Ok, I get these Q’s frequently from teachers who reach out to me regarding setting up and running stations or centers (same thing, basically) in their middle school English / Language Arts / Reading / Writing classes: How do I make stations work so I can . . . >> teach my students while also
Below is my list of the 15 best books for 6th graders. As an ELA teacher, these are my tried-and-true tools for unlocking the reader buried within all of my
I can't believe it's only Tuesday...Seriously? I already feel like I need the weekend for a break. Part of the problem is that it was my ...
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
Making inferences worksheets and activities aren't always easy for students, but there are fun ways to teach this challenging reading skill.
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!
Thinking about implementing a Daily Three reading structure for reading rotations? Check out this post for details and example activities for each roation.
Simple tips for improving writing in your second or third grade classroom. These tips are a must if you want better writers!
As teachers begin planning for back to school, I see an abundance of creative classrooms filling my Instagram and Pinterest feeds. I love seeing how other
Kids will have fun looking for nouns all around them in this Grammar Activity for Kids. Simply print the Noun Hunt printable and head out for fun learning.
Unleash the power of poetry analysis with our dynamic Poetry Analysis Graphic Organizer, meticulously designed to be paired with any text or poem. This versatile resource, crafted using Google Slides, offers the flexibility of both printing and digital assignment, enabling students to unravel the intricate layers of poetry's artistry. Key Features: Comprehensive Analysis: This graphic organizer presents a comprehensive framework for diving deep into the poetic realm, encompassing key elements such as Tone, Word Choice, Imagery, Style, and Theme. Digital and Printable: Accessible via digital platforms or traditional print, this resource adapts seamlessly to diverse learning environments, ensuring accessibility and convenience. What Students Will Explore: Tone: The graphic organizer guides students in uncovering the speaker's attitude toward the subject, fostering an understanding of the emotional tone of the poem. Word Choice: Students will analyze the specific words used, their connotations, associations, and emotional impact on the reader, facilitating a deeper comprehension of the poem's linguistic nuances. Imagery: The organizer prompts students to immerse themselves in the sensory details of the poem, from sound and smell to sight, taste, and touch, enhancing their sensory perception and connection to the text. Style: Students will explore the author's unique style, including the use of figurative language, repetition, rhyme, and rhythm, illuminating the poetic techniques that shape the verse. Theme: The graphic organizer helps students uncover the poet's profound insight about life, encouraging them to ponder the deeper meanings and messages embedded in the verse. Why Choose Our Poetry Analysis Graphic Organizer: Comprehensive Framework: This resource provides students with a systematic framework for in-depth analysis, fostering a deep appreciation of poetry's artistry. Digital and Printable: Designed for both digital and print use, this graphic organizer accommodates various learning preferences and environments, enhancing accessibility. Critical Thinking: By guiding students through the exploration of poetic elements, this organizer promotes critical thinking, interpretation, and a profound connection to poetry. Empower your students to become skilled interpreters of poetry, unveiling the secrets of verse and fostering a lifelong appreciation for the art of language. The Poetry Analysis Graphic Organizer is an essential tool for nurturing critical analysis and poetic awareness. Elevate your teaching and inspire your students with a versatile resource designed to deepen their understanding of poetry and its captivating intricacies. Transform your classroom with the Poetry Analysis Graphic Organizer from History and Literacy for All!
Hi friends!! I’m super excited to be linking up with Doodle Bugs for Five for Friday. I haven’t done one in a long time!! But I’m not feeling too well […]
These worksheets for main idea and supporting details are a great way to build reading comprehension in young students. Grab the free sample.
If you are looking for some high-interest activities, try using animated shorts to teach inference. Free handouts focus on student learning.
Did you think teaching students to write would be a snap? I mean, you are a college-educated, certified individual. How hard could it possibly be? Well, it’s a challenge, especially when just starting out. In my classroom,
Back to School is right around the corner for us and I am SUPER excited to kick of this school year with some fun, hands-on and engaging resources for The
Want an intentional way to increase your students' morphological skills AND vocabulary? Try a morphology word of the day routine!
