Text Structures Concrete to Abstract How do we get students to not only understand what a text structure is, but to know why it’s important and why it matters? Back up– do our students even know what the word “structure” means, much less what “text” and “structure” mean together? If
Close Reading Skills & Annotating Stop the excessive underlining and highlighting! Close reading skills don’t happen by accident— it’s a skill set that, when implemented effectively, helps to engage readers and keep kids mentally focused as well as physically engaged. When done correctly, it can put an end to reading
Project Based Learning (PBL) Helping Students Take Ownership of Their Learning Ok, let’s be real here: Anytime you give 12 year-olds a project and then release them to go work on it, there’s going to be some chaos. Here’s what PBL is supposed to look like in my 6th
NOW what are they wanting me to do? Ok, so it’s easy to get caught off-guard when someone asks or tells you to help with yet another after-school or evening activity . It’s easy to get cornered and swept into the whole “help us with XYZ after school because it’s
Hint: Holistic Grading is the best thing since sliced bread. The cross that we bear as Language Arts teachers is all the freakin’ writing we have to grade for our students. (But, yeah, they NEED to be writing!!) Let’s give our students lots of writing opportunities without us actually having
I don’t know if you can really do this every day… It definitely depends on how much class time you have. It’s more important to just do it consistently, whatever that means for you and your classes. So maybe twice a week, give your students a free-writing topic. To make it
Um… Just make them write everything? When I first began teaching English / Language Arts, I was just trying to survive. I even had a principal at the time who expected to see the same thing happening in every classroom. Ugh. So I did what the other ELA teachers did.
What to Do When Kids Finish Their Work Early Those few minutes that exist between activities when some kids have finished their work and others haven’t is sooo chaotic, right? Oh sure, just have them pull out their library books and read until you’re all ready to move on.
Like… actually using it. For real. Ok, so whether you’re teaching Greek & Latin root words or SAT terminology, you know what it’s like to feel that pull-your-hair-out level of frustration when your kids come in the next day or the next week and Don’t. Remember. Anything. I personally went