There's no sense to learning to spell words we don't understand. This activity from Word Study That Sticks helps you review with your K-2 students the words they understand (or don't) for greater clarity.
Use these two activities from What Are You Grouping For? to quickly build a sense of community, establish shared values around collaborative work, and "break the ice" in newly-formed groups.
Summarizing is a great way to know if a student is understandning the main point of the reading. In this activity from The Big Book of Literacy Tasks, Grades K-8, the student will write a news story to another student explaining the most important points to know from the text read the day before.
Much like the adage “a rising tide lifts all boats,” displaying students’ writing about reading gives all students the opportunity to learn from—and aspire to— the ways of thinking of peers. Check out this activity from What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow? Nonfiction, Grades 3-8 to learn how to create an effective inspiration wall for your classroom.
These text-dependent questions from Text-Dependent Questions, Grades K-5, help you get your students started on a deeper reading of Allen Say's The Sign Painter.
Use these think aloud sentence starters from Think Big with Think Alouds, Grades K-5, to guide students to deeper understanding and comprehension by thinking aloud.
Use these activities from The Word Study That Sticks Companion by Pamela Koutrakos with your young readers to expand their word learning.
Use these activities from The Word Study That Sticks Companion by Pamela Koutrakos with your young readers to expand their word learning.
This activity from Planning Powerful Instruction, Grades 6-12, primes and orients students through discussion of controversial concepts that they will explore in the unit. Students also practice complex processes like making claims, supporting reasoning with evidence, listening and mirroring, summarizing, and addressing opposing viewpoints and reservations to their own thinking.
In this activity from Planning Powerful Instruction, Grades 6-12, students will use a picture map to walk through the skills of (1) identifying key details and capturing the connections among them in order to (2) identify topics, then (3) identify patterns of key details in order to identify main ideas and make deeper meaning of the text.
This three-level questioning guide from Planning Powerful Instruction, Grades 6-12, moves learners through the levels of literal, inferential, and reflective evaluation and application questions.
Molly Ness, author of Every Minute Matters, has devised ways to make her literacy rich activities doable at home, so families, teachers, and kids can still have fun with literacy, even at a distance.