Have you ever walked into a classroom and truly been wowed? On a recent coaching visit, I walked into a Kindergarten classroom and I had this feeling. I immediately felt that I was in a child-centered environment that stimulates and gently coaxes children to read, write, and learn with ease. I found myself surrounded in print. The students were actively engaged in independent reading. They each sat on an individual decorative rug spread out throughout the wide-open room. As I gazed around the room, my eyes landed on organized collections of books everywhere. One large area of the room was set aside as a reading area. On the...
Read More Post a comment (0)It is 6 p.m. and I have just wrapped up a “laborious” hour of math homework with my daughter. Math homework is typically my husband’s “job,” but tonight he is at a meeting so I am in charge. Just like my daughter, I find reading work much easier than the abstract tasks associated with the math work that comes home every night. Students struggling with math is very real but has not necessarily gained as much attention as students struggling with reading. Math Response to Intervention—identifying students who may be at risk of falling through the cracks either in reading...
Read More Post a comment (1)Reaching our students—easier or more difficult than before? To answer, go back to your first year of teaching or your freshman year of high school when your teachers were reaching you, or trying to. In the digital era, we may feel like shouting or at least hitting Caps Lock before responding: more difficult! The sense of competition with digital tools breeds a kind of exasperation—how do I get my students’ attention, much less sustain it for an entire lesson and string enough of these together to cover the standards? When we leverage the digital tools that define our students as digital residents...
Read More Post a comment (2)I have been working with schools lately regarding Guided Reading, and one principal asked me to put together a list of tips (basically reminders) for teachers who are implementing Guided Reading. Teachers were so grateful; I thought I might share it with others. Below is my list! Guided Reading is the heart of Reading Instruction. It is the time where students apply all the reading strategies taught throughout the literacy block. Students should be reading independently most of the time during Guided Reading, while teachers monitor and make notations of reading behaviors. An instructional leveled text is a text that students can read...
Read More Post a comment (0)Every one of us recognizes the book introduction as a key aspect of the "before" reading component in guided reading. Imagine you are introducing Native Americans at the Time of the Explorers to a group of 3rd graders. You activate their schema about Native Americans, tapping into their prior knowledge and making connections to their life experiences. You frame it this way: “Tell me some things you know about Native Americans.” Their responses vary, most are on point, a few surprises! In other words, a typical beginning to your small-group lesson and one that starts your students on their journey...
Read More Post a comment (0)It would be difficult to overstate the importance of academic vocabulary to our students’ success in reading, the content areas, and beyond. In Reading, Writing and Learning in ESL (2005), Suzanne Peregoy and Owen Boyle frame it this way: What we know in any content area is distilled in the vocabulary we own in that subject. In other words, our academic vocabulary, the words we control, manipulate, and communicate with, reflect the content we know at the conceptual level. For all of our ELs, but most especially those who enter the country in middle or high school, academic vocabulary acquisition is a...
Read More Post a comment (0)OK – I finally did something I told myself I would never do. My daughter’s writing notebook was sitting on the table (open of course) and I couldn’t help myself – I had to peek! My heart sank – the title read “Sad Tears.” Wow – I was completely torn! I felt that it was wrong to read it (that goes against our privacy policy in the house), but the title had me worried. So I called for her to come to the kitchen and when I asked her about her notebook, she was more than happy to read it...
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