professional resources
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A quick search for “toolkits” in the Units of Study Facebook groups will yield dozens of posts with requests for and pictures of various toolkits. They are certainly a hot topic. However, I haven’t seen many that focus on writing about reading, a component of balanced literacy that students are expected to do throughout the…
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My current writer’s notebook I’ve always loved writing. In fact, there was a time in late middle school and early high school that I wanted to make writing my career, thanks to an impressionable year with an amazing teacher. I researched colleges and universities with strong creative writing programs and started wearing quirky clothes to increase…
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I’ve gone and glogged again! My latest glog is all about Fountas and Pinnell’s framework for guided reading for teachers from kindergarten to second grade, though the information is certainly transferrable to all the grades. I love making glogs because you can see all of the information and synthesize everything at once. The video that’s…
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I created my very first glog (I created a trial week-long Glogster account), and it’s about Standard of Mathematical Practice #3: Construct a viable argument and critique the reasoning of others. This SMP is my favorite because I believe it has the greatest impact on students’ learning across ALL subjects. When students have to discuss their…
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In the past ten years of my teaching career, I’ve avoided doing worksheets of punctuation practice because I haven’t seen students’ writing improve. Instead I’ve seen students work on them, seem to be proficient at using punctuation marks because all of the fill in the blanks are correct or the sentences have been edited appropriately, and…
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I love finding inspiring quotes in the books I’m reading! In fact, my students have a whole section of their reading notebooks devoted to quote collecting. It’s impactful work because it encourages: “reading like a writer.” Being aware of how words are composed influences and excites us as writers. I want my writing to have the same kind…
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I recently developed a math workshop lesson on math vocabulary using the ideas discussed in “Four Practical Principles for Enhancing Vocabulary Instruction” and “Oral Language Needs: Making Math Meaningful.” Using this information as inspiration, I created several stations focusing on practicing math vocabulary: Visual Dictionary, Vocabulary Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect Two, Vocabulary Magnets, and Math Revising. In…
A SEA OF TALK 