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Reading Comprehension- shifting our thinking. Awesome video

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Reading Comprehension- shifting our thinking. Awesome video

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Background Knowledge: A Key to Comprehension

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This video includes analysis of running records, as well as how to take them. No advertisements for other courses. Worth watching the whole thing.

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Uploaded by AlexEverettmedia on 2013-09-30.

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Shifting the Balance - I'm enrolled for this one!

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Shifting the Balance - I'm enrolled for this one!

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I'm excited to take part in this online class.

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Shifting the Balance Online Classes NEW - The Six Shifts

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The Six Shifts Online Class Registration Page.

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Fantastic freebies from Shifting the Balance

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Fantastic freebies from Shifting the Balance

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There are so many excellent resources here. A form to help analyze the MSV on running records. It would have helped me gain understanding SO much faster!

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There is so much here to tweak what we already do and make it that much more powerful. I can't recommend this book enough. You can check out their videos and freebies to get a taste. This is worth reading and I KNOW you are BUSY.

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The Six Shifts Where Science of Reading Meets Balanced Literacy. We provide resources, professional development, and literacy audits for busy literacy educators like you.

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Webinar with Adrienne Gear: Book Talk — Powerful Writing Structures

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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How to get to there, what to do, etc.

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Making the Most of the 18 Minute Guided Reading Lesson

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Teaching Phonological Awareness - It's FUN!

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Teaching Phonological Awareness - It's FUN!

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Another lovely video PD from Delta. This is the basis for reading and writing, but you don't need your eyes!

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2021-2022

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Adrienne Gear has been an elementary teacher in Vancouver, Canada for over 25 years. She has worked as a classroom teacher, teacher librarian and district Literacy Mentor. Adrienne brings her passion for learning and her wealth of knowledge and experience in the classroom to her professional workshops, demonstration lessons and leadership sessions.

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We have a district license for CISPG. Are you interested? I can help.

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Welcome to Joyful Literacy Online. We are Joyful Literacy, a group of passionate and experienced teachers, educators, authors, and literacy experts, offering educational resources and online Zoom conferences to support the professional development of teachers, and the literary development of children from Kindergarten to Grade 5.

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This book contains a series of assessments to guide instruction.

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This book contains a series of assessments to guide instruction.

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Marie Clay

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Webinar (44 min.) Dr. Tim Rasinski: Supporting Fluency Instruction for all Readers

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Webinar (44 min.) Dr. Tim Rasinski: Supporting Fluency Instruction for all Readers

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Dr. Tim Rasinski: Supporting Fluency Instruction for all Readers

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Click the image below to see a sample flip-book. These books are very carefully levelled and increase difficulty gradually and deliberately. The characters pop up in each level and provide enjoyment and familiarity. These are my personal first choice for reading instruction and independent practice with familiar reads.

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Jill Eggleton writes excellent stories to share with whole groups. Pearson sells them as big books in Canada. Nelson sells them as levelled sets.

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Year 1 St Heliers School - Home Learning

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Example of inferring meaning of new vocabulary. I love Tara West. She has fantastic shared reading lessons on teacher’s pay teachers. 

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Example of inferring meaning of new vocabulary. I love Tara West. She has fantastic shared reading lessons on teacher’s pay teachers. 

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https://youtu.be/Bb_YeN5f1PQ

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All ages: Each section includes a list of Writing Activities and Reading-Writing Connection Lessons that can be used to help students develop their Writing Skills. Teachers should consider including a practical, hands-on activity or lesson as a way of introducing Writing Skills.

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The eight Writing Skills are what good writers use consistently and purposefully. These skills need to be taught directly to students and put into practice, with coaching and feedback provided by the teacher. By making these skills visible and explicit throughout the writing process, teachers and students can have more meaningful and focused conversations about writing.

A growing body of literature describes the need for students to not only learn to write, but also to write to learn. The process of putting thoughts on paper helps students build comprehension and construct meaning. Direct instruction of the eight Writing Skills should occur not only in the Language Arts class, but also in the content areas (Science, Math, Social Studies, Fine Arts, etc.) to deepen students' understanding of subject matter and enhance their ability to demonstrate their knowledge.

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The eight Writing Skills are what good writers use consistently and purposefully. These skills need to be taught directly to students and put into practice, with coaching and feedback provided by the teacher. By making these skills visible and explicit throughout the writing process, teachers and students can have more meaningful and focused conversations about writing.

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Each individual Reading Strategy includes a description of the strategy and lists of Reading Activities and Reading-Writing Connection Lessons that offer specific, text-based lessons to help students practice their Reading Strategies. Teachers should make sure to pair lessons with either Reading Activities or Reading-Writing Connection Lessons.

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Reading involves the orchestration of a number of different cueing systems in a coordinated and fluent manner to access meaning from print. Reading has been compared to the performance of a symphony orchestra - it is a holistic act, a lifelong endeavour requiring practice, and there may be more than one interpretation of the text. Although reading can be broken down into sub-skills such as discriminating letters or identifying words, performing the sub-skills one at a time does not constitute reading. Reading takes place only when the parts are put together in a smooth, integrated performance.