Each Monday we collaborate with our building's new and Dual Language staff members for a professional development session based on what they highlight as their needs and/or desires for learning! This week we focused on Daily 5 ideas as all of our staff are currently working hard to get their stations and guided reading up and running! The teachers who attending the session came up with a variety of wonderful ideas and activities that could potentially be used throughout the year in these work stations. I thought some of you may enjoy taking a gander at what they came up with as well! Just a little background... we utilized a strategy many of you may be familiar with called "Round Robin" to gather ideas during our meeting. The staff were given the anchor charts with only the titles and asked to add any activity ideas they were doing, would like to do, etc. based on the title on their paper. We gave each group 1 minute to brainstorm and write their ideas, and then they were asked to pass the poster to the next group. We continued to do this until all posters had made it to all groups. This is a great strategy that you could use with your students as well to assess their background knowledge and/or learning of concepts. You could even do it at the beginning of the year to see what activities they already know and enjoy doing during Daily 5 if they are familiar with it from the year past! This may give you some insight as to what they may want to do in your classroom as well! Alright now onto the posters...keep in mind these were quickly written by our staff and we discussed them a bit after as well, so not everything may make perfect sense! But feel free to ask questions in the comments if you have any and I would be happy to try my best to answer! After our meeting, I also took some time to type up all of their ideas onto one page for them to hold on to and refer to throughout the year. You are welcome to a copy if you'd like- just click on the image below :)! (Graphics: Scrappin Doodles, Priscilla Concepcion)
Spelling is a skill that develops with time, teaching and practice. We work hard all school year to build solid spelling foundations in our little learners. To do this, we provide our students with engaging tools that assist and challenge them to be responsible for their own learning. Now’s the time for us to up […]
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
Get organized with a daily and weekly ELA plan so that you feel confident and prepared. Planning the structure of a class period varies by unit. Start here!
Need to help your students get more hands on practice for their vocabulary words? I've got 5 fun vocabulary games you can use right away!
Last year, I taught how to make inferences for quite some time. With such an emphasis on close reading, I wanted my students to read between the lines, to dig deeper, and to find out the answer to the question, “what is the author really trying to say?!” I spent a lot of time […]
Teach kids to use guide words, word forms, find definitions and more with dictionary detective! Print FREE dictionary skills worksheets.
The freebies have moved! Instead of having the freebies in a separate resource library, we have put all of our freebies in our shop. You can find the freebies by clicking right here!
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 […]
Looking for a fun way to introduce the writing process to your students? What about using playdough? Come grab a fun & hands on lesson for your classroom!
Seven effective first grade assessment tools to test student knowledge with checklists, journals, observations, conferences, and rubrics.
Here are 15 engaging and creative TV episodes to use in ELA to teach genre, narrative techniques, characterization, and more. (Blog post)
⚓Make learning about the Titanic for Kids fun and easy with a printable reader. Children will read, color and learn titanic facts for kids.
Do you use a yearly pacing guide? It is so handy to have a map of how you plan to fit the various standards into your academic year. Things WILL change, but it nice to have some idea of where you'd like to be with your instruction. I think that it makes lesson
As we have entered the month of August, every teacher, whether she likes it or not, starts thinking about school. Some of us have dreams (or nightmares). Some of us go on a Pinterest spree. We walk through Target and ask ourselves "What do I 'need' from the dollar section?" You don't do this? Okay, maybe it's just me. Anyway, we are also thinking about what were some of our students' challenges last year, and how we will address them this year. My third and fourth graders had difficulty with vocabulary and making inferences, which was evident in how they would describe their characters: Nice Mean Sad Oh my. So late last school year, I developed this chart of character traits with the intention of helping students organize their thinking when selecting a character trait. Traits are arranged in alphabetical order in the following categories: nice/mean/sad, confident/nervous, and does a lot/does very little. The rest of the categories are partially alphabetical and having a corresponding opposite. This year I will be teaching second graders, so I'm thinking how I will adjust this chart to better suit their developmental abilities: Less words? Words that are more relevant to a second grade schema? Some pictures or graphics to support the vocabulary? Some food for my thought... Many teachers or parents who have downloaded this chart seemed very happy, and I'm happy that they're happy!! Update: Hello there, long time friend! If you found this resource useful for your students, please check out my Character Feelings blog post and TPT product!
