Cooler mornings, school buses on their routes, apples, pumpkins, and football—It’s that time of year again! It’s time to give your students the opportunity to learn and practice academic skills that will allow them to be productive citizens in our society. Some subjects you teach provide your
ELA Success
Today, I’ve decided to write to you, the adult reader, about a topic that most of us take for granted: Reading. I’ve chosen this topic because improving reading skills is not just a concern for students only! We all need to practice. The truth is that your reading
shurley english
If you’ve ever found yourself in the middle of a tumultuous situation like a rip-roaring, indoor recess due to inclement weather, or a rigorous test preparation right before a holiday, you know how it feels when you need a break! …You need it, and you need it NOW! Now
ELA Success
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed the benefits of taking some time to slow down, relax, and focus on being more of a human-being rather than a human-doing. For teachers and students alike, that all seems easy to do during the summer months, but how do you avoid getting sucked
ELA Success
Last time, I showed you how to help students own the alphabet as more than just the ABCs. Each symbol or letter is a picture of sound. Our job is to teach kids how to attach the sound or sounds that each symbol represents. We’ll start at the very
Writing
The ideal scenario for the first couple months of a new school year would be a classroom running smoothly. You want to be comfortable with your daily schedule and know that you can meet the needs of all of your diverse students. Realistically, some of you may already feel like
depth of knowledge
If you follow the Shurley English blog, you already know that our main goal is to give students the knowledge, skills, and practice they need to become competent, confident communicators. Our plan of action consists of applying the following equation during language arts instruction: (Knowledge + Skills) x Practice = Competence and
ELA Success
Lately, I have been pondering my linguistic journey. Over the years, it has been a journey of self-discovery. A journey that led me to use a fascinating method to teach systematic phonics and phonemic awareness. If you could have visited my first and second grade combined classroom about 20 years
ELA Success
The rules for writing numbers in a sentence or paragraph haven’t changed over the years, but for some reason, I still feel the need to double-check them. I’m not sure why numbers are such a stumbling block, but any time I need to communicate a quantity, dollar amount,
ELA Success
For my birthday, I received a beautiful interior sliding barn door as a gift. I envisioned that this hefty, rustic door was going to be a unique addition that would bring more style to my home. With a few extra hands, how hard could this DIY project be if we
shurley english
During my undergraduate days, I was headlong into all of my pre-teaching training courses. I truly enjoyed all of them. But, as I neared my junior and senior years of college, I began to get more into the philosophies of teaching. It seems that, at that time, the prevalent theories
ELA Success
Whether you teach language arts in the school classroom or your home classroom, you have to teach your kids how to write, right? To be clear, I don’t mean the mechanical parts of writing: holding the pencil correctly, positioning the notebook paper properly, and so on. I mean the