Twelve Reading Strategies form the basis of classroom reading programs. These twelve Reading Strategies are what good readers use when they try to understand a reading selection, whether they are five or fifty-five. In order to comprehend the text, readers use most, if not all of these strategies. Students need to become proficient with all twelve Reading Strategies.

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Reading involves the orchestration of a number of different cueing systems in a coordinated and fluent manner to access meaning from print. Reading has been compared to the performance of a symphony orchestra - it is a holistic act, a lifelong endeavour requiring practice, and there may be more than one interpretation of the text.

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This is an amazing list of graphic organizers for both reading and writing, all grades. You can click on each to open them. These are a great way to help students organize their thinking.

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Here you can find all of the Graphic Organizers used in the Literacy 44 website's instructional activities. Come here and reprint the Graphic Organizers as you need them. And feel free to adapt the Graphic Organizers for any future lessons. Many of these documents are not lesson specific. For French-language versions of the Graphic Organizers, see Les organisateurs graphiques.

To use these Graphic Organizers, just click on the link, and a PDF will open in a new tab for you to either download or print.

Primary

Intermediate

Secondary

Primary

Intermediate

Secondary

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Here you can find all of the Graphic Organizers used in the Literacy 44 website's instructional activities. Come here and reprint the Graphic Organizers as you need them. And feel free to adapt the Graphic Organizers for any future lessons. Many of these documents are not lesson specific.

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A Structure for Guided Small Group Instruction at like-level "Tip Toe Reading"

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A Structure for Guided Small Group Instruction at like-level "Tip Toe Reading"

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Pathways to Writing (DeltaLearns Literacy Playbook)

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Pathways to Writing (DeltaLearns Literacy Playbook)

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If you prefer a video PD, this is fantastic! Please share a takeaway in the comments.

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This site has audio books, read to me books, and read to self books. It is free for educators. To use at home, families can buy a subscription.

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Free for educators! Give students unlimited in-class access to the best books & videos on Epic

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Free books you can borrow from your public library.

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Download the Libby App: ebooks & audiobooks FREE from your library

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Bring the library to you! Free digital books, magazines and more! Available for iOS and Android devices.

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Scholastic Education offers blended and digital classroom resources in literacy, math, science, social studies, and French. We’re committed to supporting teachers in their instruction—in-person, virtually, or in a hybrid/blended learning model.

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Running Records: Assessing and Improving Students' Reading Fluency and Comprehension

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This blog is excellent for working with reluctant readers. She writes high interest, low vocabulary books for older students. She provides teacher guides to support these books.

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Lori Jamison Rog

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Adrienne Gear - Balanced Writing Program, Brain Pockets, Writing Text Structures.

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Reading, Writing, and Mentoring in Tough Times: Adrienne Gear

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Full of lesson plans, book lists, amazing ideas!

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I created this to add an extra layer to Making Words for my students. This was a way to spiral practice skills.

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2 minute video - The Why.

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QUIO Quipped Interactive Learning Tools Inc.

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A research-based approach to literacy development

As educators, we work persistently to meet the needs of every student.

Our efforts toward this goal can be impacted by countless factors-our students' strengths and needs, our school environment and resources, state and federal standards, the input from countless invested community voices, time limitations, and more.

Hi, I'm Jennifer Serravallo

educator, author, speaker, and founder of Literacy Strategies Consulting, LLC.

I work worldwide alongside K-8 educators like you to develop proficient, enthusiastic readers and writers using research and practical strategies.

My model for supporting both students and adult learners is based on continuous data collection, intentional goal-setting, explicit strategy instruction, and responsive feedback.

With 20+ years of teaching experience, 15 books and teaching resources published, and an incredible consulting team by my side, I'd be honored to join the work in your district, as we collaborate to build knowledge, skills, confidence, and excitement around literacy learning and instruction.

personalize your literacy learning to match your interests, goals, and how you learn best.

From best-selling books to customizable professional development, you can personalize your literacy learning to match your interests, goals, and how you learn best. No matter how you choose to work with me, you'll get practical, timely strategies for learning and teaching, driven by needs-based assessments and backed by current research.

Professional Development

Collaborate with us for customized professional learning experiences based in your classroom, school, and district; or choose online workshops or webinar series.

Printable Resources

Download ready-to-use resources, including writing templates, assessments, study guides, and resources in Spanish.

Podcast

Keep up to date with current research and get realistic ideas and solutions for your classroom. Listen in as I interview researchers and scholars and have post-interview discussions with colleagues about practical takeaways.

Read about research-driven best practices using my best-selling books such as The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 (new 2023 edition!), The Writing Strategies Book, my comprehension assessment and teaching resource Complete Comprehension, and more.

