Use "think alouds" in your classroom? This is a freebie think aloud visual that you can use in your classroom when you're performing them for your students. It's a visual clue that what you're saying out loud is what you're thinking in your brain, and it's what they should be doing while reading a...
This is a student-friendly chart outlining how think alouds can help promote text comprehension. Each think aloud strategy contains a few prompts students can ask themselves to assist them in activating the given strategy, thus, encouraging students to share their thinking and become better readers.
Y'all my office smells like something died. Seriously! It started about two weeks ago. I walked in and got hit with a pretty putrid smel...
User interviews help you learn who your users are, what their experiences are like, and what they need, value, and desire.
What is Wrong with This Sentence?" is an engaging auditory book designed to help children enhance their comprehension and language skills through interactive listening exercises. Perfect for children with special needs, including autism, ADHD, and hyperlexia, this book transforms learning into a fun and rewarding experience. Inside You'll Find: Auditory Learning Activities: Each sentence is read aloud, challenging children to identify the incorrect word and choose the right one, fostering active listening and critical thinking. Interactive Exercises: Fun and engaging tasks that encourage participation and keep children interested and motivated. Support for Special Needs: Tailored to the unique learning styles of children with autism, ADHD, and hyperlexia, providing a comfortable and effective way to improve language comprehension. Development of Focus and Attention: Short, manageable tasks designed to improve attention span and focus. Building Confidence: Clear and immediate feedback helps children feel accomplished and boosts their confidence in their abilities.
Read aloud texts are vital at every age and support the creation of strong readers. By reading aloud to students, we help to foster strong literacy skills such as reading fluency, auditory comprehension, the usage of expression and tone, modeling thinking, text features, introduction to new vocabulary, and of course, we get to share our love of reading - which is contagious!
In class this week we were introduced to this idea of “constructing meaning.” For this blog posting, you are to investigate strategies that can be used to develop or construct meaning.…
A blog full of tips, lessons, and ideas to use in the upper elementary classroom.
What have you noticed in the last two weeks? Take one minute and think about your “I NOTICE” statements. Here are some of my “I NOTICE” statements I’ve told my students, and their responses: I notice you look happy…. “I am going to my brother’s baseball game, so I am happy!” I notice you look tired….. “I woke up in the middle of the night.” I notice you are working on your morning task…. (smile!) I notice your cool leggings… “I coordinated the color green!” I notice your legs are out of your desk… “Oops.” I notice something on the floor…. (Picks up a couple of pencils) I notice you are struggling…. “I know. Can I use the fraction kit?” And then, I noticed someone who came in the classroom mad. Me: I notice you are angry. Kid: I AM very angry because Tom is annoying. Me: (Hmmmm, she just came in and had no interaction with Tom.) Me: Hey, shall we step out? I will be glad to listen to you. Kid: Fine (fuming!) (Follows me) Me: So, what’s up? Kid: Tom is making noises and it is so annoying. Me: I see. You are frustrated because of the noise Tom makes, am I right? Kid: Yes! Me: OK, why don’t you let me take care of Tom? I assume you know some calming down strategies for yourself, right? Kid: Right. Me: Great. Let me go take care of Tom while you take time to calm yourself down here. When you are settled down, you are welcome to come back to the room. Me: (Going into the room) Kid: (Starts breathing) After a couple of minutes, she came in and started her entry task. The entire process took me about 5 minutes. “I notice” statements give the impression of “I care about you.” This simple 5 minute interaction saved many hours of instructional time. Adults who take care of children almost always have good intentions. Unfortunately, some of these people don’t have clear execution in their communication. Good intentions are delivered and displayed to others through good listening, instead of just “telling” people how they care about them. Building relationships with “I NOTICE” statements applies to adults, too. You have been practicing “I NOTICE” statements with your learners and yourself for the last two weeks. Keep working on them. This week, add to your audience your colleagues and your family members. For instance, try simple complements like, “I notice your new shoes,” “I notice you have done the laundry,” or “I noticed you lowered your body when you were talking to your student,” etc. “I NOTICE” opportunities are limitless! Then, I want you to notice how your working communities, neighborhood, and your family would change, and what feelings you notice when you get responses from them. I look forward to hearing about your experiences!
