test prep

Once a month, LPS teachers have a “teacher-led” staff meeting. Teachers must be in the building from 3 to 4 working on anything of their choice. After going to the Saturday Reunion at Teachers College and Literacy for All, I was desperate to share all of the new ideas I’d learned. I’d been considering lots…

Toolkit Ideas for Writing About Reading

Nov 13, 2018

literacy, professional resources, reading, test prep, writing

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…

Resource-Based Question Resources

Mar 25, 2015

professional resources, reading, social studies, test prep, writing

I remember document-based questions (DBQ’s) from the AP US History exam, for which I had to analyze and synthesize several primary and secondary sources to answer the question. I enjoyed the task (NERD!), and before I’d heard of PARCC, I had my students work on DBQ’s throughout the year, usually in social studies. Now that PARCC…

Writing Clinic #1: Conferring and Small Groups

Toolkit Ideas for Writing About Reading

Resource-Based Question Resources