Reading Lesson Plans

Hello friends! Monsters University, what a great movie. But, the short, "Blue Umbrella" really affected me. Not only did it make me feel...

I absolutely love how these sticky note templates help my 4th grade students jot down their thoughts while indepndently reading. They cover a variety of skills like comparing and contrasting, making inferences, and cause and effect and are just the right size for upper elemetnary students.

As much as I love to read, sometimes I dreaded teaching reading. I was reading by four and everything in language arts came easily to me – it just clicked. When I had students that didn’t improve their reading with my strategies, I didn’t understand why. Now that I am working with my son, I […]

Students love these funny Ted Talks that also inspire and teach valuable lessons. Includes ideas for how to teach them in the classroom. Appropriate for students of all ages.

I needed a simple, easy to read transition words poster for my students, so I made this one! This poster will help your students meet Common Core standards by helping them use these temporal words and phrases to signal event order.You can print as large as 11x17 for a classroom poster or go smaller...

Teaching your students all about accountable talk is so important when you are launching reader's workshop. This set of mini anchor charts can help! These anchor charts will make any upper elementary teacher's job easier as they get ready to launch reader's workshop in their classroom.

Fun Socratic Seminars! How to get students talking, moving, and sharing with emoji accountable talk, Socratic seminar bingo, digital discussions, and more!

Differences between Inference and Prediction. Excellent to use when introducing inferences. Students can tell what they know about predictions, and then learn about how inferenceing is different.

5 Tips for Engaging Gifted Readers

‘Split into small teams and discuss …’ Why won’t they discuss? There might be a whole lot of reasons for that: I don’t know enough words. I’m worried about my grammar. I’m …

Speech Time Fun: Tips and Tricks for Working on Inferencing in Speech

Teaching With a Mountain View: Teaching Point of View with Pictures! This is an amazing way to teach literacy skills!

Making lit circles work in middle school!

For years, I have witnessed, over and over again, the value of using pictures to teach reading skills in my classroom. I always use the...

One of my favorite things about being an English teacher is hearing my students have deep discussions about literature. I mean half of the people I know go to book clubs for fun, so how awesome is it that I get paid to do this!? ...sans wine, ;) The value of Socratic seminars is tremendous, but just like with anything, hosting them the same way every time becomes mundane for you and your students. That said, here are some ways to spice up your next seminar. 1. Flipgrid- My teacher neighbor…

If you've read my previous post about anchor charts , you know that I feel pretty strongly about a few things . They must be created...