When it comes to novel study the pros are the cons. What I mean is this: novel study gives you the chance to do a comprehensive, whole group reading of a quality grade-level text. BUT, comprehensive, whole group readings take a lot of time. Time that you might be pressured to use otherwise. So in order for novel study to work in most classrooms it needs to be: standards/common-core aligned directly tied to your larger curriculum organized (so you don’t squander valuable time) connected in some way to test prep The last one always got me in the classroom–when I have so little time to begin with, and a percentage…
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How to Celebrate Halloween Without Losing Instructional Momentum
Nearly every Halloween in the classroom has seen me running to the library during my conference period to beg the librarian for a book that would satisfy my student’s request that we do something “scary.” Coming up short on a day like Halloween is like looking into your kids eyes on Christmas morning as you explain that you just didn’t make room in your schedule for presents this year. So once again, I’ve armed myself with a holiday mini unit. This Halloween unit is flexible enough to blend easily with whatever I did in reading workshop on October 30, but festive enough to scratch that Halloween itch. Here’s a peek…
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How to Build a Happy, Emotionally Intelligent Classroom with the RULER Acronym
We all care about our student’s emotional lives and we do things in the background to help them out–create a welcoming atmosphere, develop positive relationships with them, and help them develop positive relationships with each other. Marc Brackett’s book, Permission to Feel, contains an excellent tool for explicitly nourishing students’ emotional lives. The RULER acronym gives you a way to teach and talk about emotional regulation with your students. Over the last few months I’ve created a series of blog posts on the RULER acronym found in Brackett’s book. Here’s a round up of the posts: Intro to the Ruler Acronym Intro to the Mood Meter Help Students Recognize Emotions…
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Expressing Emotions, Social-Emotional Activities, RULER
This summer I completed a series of social emotional activities built around the RULER method for social emotional learning. Over the next few weeks I’d like to share them with you! You can purchase the activities in my TpT store, or use them as inspiration for your own activities. This post will focus on expressing emotions. This was one of the more difficult units to create–expression is valuable, but also risky. We want to help students express emotions in a way that is most likely to yield a good outcome. This unit helps students think through two things: Methods/Options: HOW can I express my emotions? Problem Solving: Which method/option best fits my situation right now?…
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Help Students Read Every Day while Learning From Home: Distance Learning, At-Home Reading Workshop
When school closures rolled across the country last April, teachers quickly adapted to provide digital resources for their students. We were all in survival mode, and a lot of these activities amounted to digital busy work. It was the best we could do. But now we’re faced with the daunting reality of intermittent school closures, or models that combine face-to-face teaching with digital teaching. One of the greatest challenges, I think, to digital teaching is the loss of a daily, reading practice. At school you can monitor and assist student’s daily reading. You can develop reliable routines that help students build reading stamina. But when kids are learning from home,…
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How to Design Eye Catching Graphic Organizers Using Keynote
Creating your own graphic organizers gives you a lot of freedom. You can design organizers that fit your instructional goals, student needs, and context better than most ready-made graphic organizers. Of course, this takes time, and you may find that you’re not so good at the design-y element. Well, neither am I. Designing resources for TpT has forced me to improve in this respect. Here are three simple things I’ve learned about designing graphic organizers without spending too much time or money: When I began making graphic organizers I tried to dress them up with purchased borders. I felt the same way I did about font–cute font/border makes the page…
