Have you heard of ‘DiSSS’ or ‘CaFE’?
These is Tim Ferriss’ framework for mastering new information, and it’s perfect for the classroom setting. Continue reading
Memorial Day is right around the corner, and one of the most effective teaching strategies is to combine the curriculum with real life.
Now you can do just that with these wonderful articles from ReadWorks. Continue reading
Today’s focus for Book Club is on the book, Sarah Plain and Tall, which is an easy read I selected to read with my students during the M-Th 30 minute class sessions. Continue reading
“Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” I pulled one of my Book Club students aside after class. He had been dozing on and off the entire thirty minutes (yes, Book Club is only thirty minutes) and I wanted to see what was up. “Look,” I said, “I know you’re tired, but it hurts my feelings when you fall asleep during my class. What if you were telling me a story about your weekend and I closed my eyes and started snoring. How would you feel?” Continue reading
Students need a break from the same-ole-same-ole. That’s why I wanted to create a comic activity to spice things up! My students were reading “Those Who Don’t,” one of the shortest vignettes in House on Mango Street. Instead of a discussion, I wanted them to think deeply about the theme in the vignette and create a comic representation of what was happening–my goal was to get them to think critically and create their own visual! Continue reading
As my Book Club students grasped text-to-self connections, it was time to move to text-to-world. To help them understand this, I created a PowerPoint/Google Presentation and walked through it with them. Continue reading
Making connections while reading is hard! That’s why I created this resource to help not only my struggling readers in Book Club, but for for any struggling reader or young reader (fifth grade through eighth grade). This simple, yet deeper-thinking worksheet helps students create text-to-self connections while reading. Continue reading
Ahhh…close reading passages, a necessary evil. Students aren’t big fans of close reading, but these mini-readings are important for their skill building, especially if there is a set of questions that are relevant to the skills they are practicing. Continue reading
For Book Club, I’m always looking for good resources to help my students make connections to their reading. I came across this great source from ReadWorks, and I created two sets of questions to correspond and help with text-to-self and text-to-world connections! Continue reading