This post features literacy center ideas and printables for 4th-grade classrooms. It includes reading centers for fourth grade.
Teaching the elements of fiction doesn't have to be complicated or time-consuming. See how I break it down and teach through stations!
What is PBL? Project-based learning is an approach in which students explore real-world problems and challenges to acquire a deepe...
Differentiating your instruction can be overwhelming. I get it. When you hear the word "differentiation" do you automatica...
I have so much to share with you about writing interventions, but first things first: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW BLOG DESIGN?!?!? Please share your thoughts! Every year, I meet lots of middle schoolers who struggle with writing. And every year, I play around with lots of different interventions to meet their needs. Last year, I made establishing sound writing interventions one of my big goals. I spent lots of time (and money!!) on resources that I could use, and by about March, I had something that I thought I was pretty happy with. This year, I'm starting off with those interventions that worked so well last year and I couldn't be happier with the results! In fact, I'm so pleased with how they are working, I feel confident enough to share my practice with my blog readers. I can say that these are definitely KID TESTED, TEACHER APPROVED!! Creating a Time and Space for Intervention within your Classroom I teach by myself. There are no aides, special ed teachers, BSI teachers... just little, ol' me! So, when I want to create and manage small groups, I'm on my own. This is hard. It would be so much easier if there was another adult in the room to help, but there is not, so I just have to deal! It's work, but it absolutely can be done! A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Power of Bell-Ringers. Establishing a quiet and smooth transition into writing class is a great way to get started, but it also provides me with a window of time where I can pull a small group! By mid-October, my bell-ringer time gets extended to 15 minutes. The kids get started immediately and are clear on the expectations during this time. Now the environment for working with small groups is set: the room is quiet and engaged, allowing me to focus my time on the handful of kids in my group. I pull my kids to a table that I have set up in front of our classroom library. I have a "teacher station" at one end where I do my instruction. I usually stream some jazz or piano music during this time so my group doesn't distract the rest of the class. Establishing Interventions In my district, by middle school, there are no longer district-mandated interventions in place. There are no clear resources for teachers to use or personnel to help. So, when we have a struggling reader or writer in 7th or 8th grade, it's the job of the classroom teacher to meet their needs. In my tenure of working with middle schoolers, I've found that there are two types of students who need more support than my writing curriculum provides (and please remember... I am not a researcher/specialist/writer of books/etc. I'm just a teacher, like you, who loves my job, tries to do the best by my kids, and is compulsively reflective about what I see happening... to me, teachers are the best EXPERTS, but I know that we are hesitant these days to trust a "lowly" teacher and rather find ourselves relying on big publishers and educational researchers to show us best practices... I don't have lots of "data" to support what I'm sharing with you... just my actual observations I've made while working with real, live kids in an average classroom setting!!). Type One: Students Who Struggle with Structure The first type of students who need intervention are those who struggle with structure. These are the kids that can't organize their thoughts in a way a reader could follow. They simply write whatever their brain thinks at the time. They can generally stick with a broad topic, but because they are just writing whatever pops into their head at the time, there are lots of places where their writing veers off track and becomes confusing. Here is an example written by a former student struggling with structure: My dog Henry is my most special treasure. He is always there for me whenever I need him in sad times and happy. In many ways, he's my best friend. He has brown fur and a white chest. He is such a good dog to have around when you are sad because he always knows just how to cheer you up. His eyes are brown, like a Hersey bar. His favorite toy is a yellow tennis ball. Once he almost got hit by a car chasing the ball down the street. I have loved him ever since he was a puppy and we first got him. I was only 4-years old when that little ball of fluff was brought home by my parents to be best friends. His soft fur is always so smooth and warm when you pet him while watching TV on a cold night. He is my best friend and that is why he is my special treasure [sic]. This student is clear about his topic - his dog, Henry - but he cannot organize his thoughts. He is thinking about his dog and writes down everything he knows about his buddy exactly as it comes to his mind. Clearly, he has mechanical and conventional skills, and you