Laura Candler's Teaching Resources - Interactive Teaching Made Easy! edutopia A while ago, I wrote a post called Doing It Differently: Tips for Teaching Vocabulary which spells out (get it?) the process and rationale for selecting certain vocabulary words and also describes six steps for teaching new words. Here, I'm going to add to that earlier musing on this topic by offering up some must dos that took me a few years down the teaching road to figure out. Must Do #1: Be Very Selective As for vocabulary lists, less is better. When you choose, choose high frequency words. And once those big-bang-for-your-buck words are chosen, you will want to really own those as a whole class -- including you, the teacher. Must Do #2 Use the Words Every Day Pull those words out of isolation in that novel or textbook and use them every day and every way you can. And challenge students to take those words out of the room. Must Do #3: Prominently Display the Words Create a word wall that uses images, examples, analogies, and connections to their own worlds. Must Do #4 Revisit Past Words
Upper Elementary Snapshots: Rethinking the Rough Draft: A Simple Strategy that Leads to Better Revising Of all the stages of the writing process, doesn't it feel like revising often gets the short end of the stick? One of the obstacles that always seems to be in the way is the simple logistics of where to do it. Students write their rough drafts in their composition notebooks, filling the lines, front and back, eventually "finishing," and we move them into the revising stage. Okay, make it better, we say. And students caret in a few adjectives. Maybe they even cross out a sentence or arrow one into a better place. The piece as a whole looks basically the same as it did prior to revising. But where in their rough draft do we expect students to make those bold changes, those big changes, those important changes? Sure we can pick and poke and find ways around. Enter, the one-column rough draft. When we fold our notebook page in half length-wise, it creates two columns: one for drafting, and one saved for revising. And the obstacle is obliterated. Those are issues.
Global Read Aloud | One Book to Connect the World Teaching Character Traits in Reader's Workshop | Scholastic The Common Core State Standards in 3rd grade fictional literature calls for students to identify and describe characters’ actions, thoughts, and motivations, which is no small task for an 8-year-old who is just beginning to read longer text. This week, I will share with you how understanding and making inferences about character traits improves my students’ inferencing skills and comprehension. Next week, in part two, I’ll share how my students are incorporating character traits to improve their writing. Introducing Character Traits Lessons on character traits are truly lessons on the comprehension skill of inferencing. Rarely does an author come out and say a character is jovial or bossy; instead, the reader must discover it by analyzing a character’s actions and dialogue. Define It For Your Students I begin by differentiating between character traits and emotions. List the Traits Make a Connection After two days, we had well over 100 traits and emotions listed on our anchor chart.
janrichardsonreading 5 Ways to Effectively Teach Paired Texts and Paired Passages {Free Posters and Center} - Teaching to Inspire with Jennifer Findley With the push for common core rigor, many states have included paired passages in their state assessment. Paired passages and paired texts are a tricky skill for students, especially struggling readers. I have written about how I implement rigorous paired passage instruction here. However, teaching paired passages can be so tricky and I still get lots of questions about how to to teach paired passages to meet the rigor of the standards. When I first introduce the concept of paired texts, I do not use passages. Read one text and discuss. Read (and grab freebies) for two Thanksgiving paired read alouds here and two September 11th read alouds here. To read more about how I introduce paired texts and grab a paired text questioning guide to use with paired read alouds, click here. One of my favorite ways to expose students to paired texts is through history topics. Click here to grab these posters for FREE! This way of teaching paired passages is something I created last year. Save
Fourth Grade Paired Selections and Extended Writing Tasks - Lead with Literacy Resources The following articles were found in ReadWorks.org, Toolkit Texts, Reading A-Z-Close Reading Packs, Comprehension Toolkit, Journeys and various internet sites. The articles are offered via links or in the case of Journeys, Toolkit Texts and Comprehensive Toolkits are referenced to hardcopy texts that are found in all the Brevard County classrooms. Prompts and Teacher Models There are three grade level sets: 4th, 5th and 6th. The teacher models were written as examples of what a teacher would produce, not an example of student writing. Contributors Many thanks to the contributing teacher-writers who searched, matched up articles and labored over every word of the prompts and teacher models: Scarlett Chesser, Sunrise Elementary JoAnn Edson, Apollo Elementary Julie Fletcher, Saturn Elementary Theresa Phelps, Elementary Programs
Free printable fourth grade reading comprehension worksheets Grade 4 Reading Comprehension Use these free, printable worksheets to practice and improve reading comprehension, vocabulary and writing at a grade 4 level. Our worksheets complement our K5 Reading and K5 Spelling programs. Check out our 14-day free trial. Reading Worksheets - Leveled These grade 4 reading comprehension worksheets are taken from a series of leveled reading workbooks ranging in difficulty from A to Z, according to the Fountas and Pinnell grading system. More Reading Worksheets Each 4th grade reading passage is followed by 6 questions which the student is encouraged to answer by writing full sentences in the space provided. An Honestly Fun Camp Fiction, 430 words Ballet Non-fiction, 470 words Clara Barton Non-fiction, 507 words Curious about Careers: Firefighters Non-fiction, 630 words Why does the Ocean have Waves? Emma's Favorite Restaurant Fiction, 520 words How to Skateboard Non-fiction, 590 words Left Out Fiction, 500 words Liza's First Spelling Bee Fiction, 800 words
Reading Educator The Question-Answer Relationship (QAR) strategy presents a three-way relationship between questions, text content, and reader knowledge. Simply put, the QAR strategy shows that students who understand how questions are written are better prepared to answer questions. These activities help students "demystify" the question-building process as a step toward better reading comprehension. The QAR strategy divides questions into two broad categories; "In the Book" (text-explicit) questions and "In My Head" (text-implicit) questions. "In the Book" questions are generated directly from a reading selection. These explicit questions fall into two subcategories: "Right There"–questions found in one place in a selection and "Think and Search"–questions built around cumulative information found throughout a document. Steps to QARs: Explain the two broad categories of questions (and the four subcategories) to students as an introduction to the QAR strategy. Learn More: