Well, I knew it was coming. We got the news that we are "virtual" for the rest of the year. Not a surprise, but devastating nonetheless. It's time to look at the remaining curriculum, streamline it, and figure out how to get the most "bang" for the delivery method with truly focused instruction. One thing that is becoming clear to me is that short and sweet is the way to go when teaching ... Read the Post
Improving and Combining Sentences: A Gradual Release of Responsibility Writing Lesson
I wanted to share today about a twenty-minute lesson I did that was super effective--and reviewed two key writing skills we worked on earlier this year related to combining sentences. These are: 1. I can combine two sentences into one improved sentence. 2. I can add details to simple sentences to make them more interesting and descriptive. Improving and Combining Sentences to Improve Our ... Read the Post
Tips and Ideas for Teaching Narrative Writing
Today is my day to blog over at Upper Elementary Snapshots! Check out my ideas about teaching leads, reviewing other skills, a quick writing revision idea--and more! Here's a sneak peek at part of it... Stop by if you want to check out what I did with our second narrative writing unit of the year. This is really one of my favorite writing activities because it is SO accessible to ... Read the Post
Grading Writing Made Easy. Really.
Because I know you do not have enough time to grade writing--or do everything else we need to do! My district requires us to use a pretty substantial rubric to go with our required writing assessments--and we are welcome to use it for others. Here's the problem. It's 2 1/2 pages long! Not only that, it makes a LOT of assumptions about what my students should be doing with ... Read the Post
Narrative Writing and Reading: Using Dialogue and More!
One thing I really like to do with my literacy instruction is to make sure that I weave reading and writing together whenever possible. This is especially true when working with narrative writing--in our independent reading workshop and our narrative writing unit. One of our phrases this year is "Read like a writer and write like a reader!" and we are working to dig into what that really ... Read the Post
Teaching Dialogue and Why It’s So Important!
We are digging into a fun narrative writing unit to complement our historical fiction unit. I know many of you write personal narratives...many write realistic fiction...mysteries--you name it. One of our fun writing projects is to take a scene from one of their historical fiction book club books and rewriting it through the eyes of a different character. It's so much fun to talk about point of ... 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
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