This simple project with help teach kids geography and increase their global awareness as they begin to grasp their city, state, country, and continent.
Mentor texts are very helpful for modeling with think aloud the process we as teachers use as we read. This post focuses on strategies for making predictions using Enemy Pie.
Ready for the biggest list of math picture books? Because I've found SO MANY amazing math books, I can't wait to tell you about them!
In this post, I am going to tell you how to use a simple tool called "ThinkMarks" to help young children understand informational...
Over the years I've had the opportunity to speak at dozens of homeschooling conventions. Speaking is an honor, of course, but getting to meet homeschooling mamas is the real treat. So often I hear a similar thread from them. It sounds something like this: “This is harder than I thought it would be.”“I can’t manage
Hey there! Jen Bradshaw here from TeacherKARMA.com Teachers, can you believe that you actually have to tell your students to THINK WHILE THEY READ? Reading is Thinking Resource has the perfect anchor chart for working on: predict infer visualize make connections question the text summarize Grab your FREEBIE over at Teacher KARMA. Best wishes! Jen Bradshaw You Might ... Read More about READing is THINKing – Comprehension Anchor Chart
Eagle Cam Update {If you have not tuned in yet, it is not too late. There are stunning photos on the site and even videos of the past 4+ w...
Kindgerecht und überaus komisch wird hier gezeigt, dass sich Ausdauer, Einfallsreichtum und Geduld auszahlen Ein kleines Mädchen hat eine grossartige Idee. Mit Hilfe eines Assistenten, ihrem Mops, will sie DAS GROSSARTIGSTE DING DER WELT bauen. Sie weiss genau, wie es aussehen und funktionieren soll. Ist doch kinderleicht! Aber das grossartigste Ding zu bauen, ist dann doch viel schwerer, als sie gedacht hatte. Sie schraubt, hämmert, klebt, dreht, malt und bastelt ein Ding nach dem anderen, aber nie wird es so, wie sie sich das vorgestellt hat. Nie wird es RICHTIG, immer ist es FALSCH. Doch mit ganz viel Ausdauer und der Unterstützung ihres Assistenten kommt am Ende doch etwas heraus, das GROSSARTIG ist.
Focus your planning by getting clear on just three things: the WHAT, the HOW, and the WHY.
Amazing math books for children from toddlers to beginning readers and topics such as counting & number operations, displaying and analyzing data, geometry & spatial sense, and more.
Hi There! Lisa here, from Growing Firsties & I'm going to share a little bit about Growth Mindset today, which is based on Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck's work. Heads up that I do have some Amazon Affiliate links in this post. Should you choose to use the links, I'll earn some "circle money" as my daughter calls coins. :-) Half of my affiliate proceeds are for paying it forward - each month I receive earnings I give to my local food pantry/outreach services organization. The other half is spent on books and items for my classroom. With a growth mindset, people believe that through effort and practice, they can develop and improve their talents and abilities. In a fixed mindset, people believe that their talents and abilities are fixed...and that it's talent (not effort) that creates success. Woah. Years ago, I first began to think about mindset in terms of working with struggling students...those students where the learning is hard. Students, who, if they don't have the mindset to keep trying, will give up. Then what will they learn? My thinking expanded as I witnessed students labelled as gifted hitting a struggle academically and not knowing how to handle the struggle when they are unfamiliar with the resilience and effort needed. Then I realized that mindset, resilience & perseverance are critical for all of us. Regardless of age. #helloIhatecardio #gottadoitanyways You may have seen this Growing Firsties post from a few years ago, containing this freebie download. Or maybe this post from last summer all about perseverance. I am blessed to work at an amazing school! Some talented colleagues ran a book study on Dweck's Mindset book this year and it was such fun to re-read and discuss mindset with like-minded teachers! I also added Mindsets in the Classroom (by Mary Cay Ricci) to my collection. We read aloud some great books and I expanded my collection beyond the wonderful texts from Peter H. Reynolds (Ish, The Dot, Going Places...) One of my teammates asked me if I had a printable for our work on mindset and that gave me the motivation to put my swirling thoughts to work....Here's a little peek at the inside... Scroll down to download this freebie! :) You might be interested in reading an article by the always eloquently-thought-provoking Alfie Kohn "The Perils of Growth Mindset" education. You can get to it {right here}. Carol Dweck, author of Mindset, has written this EXCELLENT article...you'll definitely want to check it out! You can get to it {right here}. I have a Pinterest board called Mindset and I love pinning to it! You can check it out by clicking here or the screen shot below. You should really check out the Famous Failures video! It's amazing! We'd love to hear what you do to help build a growth mindset with your learners!
