Many students encounter difficulty as they transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” in fourth grade, and this difficulty can be even more pronounced for English language learners. Featuring Nonie Lesaux, this webcast explores effective strategies for instruction and assessment that can help teachers support their ELL students.
Newspapers expand the curriculum with an unlimited amount of information to use as background for learning activities. Discover new ways to use the newspaper in your language arts studies, with these activities from the Newspaper Association of America.
The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn the alphabetic principle — the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language — and that there is an organized, logical, and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.
Play is the work of children — through play and interaction, children learn how to talk, listen, read, and write. Read about typical behaviors of emergent and beginning readers, and how each of these behaviors relate to reading and writing.
Drawing on instructional materials, classroom images, and observational data from research, the authors illustrate these principles: establishing efficient, rich routines for introducing target word meanings; providing review activities that promote deep processing of word meanings; responding directly to student confusion; and fostering universal participation in and accountability for vocabulary instruction.
Explicit instruction in core literacy skills (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) combined with multisensory supports, are key to helping children with language-based learning disabilities thrive in a virtual learning environment. Try these ideas and online learning tools with your students.
Our Author Study Toolkit provides the step-by-step for studying authors in the classroom. But what would a real author study unit look like when you fill in the details? We’ve developed a sample author study using the popular author and illustrator, Patricia Polacco, as the model. Her much-loved books include Pink and Say, Thank You, Mr. Falker, and Thunder Cake. Polacco’s themes are timeless and provide rich opportunities for in-depth study.
February 14th is Valentine’s Day, a day to show family and friends how much you love and appreciate them. Here at Reading Rockets, we also see Valentine’s Day as a perfect opportunity to practice creative writing skills — and take a fresh look at poetry, figurative language, and word play.
How can you help your baby or toddler to learn and to get ready for school? Here are some ways to make sure young children’s physical and social needs are met.
The development of new teachers in hard-to-staff schools should be of the highest priority for principals, as stability is key to long-term school improvement. Here are some factors principals should remember when recruiting and retaining teachers.
Many of the adults in your child’s life are unfamiliar with learning disorders in general, or your child’s unique pattern of strengths and limitations. Developing a one- to three-page dossier that provides useful information about your child can help their babysitters, coaches, teachers, bus drivers, school support staff, neighbors, and relatives understand their limitations.
Cricket tasting, habitat building, and “hive” pollinating? Learn from the great implementation ideas that resident engagement specialists in education from Affordable Homes & Communities (AHC) in Arlington, Virginia developed over the summer while bringing books and Bug Buddies to their K-5 summer campers.