can see evidence of where he is practicing what we learned in our mini-lessons and from studying our mentor pieces. But, because there is no organization, it is too difficult to follow and all of the skills he has are lost to the untrained, teacher-eye. Kids who write like this need an intervention that focuses on structure and organization. Typically, I LOATHE teaching step-by-step process writing, but in cases like this, I'm left with little choice. The lessons that I put together for kids in need of this intervention consist of learning how to write a well-organized paragraph. Together, we will work on writing topic sentences, creating strong and clear supporting sentences, and finish up with writing a closing that sticks with our reader. My favorite plans for this type of writing come from Michael Friermood. His Fact-Based Opinion Writing products are geared toward teaching elementary students (grades 3-5) how to write a good opinion paragraph, and they are PERFECT for my struggling 7th graders. They also lack a lot of the "cutesy" images that you find with products for this age group, so my big kids don't feel like I'm making them do "baby stuff." (I do not use the stationary he provides for the final writing piece... it's adorable, but it would be pushing in with my kids! So, we just do our paragraph writing in our intervention notebooks!) My plan is to pull the intervention group for one week (at 15 minutes a pop, this comes to 1 1/4 hours of learning). Long before I ever pull a group, I work hard to make sure that my lesson is broken down into five succinct 15-minute increments. Since time is so precious, you need to make sure not one minute is wasted! I can say that it takes me much longer to plan for a small-group lesson than a 50-minute whole-class lesson because efficiency is so crucial. The first few times you plan a small-group lesson, don't be surprised if your timing is mess. It definitely takes practice to be an effective small-group instructor! After their week is up, then I send them back to completing the bell-ringer at the start of class. I will watch them closely and conference with them lots to make sure that I am seeing a transfer of skills. If I don't, then it is likely that I will put them back in an intervention group in a few weeks to practice again. This intervention model will continue all year. Right now, I have 8 intervention students in one writing class, and 6 in another. By the end of the year, those number should reduce to 3-4 and 2-3. Never in all my years of working with small groups, have I had 100% of my intervention students "graduate" from small group. Don't be frustrated if this is the case! If you can improve 50-60% of those kids, then consider that a huge success!! Type Two: Students Who Struggle with Motivation The next group of kids that I work with are those who struggle with motivation. These are the students who complain a lot about not having anything to write about, spend more time doodling or coloring in their notebook than writing, and who will write the absolute bare minimum for any writing assignment. Many times, these kids produce too little for me to gauge whether or not they also need help with structure. But typically, once I can get them writing, they will likely find themselves in a small group for structure work :) Come October, after we've spent lots of lots of time list writing, the kids who are still struggling to get their pencils moving find themselves using a very special Interactive Writer's Notebook called "Musings from a Middle Schooler." This product contains loads of interactive writing pages that will motivate even the most reluctant writers. The pages can be printed out and glued into a marble notebook. (Most often, I'll have the kids create their own... I don't always have them use all the pages, rather I let them pick and choose the ones they like!). Cover Table of Contents page Table of Contents cont. and an "All About Me" page "My Life Story in Two Pages" My Favorite Thing Comics I created this project just last school year and it's been an absolute smash! The kids (especially my boys!) LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! In absolutely no time, they are writing like crazy. And once I can get their pencils moving it doesn't take me long to get them producing some actual pieces. I don't necessarily pull these kids and work with them in a small group. The first few days, we will assemble our books all together at the back table, but then they go right back to the big group. Rather than do the bell-ringer with the rest of the class at the start of the period, they will work in their "Musings" notebooks. Fifteen minutes of that is usually enough to get them into writing mode for the rest of class. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * So, that's how I make writing intervention work in my classroom. Phew!! That was long, folks!! I apologize for my wordiness and I am grateful if you stuck it out until the end! Also, I'm sure that I've left out some crucial details of my practice, so please do not hesitate to ask me any questions you still have! Do you have any good intervention tips or strategies that work for you? I'd love to hear about them. Drop me a comment and share! Happy Teaching!!
