's an example of some text you might use with an emergent reader. It has a limited number of words, uses mostly sight words, and has pictures that clearly match the sentences. You'll notice the text has a repeating pattern, in this case, "I see a red __" The book I took this from has 6 sentences with this pattern, one to a page, plus a final page without the last word on it, for the children to add in their own word and picture. Once children are familiar with the text pattern from the book, you can have them match the sentences and pictures. Start with just a couple, and work your way up. You can also separate the words in a sentence and have students pay close attention to each word in order to put the words in the correct order. This is a great time to point out that sentences start with capital letters (so the word "This" must be first) and end with punctuation (so the word yellow must be last). Children will look at the first letter in each word to help them decode the word, and need to think about what makes sense. They may notice that the first word in each sentence is the same, or point out the pattern the sentences are based on. If they struggle with one of these words, you might want to point out other instances of the word - preferably in a sentence they've already read. I find that children are much more likely to engage with the text if they have the opportunity to "play" with it, so I make word and picture cards large enough for students to manipulate easily. I usually use mine in a pocket chart. Just think of the fun children can have putting the words in the wrong order to create crazy "sentences" - and the reading and thinking about the words necessary to do so! If you are working on skills like this with more than one child, challenge them to work together to make the sentences, or to scramble them up for each other. My students LOVED taking turns scrambling and decoding sentences. You can even have them dictate and illustrate additional sentences that fit the pattern, and let them scramble and decode those! As students gain skills and confidence, you can challenge them with more text at once... ... including multiple scrambled sentences. Here I've combined both of these techniques: several sentences need to be unscrambled, and then the matching picture can be found and placed with each one. Notice that these are still predictable sentences that follow a pattern, and that the pictures still correlate closely to the text. By varying the number of sentences children are working with, whether the words are in order or scrambled, and whether the pictures are with the sentence or scrambled separately, you can manage the difficulty level for different children - or the same child, on different days. This is the most challenging level I've come up with for this kind of text. I've scrambled both the pictures and the words for multiple sentences, and have provided the text in book form for students to refer to as they put everything in order. Look how much more challenging this is than the other ways of differentiating listed above! By the time students can work with the text at this level, they've most likely mastered the sight words used in the text, and will be able to identify those words in other places. (In other words, they're really reading!) When working with children like this, it's important to look at what they CAN do, and to build on the skills already in place. A child who already knows the sight words in a text probably doesn't need to match pictures to sentences, just as a child who is working to put a single sentence in order will only be frustrated if you scramble several at once. You want them to enjoy the experience of working with words, as well as to learn new things! These techniques will work with almost any emergent reader text, but if you are interested in the texts I've used in this post, they are all part of this resource, including the word and picture cards for children to manipulate: I'd love to hear how you differentiate for your emergent readers - share your tips in the comment section below!

After this past week, my kiddos could certainly answer that question with a big YES! This week we learned what the setting is, what makes up a setting, and why on earth it matters so much! My kiddos rocked it, so I’m here to share what we did. I know that spending an entire week on setting might seem like…

Hey, today we studied a little bit of new classroom English expressions so that you can express yourselves in English as often as possible in the class. Among the new expressions were : Dire qu'on ne sait pas : - I'm afraid I don't have a clue. - I'm...

Pass them on to your first grade teacher friends!

How three types of scaffolding instruction (sensory, graphic, interactive) can empower ELLs to access content and develop academic language skills.

MAPS AND GLOBES - Social Studies Resource for 1st Grade Teachers This set of materials is a great supplemental pack of resources for your instruction on MAPS & GLOBES. Click on the PREVIEW above to see sample pages from the set. THIS PACKET INCLUDES: • 12 vocabulary posters explaining key terms: atlas bird's eye view compass rose equator globe key landmark human feature map physical feature route symbol • Multiple student learning sheets prompting students to: complete a K-W-L chart label and color a globe label and color a map complete a compass rose compare maps and globes using a Venn diagram sort vocabulary definitions on a True/False t-chart practice using map keys find locations using street names demonstrate using a compass when reading a map explain how maps are helpful • A 6-page student "history" book explaining FUN FACTS about maps • Higher-order projects, including a pancake-book inspired by the children's book "Me on the Map" and a flip-book project where children create original maps of their bedroom, classroom, and school • Original poems and songs that can be used for integrating shared reading and/or phonics instruction The materials in this set can be used in multiple contexts, including: guided instruction homework options assessment pieces TEACHERS LIKE YOU SAID: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “I used this resource for the first time this year and my students LOVED it, especially reading the maps." (Amanda S.) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “This helped to make my social studies more fun!!" (Leah M.) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Wow, this was a wonderful resource for our maps and globes unit. Thank you!" (Kirbi M.) Thank you for your interest in this item. After purchasing, REMEMBER TO LEAVE FEEDBACK. Each review leads to TPT CREDIT you can use for future purchases! ❤️ FOLLOW ME ON TPT to stay in the loop when new resources are launched. Copyright © Andrea Knight All rights reserved by the author. Permission to copy for single classroom use only.

Learn these action verbs to improve and enhance your vocabulary about verbs in English.

Will Thalheimer reminds L&D professionals that the most important thing we can do is be skeptical when we encounter “research” or evidence.

These worksheets are about “Who What Where When”. Using these question models, the reading comprehension has been prepared. Download Who What Where When Reading Comprehension

S.T.O.R.Y. A few years ago, I was looking for a fun and engaging way to teach Fiction Text Structure to my struggling readers, when I came across Victoria Naughton's strategy, 'Picture It!' (2008), in my copy of The Reading Teacher. Naughton was recognized for her hard work in research and publication with the Shaw Fund for Literacy 2009 award by National Louis University (NLU). Although she recommends it for all grade-levels (even high school), I use it with my 2nd and 3rd grade RtI groups. Essentially, this strategy 'uses pictures and other visual elements to enhance comprehension' (Naughton, 2008). Each letter of S.T.O.R.Y. represents an

The usage of THERE IS and THERE ARE is quite easy to understand. In this post there is a mind map, a worksheet and two games to help you or your students.

One of the most important elements of teaching is providing students with plenty of opportunities to actively engage in learning with their peers. This blog post covers my favorite cooperative learning strategies that I have used in my classroom. These activities can be used across all subjects and several grade levels (3-6+). Bonus: I created […]

Write the right form of the verb ”to be”: am - is - are. Worksheets PDF, Grammar for beginners to be.