Now is a great time to encourage kids to practice habits that are truly useful in their daily lives. And nothing is more daily than a daily journal. Keeping a journal helps students process a confusing time, record history from their perspective, and remember a significant time in their own lives. A journal also helps kids reflect on how their personal lives are impacted by global events, and share their feelings with adults who care about them. Want your students to keep a journal? Here are some tips to help them get started! Make it Manageable: A basic structure helps kids get started, but too much structure makes writing burdensome.…
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15 Whimsical Places for Kids to Read While Learning at Home
Practice may make perfect, but repeated practice gets old quickly. How do we keep our kids and students reading day after day? Teachers have lots of strategies for keeping reading fresh. One way is to encourage kids to have some fun when choosing a PLACE to read. At school, we fill our classrooms with props for comfortable reading–pillows, bean bags, camping chairs. Students can choose silly places to read (underneath the teacher’s desk is a favorite). All of this helps break up the monotony that comes with any daily task. Here are some ideas, kids can read… Under a tree. Next to an open window. In the kitchen, while something…
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Use This Hand Drawn Chart to Make Distance Learning Easier
In elementary school, the first six weeks of school are all about building routines. In reading class, this means teaching students to read a book each day, for a sustained period of time. Over the last couple months, all of our routines have been upended. Students have lost the reliable reading routines their teachers worked hard to build, and parents have seen their own routines turned upside down. How can parents manage their child’s schooling while juggling everything else? Here’s a teacher trick… The “I Can” chart. An “I Can” chart lists things students CAN DO during a given part of the day. Kids respond well to positive commands (“read…
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15 Questions for Quarantine Reading
The first goal of any good reading program is to get kids reading–every day. The next goal is to help them think about what they’re reading. The easiest way to get them thinking about books is to talk to them about books. So here are 15 questions to help you talk to your kids about their quarantine reading. Questions That Relate to Reading Curriculum: It never hurts to drop a few school-related hints here and there. What is the main character in your book learning about life? How is this lesson changing him/her? (Theme) If you had to describe this book using 6 words only, which words would you choose?…