"Our day with Jennifer was just amazing! Everyone was so engaged, enthusiastic, excited and on board, and I know we all found the strategies and resources to be so valuable. We got a ton of feedback on how people loved the day, and we are thrilled with everything."

- Lisa Thomas, Program Manager & Teacher Consultant, POPEY Conference

"I have so much more confidence in the journey I'm responsible for guiding readers through. I have read many books that leave me inspired to teach reading, but this is the best book I've read in terms of feeling equipped to decide on goals and strategies. It's amazing how much valuable information is packed into a surprisingly quick read. This will live right next to my plan book - I will refer to it constantly."

- Reader review for Understanding Texts and Readers, Goodreads

"The skills and strategies we are learning make teaching writing more manageable, through the use of small groups. Creating goal oriented groups have focused our teaching. We feel rejuvenated as teachers of writing."

- Shannon Ticali, 2nd Grade Teacher

"On behalf of all of us at 826 National-and also very much personally from me-thank you so much for joining us for the 826 Summer Learning Session. It was an incredible few days of learning together, with so much thanks to your participation. We are tremendously grateful for your time and shared expertise, and we look forward to continuing discussions from your session and applying this learning to our work in the year ahead."

- Kait Steele, Director of Field Operations, 826 Summer Learning Conference

"Jen knocked it out of the park today in her session with Oregon educators."

- Penny Plavala, Oregon State Literacy Association

"You did an absolutely outstanding job today. Your energy and enthusiasm are contagious! I was blown away by your ability to personally connect with people via chat and the Q and A section. Did I hear right... you answered over 40 questions during one of our work sessions this afternoon?! Wow! Today was the type of motivation and guidance our teachers needed to push through the next few months."

- Ryan Nevius, Executive Director, IL ASCD

learn more about customized professional learning.

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Practical, research-based strategies for learning & teaching literacy. Develop proficient readers & writers with Jennifer Serravallo, best-selling author.

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POPEY - Full of resources and practical ideas K-3

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POPEY - Full of resources and practical ideas K-3

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K-3 focus

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POPEY | Provincial Outreach Program for the Early Years

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The Provincial Outreach Program for the Early Years (POPEY) is a British Columbia Ministry of Education Provincial Resource Program with an outreach focus. POPEY's mandate is to increase K-3 educators' capacity to support all primary English literacy learners, particularly diverse and struggling students in the classroom.

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Year Overview K-3 Opportunities - Register with links

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Year Overview K-3 Opportunities - Register with links

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Guided and Independent Reading: Browsing Bins (Virtual Tour)

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Levelled Library - One aspect of a classroom library.

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Levelled Library - One aspect of a classroom library.

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Creating a Leveled Library: Developing Skills in Reading and Writing

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Daily Five - Setting up Read to Someone 

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Daily Five - Setting up Read to Someone 

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Read to Someone: A Component Of The Daily Five

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Pal Reading: Developing Fluency and Comprehension with Paired Reading

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Social Emotional Learning for Primary Literacy Learners (40 min) 

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Social Emotional Learning for Primary Literacy Learners (40 min) 

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Exploring  literacy activities, stories, and texts that may make those intentional connections and provide opportunities for students to experience and delve into social-emotional learning.

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The foundation of early intervention is rooted in effective classroom practice for all students. Effective instruction for all will result in fewer children needing intervention.

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The foundation of early intervention is rooted in effective classroom practice for all students. Effective instruction for all will result in fewer children needing intervention.

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Love this app, use it all the time. Just wish that there was either an undo button for when you accidentally hit the reset button or there was a history button so you can go back and look at what was just done. Thanks!

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‎Running Record Assistant is the number one choice for calculating Running Record scores. The app combines all the standard running record calculator and stopwatch functions with the convenience of audio recording playback. Flagging lets you score as you go and quickly refer back to audio of difficul...

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The CAFE Literacy System gives a structure for ongoing assessment to monitor each student's progress and a plan to help shift instruction so that each student is successful. It provides a common language to talk about reading development and proficiency. Students feel ownership and accountability over their learning.

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Shared Reading - integrating all the aspects

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Shared Reading - integrating all the aspects

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Literacy & Student Self-Assessment of the Core Competencies

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Literacy & Student Self-Assessment of the Core Competencies

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Literacy & Student Self-Assessment of the Core Competencies

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Word Work Skills & Strategies to Support Early Readers and Writers

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Word Work Skills & Strategies to Support Early Readers and Writers

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Oral Storytelling in Your K-3 Literacy Block.

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Oral Storytelling in Your K-3 Literacy Block.

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Reading and Writing Conferences in Your K-3 Literacy Block

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Reading and Writing Conferences in Your K-3 Literacy Block

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Reading and Writing Conferences in Your K-3 Literacy Block

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Reading and Writing Conferences in Your K-3 Literacy Block

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Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment Refresher

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Word Sort example for Words Their Way (During Covid)

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Word Sort example for Words Their Way (During Covid)

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This is an example of a word sort done online during covid teaching from home.

