The Other End of the Reading Rope

How? Pure and simple - integrate science or social studies with literacy! Integration of literacy in the content area has been proven to - Engage, Motivate and Excite our kids - BUT...curriculum matters - Choose high quality curriculum to support your literacy needs. Ex: FOSS science - Use Text as tools! nonfiction poetry narrative nonfiction historical fiction realistic fiction persuasive text ar...

Hello, This is a follow up to episodes 1 and 2 as we continue to explore the article featured on ASCD on Knowledge Building curriculum. Today we tackle ways to help children access complex text. - Through Read Aloud - How it supports Foundational Skills - Comprehension Strategies for Sense Making I hope this will help you clarify the role that Knowledge Building has in your classroom!

Last episode we talked about how vocabulary and language are a key building block for building knowledge and comprehension. In this episode (while my dog barks loudly outside) I will share more insights from part 2 of the ascd article on HOW to build a language rich classroom through: - play - talk - conversations - read aloud - print and more!

This podcast is based on the article "Looking to Research for Literacy Success" t hat appeared in ASCD last February. It outlines the three headings for success: - Build Knowledge Through Language - Expand Access to Texts that build Knowlege - Set the Conditions to Build Knowlege This podcast is a quick run down about this article and the Knowledge Matters Campaign. I will dive into appl...

Once again, I felt called to share with you some tips for handling frustration and drowning out the noise of negativity. We are surrounded by it and it can help us or hurt us in our work environment. Many of the tips that I have compiled came from this article - how to handle frustration at work. So the next time you are frustrated, determine what is in our control and what is out of our control....

Do you watch the TV show called the Bear ? I have loved watching the show this year. For those of you who don't know about this show, it is about a dysfunctional family who decide to shut down the current restaraunt they run in order to build something better. Think swiching from a greasy spoon to a 5 Star Restaraunt! Wow! Those are some big goals. But in many ways this is what we are doing in...

I have already created a few podcasts on this topic, but this short and succinct version tells how to determine what best practices to follow and what resources I recommend. I am also exploring the idea of an inexpensive short course, that would allow you the tools to create your own pathway using your curriculum and content. If this is something that you are interested in, click the poll below! R...

Every few summers, we get a new curriculum. Sometimes its for math, or science or social studies. Sometimes it's for literacy. And when it comes, we have a ton of boxes to go through. It can be overwhelming! How do you know what to use and what to wait on? Today I share what I did the last time I got a new curriculum - in the middle of the pandemic - in order to make it work for me and my stud...

The last component in our executive functioning series. This one is on social understanding which affects lots of indivudiuals with autism, social anxiety and our COVID kids. What can we do to support our students in class? - create a story map from different character's perspectives - teaching students emotional vocabulary - Manyuk progression - Role on the Wall drama strategy for internal/ex...

Guys...working memory and impulse control affect reading comprehension. We know this; it's not news. But what should we look for? How does it affect understanding? And what can I, a classroom teacher or parent, do to help? In this episode, we will discuss the following: Behaviors you may observe Games to play for practice Ways to support students during literacy lessons Click  here  for a prin...

Thinking flexibly is crucial because it allows our students to hold on to multiple things at once - and in the case of our students, they are holding onto decoding and meaning. But how do we teach this to our kids? First, play games with your children! Uno Set Scattegories Hink Pink Think! from Florida Center for Reading Research Draw literal examples of compound words (butterfly as a stick of but...

Hi ya'll! Today we explore the concept of organization and how it affects comprehension. I'll start by saying we can help our students with this through some planning and preparation. We want to make sure that we recognize when our students are confused. They may get events out of order in sequencing, words out of order when reading, or not be able to connect all the parts and pieces of a...

Well, that title is a mouthful, but I wasn't sure how else to describe what this podcast is about. Diving deeper into executive functioning skills and their effect on comprehension, we will share with you two main concepts. How can we build planning skills using board games? Why? And which ones? How can we work with students in small groups to learn the process of planning while reading? I hav...

This is the beginning of a new series that I think all of us are dealing with. Why do some children struggle to read STILL, even with good instruction? As someone who works at a school that has embraced the science of reading, I was confused as to why so many kids were still struggling with comprehension. And then...I found some research which backs some of my personal opinions. Trigger warning -...

This episode is near and dear to my heart as I share with you the latest research on WHY routines are important in your personal life, your classroom management and your instructional routines. In it, I share the experiences from the viewpoint of a mom of a son with sensory processing/adhd issues, as well as from the view of a classroom teacher. I will share the words of Dr. Anita Archer and sever...

This has been bothering me...can we have explicit instruction and inquiry within the same learning cycle? Can we have them working together? The answer is yes....and no.  It depends on the content, the knowledge of your students, and the place in the learning cycle.  Once again, I go to the expert, Anita Archer, to learn more about these two approaches to learning.  This is the char...

I am a huge fan of Anita Archer! She is the author of Explicit Instruction , and she is a wealth of good ideas! In today's podcast, we will explore the four ways we can add engagement to our whole group lessons.   It isn't rocket science. Just follow these four things:  Read Talk Write Do Within this podcast, I will give examples of how my teachers, 2-5th grade, use these four premises t...

Everything that I have been discussing the past three podcasts comes from the research at Literacy How and the remarkable Dr. Margie Gillis. And I would be remiss if I didn't recommend her book, Syntax - Knowledge to Practice, for you to purchase so that you can have more information at your fingertips. It is an easy read with practical suggestions to put in place in your K-3 classroom tomorrow. A...

This episode builds on the work of Dr. Margie Gillis from Literacy How.  In it, I will dive into how we can help our students understand the parts that make complex sentences.  Adverbs: We will begin to understand what makes a word an adverb, what types or categories adverbs fall into, and how understanding these help you to understand the actions of the story.  Prepositions: We dis...

In the last two podcasts, we talked about writing sentences. We are all very aware that are sentences are choppy and lack details. We recognize that this is a building block for efficient writing. However, did you know that sentence understanding similarly affects comprehension?  We will explore the research of Gillis & Eberhardt 2016 which can be found on their website: https://literacyh...

Looking for a place to start with the Science of Writing? This podcast is a follow-up to the first sentence writing podcast. It will focus on some strategies for generating sentences as well as creating more complex sentence structures using conjunctions with routines and strategies from the Writing Revolution. generating questions teaching the four types of sentences (questions, statements, comma...

Looking for a place to start with the Science of Writing? This podcast will focus on some strategies for building basic sentence structure with routines and strategies from the Writing Revolution.  Subject and Predicate Fragments and Sentences Scrambled Sentences Sentence Expansion To get a free resource for winter sentence activities, sign up here!  To read more and see some examples, v...

As you know, I speak about the Reading Rope quite a bit. But did you know there is also a Writing Rope or a Simple View of Writing ? As part of my research, I have read the Writing Revolution by Natalie Wexler, LETRS Volume 2, and the Writing Rope by Joan Sedita, I have deepened my understanding of this topic and hope that I can give you a quick overview on this podcast.  On this podcast, I w...

Okay, that's a mouthy title. One of the main questions I had, when I began taking the LETRS course, was how is this any different from what I'm doing. And of course, once I dug into it, I realized a lot was missing from my instruction.  In this episode, I share how language comprehension lessons are uniquely different from other comprehension lessons. But I also talk about what is the same an...

Hi ya'll... For our very first episode, I'm going to share with you some tips about lesson planning. What? You may think I've been doing that for years, or I just wing it, or I don't have time for that...honestly, I've had all three of those thoughts. But, in this climate of post-pandemic teaching, we truly do need to know what and how to teach our content. However, it has to be manageable. ...