A tippy turtle helps children build the decoding skills that lead to fluency and comprehension with this simple play that provides plenty of repeated reading practice with words from the -ap word family.
Research based teaching strategies you can use today with a free printable chart.
We have all heard the term, Reading is THINKING! Unfortunately, actually teaching kiddos how to think and be more metacognative while they are reading is more difficult than it sounds! This anchor chart, Reading is Thinking, has helped me to model for my students how to think, ask questions, predict, summarize, visualize, infer, and make connections while they are reading. Reading is THINKING Freebie to improve Comprehension ~ TeacherKarma.com Click on the Reading is Thinking anchor chart to get more strategies and a FREEBIE just for you. :) Best wishes!
Teaching reading comprehension is such a challenge! Learn how I revamped my reading instruction (and my reading block) to inspire HUGE change in my readers!
With so many good options, what are the best read aloud books for 5th grade? These books will make great choices for your readers.
Higher level questioning is on everyone's minds these days. I knew I wanted to create something for Blooms, but just couldn't decide on how I wanted it to look in my classroom. It's always been something I just do without even thinking. I always gear my questioning toward higher level thinking, but don't necessarily tell my students where each question ranks on the Bloom's Hierarchy. I've come up with a little something to incorporate more of the Bloom's language and questioning in my day to day classroom discussions. We always have a read aloud for the week, whether it's from our reading adoption (Reading Street) or a trade book. My plan is to use this form to teach the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and then have them answer questions about the story at the different levels of Blooms. My analogy will be when the shirt is fully buttoned, then you are fully dressed and ready to go. And when you are able to answer all the button level questions, then you have a full or complete understanding of the story. My plan is to have button breaks, where a student will randomly choose a colored button from a can. The color they choose will correspond to a Bloom's Button Card which contains a question that corresponds to a particular level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Some times I may have them answer the question independently, they could do this either orally or in a journal. Other times they may try to answer the question with a buddy or a group. The goal is to get them thinking about the story as well as their own thinking!!! These are the buttons that I'm using in my jar. Nice and big. Notice that the orange buttons are missing in the middle picture above. Well, we had an uh oh, this evening. My toddler decided to stick the orange buttons inside the skinny opening of my very expensive laminator. Yikes, it was not fun finding a solution for that one!!! Here is an example of a few of the cards. There are 9 questions for each of the 6 levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. There are also blank (editable) cards provided for you to add your own questions as you see fit. There is also a black line master available of the Button Chart, if you would like to have your students color it in and then place it in a journal/notebook to refer to throughout the year. You can click the picture below to head on over to my teacher store. Hope my students and possibly yours love their button breaks!!!
Scripted SCIENCE lessons for kindergarten - Engaging, easy to prep, and includes everything you need! Nonfiction read-aloud books, PowerPoints for every lesson, student activities and workbooks... Kids LOVE this program! NGSS and TEKS aligned.
Yesterday, I shared my weekly post in the Building Mathematical Comprehension book study. As I said in that post, this chapter is so long and full of great ideas. So full, that I had to break it up into two posts. Today’s post is all about the strategies that Sammons suggests to help your students […]
My team level compiled this bookmark as a tool to be used with Think Aloud and other comprehension building activities. The information on the bookmark comes from Bloom's Taxonomy, Think Aloud Categories and Active Inquiry strategies. The design is original to me. One license for up to 3 teachers. You and share with 2 others. :-)