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Green Book Sort 38 soft and hard g and c.mp4

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This video was for online teaching during covid. The kids had the pictures at home to sort as we went.

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In the last couple of blogs, we've unpacked these three questions about decodable texts: Who really needs decodable texts, anyway? What is a decodable text, really? How many decodable texts do I need? If you missed those posts, you can catch up here and here. As...

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In the last couple of blogs, we've unpacked these three questions about decodable texts: Who really needs decodable texts, anyway? What is a decodable text, really? How many decodable texts do I need? If you missed those posts, you can catch up here and here. As...

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Connecting to the Reader - Non Fiction Writing

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Connecting to the Reader - Non Fiction Writing

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Is my writing interesting?
Is my writing clear?

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Nonfiction Writing Power - Adrienne Gear

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Giving children the chance to write non-fiction instead of a story. Story writing is very complicated, and non-fiction writing is more related to a formula.

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Reading Comprehension- shifting our thinking. Awesome video

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Reading Comprehension- shifting our thinking. Awesome video

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Background Knowledge: A Key to Comprehension

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JillE Literacy Levelled Books are specially designed to engage young readers. Through high-interest nonfiction and thought-provoking stories students systematically build their decoding, comprehension, and critical-thinking skills.

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This is a fantastic explanation of two different types of story and provides the template for planning a walking story.

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Writing Lesson Layout, No excuse Words, Planners...

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Writing Lesson Layout, No excuse Words, Planners...

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To much good stuff here!

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Posting for my own information. :) Need to watch this one. I want to use the idea with books that we are using already.

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Mentor sentences are the perfect way to teach grammar and author's craft through examples of excellent sentences from your favorite read-aloud books! This video will show you what each day looked like in my classroom on the fourth week of school in my fourth grade classroom.

You can get the lesson you see in the video in isolation (along with other mentor text activities) by clicking HERE.

If you need more proof that the numerous volumes of mentor sentence curricula created by Ideas by Jiveyare a best practice in the classroom, download the case study! The download presents the data collected over the 2016-2017 school year in the form of a case study.

Grab mybest-selling mentor sentences bundle, and you'll be set for the year! There is a 9-page introduction in the FIRST unit with pictures included of how I use mentor sentences in my room (VERY detailed, day-by-day). In each unit, I walk you through each day's lesson for 40 weeks- all the work is done! I've even done all the thinking for you when it comes to revising and imitating! :) Each lesson includes the teacher sentence page, the student sentence page, a lesson plan page with possibilities for all 4 days, and a quiz aligned with CCSS with answer key.

I have over 175 lessons with your favorite mentor texts for the upper grades! See ALL of the mentor sentences units for grades 3-5 HERE.

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WHAT ELSE DO I NEED?
There is a bundle ofInteractive Language Arts Notebook Companions for all of the units! They include an interactive activity for each focus skill in the mentor sentence sets. Every mentor sentence unit has a companion interactive notebook to help you teach and/or review the skill for the week!

You might also be interested in the Volume 1 Mentor Sentences Modifications ADD-ON Pack which will support students with disabilities, English as a Second Language, or slow writers.

You'll also love to use these mentor texts in reading and writing, too! Make sure to get BETTER THAN BASAL: Complete NO PREP Reading & Writing Units for 40 Popular Mentor Texts!

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DO YOU LOVE TO SAVE MONEY?
Do you already have the first set? You can buy just the second, third, and fourth units in a bundle.

There is a BIG bundle with all Volume 1 Mentor Sentences, Interactive Notebooks, and Reading and Writing activities for all 40 books! Check out the Biggest and BEST Bundle for Volume 1!

Click here to buy all 40 weeks of Mentor Sentences in a Hard Copy Book, which will also come with the digital version. You might also be interested in the HARD COPY BUNDLE with all Volume 1 Mentor Sentences, Interactive Notebooks, and Reading and Writing activities for all 40 books!

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HELP ME PLAN!
You don't need to do all of the mentor sentence lessons in the order they come in the units. When I created units 1, 2, and 3, I put them in the order I used them in my classroom, so these lessons are in an order that spirals and gets progressively more difficult, but it is not necessary to stay in that order. Unit 4 was created a year later as "extra" lessons with more of my favorite books that I used throughout the year.

Download the free "At-A-Glance" document for all 40 books in Volume 1! This download will help you see all of the skills covered in Volume 1 units if you'd like to "bounce around" within the units.

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WHAT ABOUT OTHER GRADE LEVELS?

There is a Volume 2 and a Volume 3 for grades 3-5 to help prevent repetition of mentor sentence lessons among grades in the same school.
Check out what's in Volume 2!
Check out what's in Volume 3!

