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The Teacher Studio

Learning, thinking, creating

Reading interventions, “Ready Freddy”, and chapter book strategies!

Fourth grade reading is tough.  Many students have "unlocked" the key to reading...they can read most of the words and can track ever-increasing storylines.  As teachers, we can provide countless texts for them, coach them, model for them, and know that they will continue to become more sophisticated as readers. Unfortunately, there are still some students who haven't made this jump. It ... Read the Post

10 Tips for Creating a Culture of Readers

Developing life-long reading habits is so critical, and as teachers we have so much power to help students learn how to learn and grow as readers. Today is my day to blog over at Upper Elementary Snapshots, and I'd love for you to stop by and check out my 10 tips for making sure your classroom is a place to nurture life-long readers!  I hope you'll click the image above and check it out! ... Read the Post

Anecdotal Reading Notes and Status of the Class

As we move into a new school year, many of us are searching for new systems.  If you are anything like me, you have probably uttered the phrase, "Next year, I am going to be SO much better at...".  And you can fill in the blank.  Better at recording grades...better at keeping your desk clean...better about providing timely feedback to students--we all have tons of areas where we wish we had a ... Read the Post

Fraction Concepts Day 2! Conceptions, Misconceptions, and Mathematical Language

Well, things got even more interesting as my work with fractions unfolded on day 2!  For those of you who read my first fraction post, I discussed how we used paper folding to get our fraction concepts unit "launched", and we ran out of time to finish the investigation before digging into some fraction misconceptions.  I gave them another 25 minutes today to work on folding their different ... Read the Post

Fraction Folding–discovery learning

Today we kicked off our fraction unit, and I think I am going to really try to do a lot of blogging about it over the next few weeks--because I will be immersed in it AND because it is such a critical component of the Common Core for intermediate grades.  I think it is vital that we dialogue about ways to help students build their understanding of fractions, so I invite you to share along with me ... Read the Post

What Makes a Great Read Aloud?

As we move into the start of a new school year, of of my FAVORITE things to think about is what books I will be sharing as read alouds with my students.  Although I have a few "must reads" that I do every year, I am always on the hunt for new ones as well. When thinking about what makes a really outstanding read aloud, I asked people on my Facebook page to chime in their THEIR ideas about ... Read the Post