I posted on FB and Twitter that our family has a monthly subscription box for teachers. For the next three weeks, we are making our instructional guides and family guides available to you free from ScholaBoxThe instructional guide includes articles, media, poetry, that kids can access online. There are writing response prompts, discussion questions and …
It comes up a lot when I work as a literacy consultant on elementary and middle school campuses. Teachers are concerned that their students don’t have sufficient background knowledge to comprehend in deep and meaningful ways. It’s true. What concerns me is that sometimes it feels as if the conversation ends there; that somehow just …
This blog post was first published a few years ago. In the last two months, I’ve had the conversation about whether teaching kindergarten students to read is developmentally inappropriate at least a dozen times. Teachers worry that they are putting too much pressure on young kids to read too soon. It’s time to repost. Recently …
Fifteen years ago in preparation to facilitate a PD session for teachers, I spent hours reading everything I could about text structure in expository texts. I was struck by how much I learned and how little I’d done to adequately prepare students to recognize and use knowledge of the types of structures authors use in …
My original state certification was for ages 3 through third grade. The state of Texas doesn’t allow that certification any longer. In addition, I am certified to teach grades K-8. Because my university degree and subsequent certification started with early childhood, the importance of social emotional learning in addition to academic content is clearly in …
This is a repost of a blog entry from a few years ago. I needed to put this back out there again after a difficult encounter this semester where a teacher repeatedly told me how lazy his students were. I know teaching is hard. We have the privilege and responsibility to look at kids with …
This post was first published three years ago and I feel a need to re-post. Curious if anything had appeared on the internet about one of my beloved teachers, I did a quick search on the web and found this from the J-TAC (Stephenville, Tex.), Vol. 10, No. 33, Ed. 1. Friday, July 11, 1930: …
Kids Who Can’t Read Teacher: “I’m looking at this running record for Andrew (5th grade student) and he can’t read words with multiple syllables. When’s he’s stuck and he tries to decode, I notice he doesn’t even really know vowel sounds.” Admin: “Which STAAR practice group is he in?” Teacher: “He meets with Ms. Pratt, …
I’ve been spending a lot of time supporting teachers on elementary campuses in a nearby district this year. Their ELA coordinator is faithful to remind teachers and coaches each time they meet that the work they do this year is aligned to Fountas and Pinnell’s Responsive Teaching Cycle. The cycle: Gather data Observe reading behaviors …
When RtI Seems Lacking We could teach almost every student to read by the end of 1st grade. So why aren’t we doing it?–Dr. Richard Allington I spend most days now on elementary campuses speaking with grade level teams, coaches and campus administrators about their students who are not reading on grade level. I’ve spent …