Mentor Sentences can be done in ALL grades! Please tell your teacher friends about mentor sentences for their grade:
Kindergarten & ELL (Early Emergent Readers)
First Grade
Second Grade

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Please remember, this purchase is for the use of one teacher. It is not intended to be shared. Please use the 'additional license' purchase if more than one teacher will be using it. Thank you!

*The mentor sentence lessons I have created are adapted from the ideas of Jeff Anderson. These lessons were born from the routine that worked well in my classroom, and the demos and examples I present are variations of Jeff Anderson's methods. This is not the only way to "do" mentor sentences in your classroom.*

Copyright © 2013-2016 Ideas By Jivey, LLC
All rights reserved by author.
Permission to copy for single classroom use only.
Electronic distribution limited to single classroom use only.
Not for public display.

Become a follower to receive updates about future mentor sentence units as well!

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Mentor Sentences Demonstration (grades 3-5) with Enemy Pie

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Mentor sentences are the perfect way to teach grammar and author's craft through examples of excellent sentences from your favorite read-aloud books! This video will show you what each day looked like in my classroom on the fourth week of school in my fourth grade classroom. You can get the lesson...

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There's an outline of goals for each day here, along with a video. I haven't watched it yet, but will get to it later. I also want to bring my word work to this routine.

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Your students are going to need a TON of modeling, prompting, and explanation the first few weeks of school, just as with any other routine. And they AREN'T going to just magically know everything. But if you start out slow and gradually build up to "grade level expectations," students will feel more successful, and you will be helping them establish the routine necessary for the whole year. And one of the BEST parts of mentor sentences... the spiral review every week! Students who aren't "getting it" the first few times will get it down the road after seeing it several more times.

In this post, I am going to lay out exactly what I would do the first week of school for mentor sentences with explanations and pictures, as well as video at the end. Buckle up- this is a long one!

No matter where you are in the school year, when you start mentor sentences you should all start the same way. You might have already read this post about not teaching grammar in isolation (and if not, go read it first!) where I lay out the reasons why I don't "start the year" by explaining all the different parts of speech. Start mentor sentences as soon as you can (I suggest the first full week of school) with LOTS of modeling. Most of the learning during mentor sentence time is going to happen through discussion. Practicing having class conversations (listening and taking turns talking) is going to be essential to teach- and a great thing to implement, not just for mentor sentence time!

The first week you begin mentor sentences, you may not even want students to write in their notebook. I like to walk them through the routine by writing it all out for them to see, and not worry about whether they are copying or not.

Yes, it is necessary to read the book for students to have context of the sentence. If you can, try to read it at some point before starting your lesson, but if not, you definitely want to read it before Wednesday. I encourage you to use the book for other lessons too, not just mentor sentences. Mentor texts are great for reading and writing mini-lessons, too! Many books can be found on YouTube as read alouds, and even on websites like Storyline Online!

If you want to skip over the written explanation and JUST SEE THE VIDEO, scroll to the bottom of this post!

DAY 1

On this day, you are going to teach students to look at a sentence for what makes it special/different/unique from a "normal" sentence. This is their time to notice. Because many of them aren't used to analyzing a sentence this way, it will be important for you to prompt them a lot and even tell them what YOU notice about the sentence if they truly don't say a single thing. Generally though, someone will always be the "talker" and anxious to speak up. 🙂 Read the sentence together, and then ask them what they notice about the sentence.
What do you see in this sentence that looks different than other sentences? What do you notice about this sentence that makes it a good sentence? Does anything stand out to you in this sentence?
Students might tell you they see a capital and a period first. We want to move them away from those answers as we continue through the year, but that's a great start for the first week! They might tell you they see an apostrophe in the contraction. This would be a great time to talk for just a minute about contractions and remind them of that skill from previous grades. You also hope they will tell you there are adjectives, or describing words. This would be the focus skill for the week. If they don't tell you that, IT'S OK!! It's the first week, and this will be a great time for you to model a think-aloud about what YOU notice in the sentence.

List all of the things they (and you) notice about the sentence either on a chart or in a notebook under a document camera.

Tell them this week, you will be focusing on making writing more exciting with adjectives, and if appropriate, allow them to do something during your writing time with this skill as well. This will help begin the transfer of mentor sentence time to writing time.

DAY 2

On the second day, you will want to discuss the specific parts of speech they see in the sentence. This is generally when teachers want to cry in the beginning of the year. But listen, the important thing here is to start off simple and build through the year. Yes, fourth graders should know more in a sentence than the nouns. But guess what? If they have been taught with grammar in isolation all of their school career, they are going to have a really hard time applying those "rules" to a sentence. Remember, the key is to make sure they understand WHY those words are what they are, and how they connect to other words in the sentence. (In other words, don't label just for the sake of labeling!)

Once again, you need to model, model, model. And just because I labeled all of the words in the lesson plan for your reference doesn't mean you need to label all of the words for the class!

Start off by asking them if they know how to name any of the words in the sentence. You can remind them of how to name them: nouns, verbs, adjectives... in my past experience, just like on day 1, you'll usually have at least one kid who knows SOMETHING and they will speak up.

