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A few weeks ago, I used the game Apples to Apples with a group of sixth graders to have fun thinking about the concept of “reasons” and “evidence” as it relates to argument writing. They had a blast and I learned a lot about what they were struggling with conceptually and was able to coach …Read more
Take a moment to read the following text excerpt. Where does the author include examples of a concept? Why is that helpful to readers? Look closely and you will see. Magnets can be found on a can opener. The magnet attracts, or pulls, a lid off of a soup can. A push or a pull …Read more
A few weeks ago, I visited several second and third grade classrooms to give a shared reading lesson and then take a small group into a guided reading lesson with the same text. Loved this!!! It makes complete sense that if I build knowledge around magnets or echolocation during a 20-30 minutes shared reading lesson …Read more
Recently I was asked to teach a lesson to second grade students with an informational text on magnets. As I read through the text, I began thinking about how many of the students I’d be working with may not have had many language and hands-on experiences with magnets or magnetism or the concept of force, …Read more
I’ve given up calling on one student at a time during whole group instruction. A few weeks ago I was walking down the hallway in an urban school and stopped to ask a fourth grade student for directions. She knew where I needed to go, but she struggled to tell me. “Like…well, it’s down there…like …Read more
Last week I taught several demonstration lessons for students on how to use the mnemonic THIEVES (Manz, 2002) and as I taught the same lesson over and over, I made some surprising and significant shifts in how I use this activity based on the needs of the students and the pitfalls of the texts. THIEVES …Read more
Emergent and early reader texts are frequently about animals and include action words like swim, hop, and jump. The trade books we choose to read aloud to students can serve to build, reinforce, and expand this type of vocabulary. For example, in Nic Bishop’s Frogs (2008), frogs wriggle, grip, burrow, climb, catch, swallow, blink and …Read more
As we ask transitional level readers to engage in close reading, let’s be aware of tricky details. Below I share my analysis of one informational text that is very similar to other texts we use in our classrooms. A few weeks ago, I taught several second grade “close reading” lessons with informational texts from the …Read more
Last week I had the honor of visiting multiple schools and giving demonstration lessons in 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. For each lesson, there were 10-15 teachers observing. Afterwards we debriefed about methodology and evidence of student learning. Some amazing insight was gained – as well as a sense of affirmation for what they are …Read more
Here’s an idea for motivating students to research and then design an argument–use candy bars. I did this with a group of sixth grade students. There were two teams of four students and each team was charged with studying different sources — the nutrition label, advertisements on YouTube, etc. to come up with logical reasons …Read more