Interactive read alouds are one of my favorite parts of our day! It’s a time for us to gather close, emulate the bedtime story time that so many kids do not get at home, and recreate that intimate time. It’s the time that I get to model how to think like a reader. I also […]
Mastering phonemic awareness is a key factor in reading readiness for little learners. No matter what reading level a child is on – pre-readers to high readers, they ALL have or need a strong foundation of phonemic awareness. Sometimes we just don’t know where to begin to help our students build the foundation of reading and other […]
RTI–those 3 letters that just make you want to pull your hair out sometimes. As elementary teachers, we already prep for so many content areas. Sometimes adding RTI to the plate is just too much. At least this is how I felt at times. Managing RTI was just going to send me to the looney […]
I have a brand new, updated post about Reading Small Groups with Pre-Readers with the Science of Reading in Mind that you may also find helpful! One question I get more than any other is, “What do I do for guided reading with non-readers?” It’s a very common question and a very realistic question. We […]
Writing is a time of our day that often gets squished to the end of the day, especially in kindergarten. So often we think, “Well, they aren’t reading yet so they aren’t ready to write much. They can just draw pictures.” You’re right, they can draw pictures, but have you ever thought about how that is […]
Though guided reading is a short time with students that seems to fly by, it is filled with many essential elements. It’s truly a time to coach students in their reading. One of the essential elements includes identifying a teaching point as a student reads. It’s easy to let this go and focus on a the many other […]
One of the most important and basic early literacy skills for our little readers is mastering concepts about print. This is the “knowledge of print awareness and book handling skills.” For many students, this comes natural, but for the other half, it does not. I see this in my own child who we adopted. While […]
Word work, or word study, is an important part of the balanced literacy approach to teaching reading. This is the time for the teacher to provide explicit, direct, and systematic teaching instruction on the foundation of the English language. This is not a big chunk of our day, but it’s a part of our day […]
Beginning literacy stations can seem like an overwhelming task. I’ll never forget when someone gave me my first professional development book about them. I was a new teacher, eager to try new things and do whatever I needed to make it work. After all, how in the world would I pull guided reading groups if I […]
Teaching and structuring a guided reading lesson can seem overwhelming at first. I know that when I sat with my kids for the first time, though I had seen a great model, I was so worried about fitting it all in. I wasn’t sure if I was even teaching what I should. I felt like […]
92 words. 100 words. It doesn’t matter which list you use – Dolch, Fry’s, or your own. Mastering sight words is a key factor in reading success with little learners. That makes progress monitoring for sight words important. But the task of tracking it all can seem so daunting. How do you keep students motivated? […]
Technology is simply a way of life in the classroom these days. When I first started teaching, I felt so lucky to have an interactive whiteboard in my classroom, especially a mounted one. Now, only a short 8 years later, apps for elementary teachers are a must-have. Along with interactive whiteboards are tablets these days. With tablets […]
Loving to read is not something that comes naturally to all children. Sometimes they love to get lost in a book, make connections, predict what will happen next and other times children just want to look at the pictures and be done. I can even see that in both of my own children. My son […]
Shared reading is a valuable part of the balanced literacy approach. You may be wondering what it is or how it’s different than a read aloud. Because it takes up such a small amount of time, it often is left out. But I am here to tell you that the 15 minutes spent on shared […]
Just the thought of getting started with guided reading small groups can be overwhelming. I know that was the case for me when I started teaching. You have to create a space for it You have to gather reading tools. Then, you have to create groups and write effective lessons. It’s a lot! One area […]
Science was, hands down, a favorite time in my class for all of my students year after year! We were not only able to explore fun topics, but we were able to get our hands dirty and carry the topic throughout the day as we learned reading and writing skills. And let’s be honest–with everything […]
Sight words are an important part of teaching little learners to read. As more research has become easily available to teachers, we now know that sight words and high-frequency words are different. You can read more about that here. No matter what, though, when it comes to making high-frequency words turn to sight words and […]
I talked a little last week about how much I loved using anchor charts in the classroom. We would use them time and time again to “anchor our learning”. From introducing topics, to exploring more about topics, recording our learning, and being referenced later—they were always a part of our classroom environment. Today I want to highlight […]