In the sentence from Do Unto Otters, the two most important things I'd make sure to talk them through are nouns and adjectives (because adjectives are the focus). If you want to label other parts, especially if students speak up and say they know that word, then do it! What I would NOT do is talk them through every other word they do not know and try to teach them what those parts of speech are. For one, you don't have time for that in a mini-lesson. But also, you don't want to overwhelm them. Take it slow and work your way up over the next several weeks. I promise, halfway through the year, they are going to know those parts of speech because of the consistent spiral manner of the routine.

This is also the day to do some more focused work on the skill of the week. I like to use interactive notebook activities to review and/or teach my skills.

DAY 3

On the third day, students are going to revise the mentor sentence. You will want to explain what this means- making the sentence better than it already is...making it sound better... etc.

Guess what you are going to do this day? MODEL AGAIN! 🙂

Since the focus of this week is adjectives, it will be very easy to revise for adjectives. Create a scaffolded, cloze sentence to show them how you will think through revising the sentence.

Allow them to help you think of words that could belong in the blank or to replace "good."

Once you get into the routine after a few weeks, you will continue to show a model of a revised sentence (but not necessarily doing a think-aloud every time) so they can discuss and identify what you've done to revise the sentence, which gives them ideas of things they can do on their own.

DAY 4

This day will be the trickiest for them at first, but will soon become their favorite day because they get to write about whatever they want to write about! On the fourth day, students will imitate the style and structure of the sentence. This is another reason why the sentences start off "easy" at the beginning of the year. Students need to understand how to imitate a simple sentence before they can ever do it with more difficult ones. Every now and then, I get emails and feedback about the sentences being too easy in unit 1- remember, you are setting them up to be successful for the rest of the year! 🙂

I bet you'll never guess what I'm going to tell you to do on this day............... MODEL! 🙂

Provide students another scaffolded cloze sentence- this time with blanks replacing words. Most of them have seen mad libs before, so I like to set it up that way.

Talk through your thoughts as you decide what to write. Discuss picking a topic first, and then moving to write words in each blank. "I want to write about all of my new friends in this class, so I'm going to write classmate in the blank for my noun. Now what kind of classmate do I want? Well I'd like a helpful classmate! It's nice to have a helpful classmate."

Just like on day 3, once you get into the routine after a few weeks, you will continue to show a model of an imitated sentence (but not necessarily doing a think-aloud every time) so they can discuss and identify what you've done to imitate the sentence, which gives them ideas of things they can do on their own.

DAY 5

This is the day when you will want to have students see how they will be assessed each week. I encourage you to use the quizzes as formative assessments to see what students still need for pulling small groups or one-on-one conferencing.... BUT I am not discouraging you from using them as grades. Just be mindful of how long you have taught the skill before taking it for a grade. 🙂

I would display the quiz on the board and do it together as a class the first week.

This will help them understand what needs to be done each week. It's also a great way to continue teaching the concept of adjectives- having them talk to you about how they know the words are adjectives!

I like to write on a chart that stays up all week long, but do what works best for your classroom style!

Here is a wonderful example of how it looks in a fourth grade classroom from Lindy Bulsterbaum's students in San Antonio, Texas!

Ready to see all of this together?

Here is a video I filmed in my office, walking you through each step of each day. It is not a professional video, so no judging 😉 but I hope it helps you see how it all works together!

I hope this post has been helpful and encouraging to you- your students WILL get better with a lot of practice, MODELING 🙂 and time!If you want even more IN-DEPTH step-by-step help with implementing mentor sentences, check out my courses!

If you are looking for guidance to pick the "just-right" bundle for your needs, click below!

Don't forget to check out Jeff Anderson's books! I adapted his ideas to make them work in my elementary classroom!

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Your students are going to need a TON of modeling, prompting, and explanation the first few weeks of school, just as with any other routine. And they AREN'T going to just magically know everything.

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This is for grades 3-5 and I've signed up. I'll watch in my pyjamas!

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Look what I found!!

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Transform your first graders into imaginative poets with practice designed to build fluency, confidence, and comprehension. Students will read and perform creative original poems that are sure to engage both reluctant and skilled readers!

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Transcript

This is a board that I set up for students to use during writer's workshop and during other times of the day when we're thinking about writing. One of the things I noticed was that my students were having a difficult time finding a reason to write, not all of them but some of them. There was a good group of students in my class who didn't find writing meaningful. And so, along with my colleagues in the school we came up with what we felt would be a good way to address that. We felt that students needed to learn that writing is purposeful, that when writers write they start out with a reason for that writing. And so we very strategically sought to teach the students about how writers think about writing. We didn't focus too much on the form; we looked really at what are writers thinking when they engage in some sort of writing. What we looked at first was why writers write, and we looked at purpose. And we talked with students about how when writers write there's a reason for it, and that reason isn't my teacher told me to write, it's because writers have something to say. And we began looking at different texts as models and trying to determine what the purpose for those texts was, and we came up with a list and we made a web that shows some of the different reasons for writing, to teach, to inform, to find out, to tell how to, and so on. And we started to model different aspects of that for students.

