ELA Success
As part of my series-within-a-series for figurative language processing, writer’s workshop might seem like a surprising topic to bring up in a discussion about reading comprehension. But, it’s not. I have worked with many students through the years, many who struggled with reading comprehension. They struggled for various
Summer Learning
If you’re looking for a unique way to keep your child engaged in reading over the summer, you might want to consider doing some choral reading at home. In case you’ve never heard of it, choral reading is a literacy technique that helps students build their fluency, self-confidence,
ELA Success
If you are a reading teacher, or if you have a sweeping love of books, you probably know about literary devices, which include figurative language. In this series about micro-comprehension, I have been touching upon the kinds of connections students need to make with stories they read or hear. Those
Summer Learning
Summer vacation is supposed to be a break from the usual routine of school, but many parents worry their kid’s reading skills will digress without some sort of action plan. According to the "Kids and Family Reading Report," a survey done by Scholastic, an American publishing company,
ELA Success
In this series about developing micro-comprehension I have discussed how students need a good vocabulary in order to create accurate mental models of the stories they read or hear. We also know that those mental models are affected by the way the brain fills-in missing information, called gap-filling inference. Next
Writing
There’s nothing like the dreaded feeling of sitting at your desk with a blank sheet of writing paper staring back at you. You see some of your classmates busily jotting down ideas; you see them creating their prewriting map; or you see some classmates looking upward with a pleasant
ELA Success
Last time, I introduced the concept of building micro-comprehension skills in young readers, starting with words. Often, students need direct instruction in the various areas of micro-comprehension to become efficient readers. I started with words because they are the foundation upon which to build the other skills. With a strong
ELA Success
The word there is a commonly used word that can be difficult to classify because of its various roles in a sentence. There can be used as an adverb, pronoun, adjective, and sometimes as an interjection. But in grammatical constructions like there is or there are, there is considered an
ELA Success
In an earlier blog post, I pointed out that early reading might best focus on micro-comprehension strategies before exploring the macro-comprehension kinds of questions that are found in most reading programs. But why? To start with, a reader won’t have clear macro-comprehension without clear micro-comprehension. A deep and wide
ELA Success
Did you know that Shurley English has a team of technology experts that work 24/7 to deliver our digital curriculum? It’s their job to develop, monitor, and maintain the SIM technology systems and services, but there’s one thing they can’t do for you: They cannot update
ELA Success
Writing is a tool for communication, and language is the system of words and the methods of combining them that we use to express our thoughts and feelings to each other. As teachers, we want our students to think carefully as they select the words they use to convey meaning,
Summer Learning
As eager as your students are for the school year to end, it won’t be long until they are actually bored during their summer break. Yes, I said “bored.” Help your students stay focused and creative while they gear up for that day with this fun and creative classroom