ELAsuccess
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
shurley english
Just like many of you, teachers across the United States are experiencing lots of change during this time of year like switching classrooms or schools, learning new curricula, and welcoming a new class of students. Changes like these push us outside of our comfort zones. I used to look at
k12 education
Discipline is one of the most pressing issues in our schools today, and in order for learning to take place, teachers must control and minimize time off task due to discipline problems. Choosing an effective approach and using it correctly can make a big difference in whether a child feels
Back-to-School
So, you have purchased your Shurley curriculum, you open the book or access your digital teacher’s manual…and then it hits you! “What’s all this? How am I going to cover all of it? Can I even do it?” If you have had these or similar feelings, don’
Back-to-School
Last week, we discussed how practicing the art of self-care IS your duty. Learning how to set boundaries at home and work helps you take care of YOU so you can take care of others. One valuable way to break your pattern of self-sacrifice is by learning how to gracefully
Back-to-School
Are you familiar with the frog in boiling water metaphor? (Of course, do not attempt this at home!) Imagine a pot of cold water sitting on the burner of a stove. A frog is peacefully swimming in it. The heat is turned on, and the water starts warming up. The
ELAsuccess
In this series of blogs about micro-comprehension, I have presented strategies that boost micro-comprehension: vocabulary words, gap-filling inference, sentence structure processing, figurative language processing, and applying text structure. When you teach students how to slow down their own thinking— to become aware of what they are thinking about while reading,
ELAsuccess
As I continue my series about micro-comprehension, text structure processing is next in line. Earlier, I wrote about sentence structure processing. The process of analyzing sentence structure and text structure shares similarities. However, analyzing at the sentence level gives a close-up picture of the meaning of the sentence; whereas, analyzing
Back-to-School
Journal Writing is an activity that is implemented very early in the Shurley English curriculum. Students are taught how to create a written journal to record their thoughts and feelings. Then, throughout the school year, they are encouraged to respond to specific prompts in their personal journals. (If you’re
ELAsuccess
Reading fluency, comprehension, prosody (the highs and lows of the voice to convey emotion), —these facets of reading sound like a bunch of educational mumbo-jumbo, but they matter! As I continue to poke around in figurative language processing, these components have to be mentioned because many readers need us to
ELAsuccess
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,