I showed students one example, one of the confusions that my students had was I would say what is your purpose for writing and they would give me their topic. What's your purpose for writing? Hockey. What form are you going to write in? Hockey. So, students did not have a clear sense that topic was a separate concept from purpose and from form. So I started to break that down for students and show them through modelling that you can take one topic and break it down into many different purposes, for different audiences that take different forms, and I really needed to do that one thorough purpose to get students familiar with the idea, to get them comfortable with the concept that we begin with a purpose for our topic, and the topic I chose was butterflies, it's something the students are always interested in and something they bring a lot of background knowledge to. And I gave them two different scenarios for why someone might want to write about butterflies. The first was, you're in the playground and you see somebody at recess squish a butterfly for no reason. That gives you a very powerful purpose for writing and we talked about how you might want to write to someone to find out why they did that.

So what we came up with together and co-wrote, I did the writing while students shared the ideas, was a letter to the butterfly squisher, and we actually called it a not-so-friendly letter. Students were already familiar with letter form, and what we worked through together were the ideas that would be in that letter. And through going through that example students understood that the purpose was not butterflies, it was to find out why someone would do that to a butterfly. The audience was the person who squished the butterfly and the form was a letter, because that's the most authentic thing to write to someone when you want to find out why in a situation like that. Then we constructed another scenario where a student is outside at recess and just sees a butterfly chrysalis on a leaf, and is struck by the wonder of that, like first grade and second grade students are, they just love these experiences of seeing these real life things, and how might you present that in writing if you come in after recess and you're excited about that. We thought you might want to teach about the wonder of the butterfly lifecycle.

So again with students I took their ideas and showed them how you could create a simple lifecycle of a butterfly using pictures with a few words. And I did that very deliberately. The letter model was very word heavy. It would appeal to the students who see themselves as big text writers who want to write a lot. And then the other model presented a different option for those students who don't feel ready to write a full letter or to write at length. They had something lighter, something a little less risky to approach that could still convey a very authentic purpose. So through showing those two examples I modelled for students and shared with them that idea that writers start with a topic and a purpose, and once purpose is determined, audience and purpose together dictate the form.

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BALANCEDLITERACYDIET :: index :: Balanced Literacy Diet

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This is a board that I set up for students to use during writer's workshop and during other times of the day when we're thinking about writing. One of the things I noticed was that my students were having a difficult time finding a reason to write, not all of them but some of them.

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Incredible Variety of Videos from Experts...take your pick...

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Incredible Variety of Videos from Experts...take your pick...

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Something for everyone here.

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The YouTube Channel of The Educator Collaborative, LLC. The Educator Collaborative is a think tank and education consulting organization which seeks to innovate the ways that educators learn together. Founded by Christopher Lehman, we support K-12 educators in studying best practices, integrating…

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Jan Richardson's Guided Reading - YouTube

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Sight Word Activities from Jan Richardson's Next Steps in Guided Reading - YouTube

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Sight Word Activities from Jan Richardson's Next Steps in Guided Reading

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Orton-Gillingham in a Gr. 1 Classroom - YouTube

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Small Group Interactive Writing - YouTube

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Jan Richardson Remote Guided Reading K 5 - YouTube

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Jan Richardson Remote Guided Reading K 5

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Authentic First Peoples Resources - First Nations Education Steering Committee FNESC

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Choose Authentic First Peoples Resources

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Choose Authentic First Peoples Resources

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Authentic First Peoples Resources – First Nations Education Steering Committee FNESC

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The past two decades have seen a dramatic increase in the number of Indigenous texts. The First Nations Education Steering Committee (FNESC) and the First Nations Schools Association (FNSA) have developed tools, Authentic First Peoples Resources for Use in K-9 Classrooms (Updated 2021) and Authentic…

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Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics: Part 1

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Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics: Part 1

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Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics: Part 2

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Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics: Part 2

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Thinking About Building Thinking Classrooms Across Contexts

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Thinking About Building Thinking Classrooms Across Contexts

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Building Thinking Questions Liljedahl New Video

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Building Thinking Questions Liljedahl New Video

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** Link to the K-12 Math Task Collection **

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Dr Nikki Newton & Ann Elise Record

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Numberless Word Problems - upper elementary

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Numberless Word Problems - upper elementary

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3 Ways to Use Numberless Word Problems in Upper Elementary

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Mix & Match Math - lots of manipulatives

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Mix & Match Math - lots of manipulatives

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Carole Fullerton

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Carole Fullerton's Store: Math Teaching Resources

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Numeracy Assessment Number Sense & Problem Solving

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Numeracy Assessment Number Sense & Problem Solving

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Numeracy Assessment and Practice - with SO many resources

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SNAP is a unique, student-friendly assessment and practice tool that enhances any balanced math program. The templates and rubrics are simple, straightforward and provide a clear snapshot of learning evidence. Effective and authentic 21st century assessment extends far beyond gathering data on paper, however. SNAP can inform the rest of the learning process and drive the purposeful, responsive action needed to guide your students down the path to mathematical proficiency.

The "SNAP". This stands for "Student Numeracy Assessment & Practice". We are very pleased to have been able to incorporate "practice" into the name of the assessment as we believe this to be a very important and innovative aspect. The idea of practice supports a spiraled approach to teaching and assessing numeracy skills. The SNAP is an assessment that can be used over and over again - to build student fluency, confidence, comprehension, and skills.

The SNAP has its philosophic underpinning based in The ANIE (by Pembroke Publishers). Our teachers were having great results with the ANIE as an assessment tool, and these results inspired us to create an assessment that was our own and catered to our exact context.

After a year of hard work, multiple drafts, piloting and prototypes, The SNAP was born.

We believe that The SNAP will have a dramatic effect on student math achievement in Chilliwack. Started in 2016/2017, all of our students from grades 2-7 are using the SNAP on an ongoing basis. With thanks to the support from our Board of Education, we have funding and staffing in place to support our teachers in using The SNAP. This initiative is currently impacting over 5,000 students and we anticipate it will significantly improve their academic trajectory. We look forward to reporting our progress in the spring of 2017.

Included in this post below is our Strategic Plan Update #1 presented to our Board in June 2016. The update outlines the SNAP journey thus far in a one-page overview. It describes the alignment with the new curriculum, gives an overview of the outcomes focused upon, and recognizes the educators who teamed together to create it.

Our SNAP team has had the pleasure of visiting other school districts in BC to share SNAP and related resources. We are proud to share some of the feedback educators have shared about learning and using SNAP!
"I'm excited to try this with my class - I like being able to have different levels for a split class." ~ Teacher, SD91 Nechako Lakes "Great assessment for teaching tool! Love the adaptability of it for IEP students and even students who are ahead!" ~ Teacher, SD 75 Mission School District "I don't need to focus on what my students already know." ~ Teacher, SD 78 Fraser Cascade "I like the idea of two simple assessment pieces!" ~ Teacher, SD 75 Mission School District "Something that stuck with me today is it's a useful tool for formative and summative assessment. Daily Practice is Best!" ~Teacher, SD 75 Mission School District "Love the website, because I need the written down." ~ Teacher, SD 91 Nechako Lakes "I now have a much greater understanding of how SNAP can be used! A potentially powerful tool! I can't wait to share with my colleagues - thanks so much!!!" ~ Teacher, SD 91 Nechako Lakes "I like that this is a tool that can be worked with throughout the year so students won't be "surprised" by the time their learning has to be reported." ~ Teacher, SD 75 Mission School District

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SNAP is a unique, student-friendly assessment and practice tool that enhances any balanced math program. The templates and rubrics are simple, straightforward and provide a clear snapshot of learning evidence. Effective and authentic 21st century assessment extends far beyond gathering data on paper, however.

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Reading is making meaning from print. These three processes happen during reading and need to be assessed together:

Decoding: Identify or decode the words in print

Comprehension: Construct an understanding or meaning from them.

Fluency: coordinate decoding and comprehension so reading is automatic and accurate.

Benchmarking conducted by classroom teachers determines the complexity of text to which a student can successfully apply these three reading processes.
Benchmarking allows a teacher to:

1. know the level of text complexity a student is able to read,

2. determine next steps in reading instruction for individual, small group and whole class instruction

3. identify strong instructional practices to move student literacy forward

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Decoding: Identify or decode the words in print Comprehension: Construct an understanding or meaning from them. Fluency: coordinate decoding and comprehension so reading is automatic and accurate. Benchmarking conducted by classroom teachers determines the complexity of text to which a student can successfully apply these three reading processes.

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Ron Berger - Leaders of Their own Learning

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Ron Berger - Leaders of Their own Learning

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Introduction to Leaders of Their Own Learning

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Creating Targets Students See, Understand, and Aim For

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Creating Targets Students See, Understand, and Aim For

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Join the conversation

Follow our hashtag: #sd37afl. Get ideas. Share your own. @SD37AFL

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Don't go it alone! Check out these ideas designed to amplify the impact of your learning team.

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Follow our hashtag: #sd37afl. Get ideas. Share your own. @SD37AFL Wondering how to get started? Click here to see what level of training is right for your team. Don't go it alone! Check out these ideas designed to amplify the impact of your learning team.

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Leaders of Their Own Learning: Transforming Schools Through Student-Engaged Assessment

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Leaders of Their Own Learning: Transforming Schools Through Student-Engaged Assessment : Berger, Ron, Rugen, Leah, Woodfin, Libby, EL Education: Amazon.ca: Books