Five Effective Techniques for Teaching Vocabulary

Can you keep a secret?  You can?  Here it is...

"Looking up vocabulary words in a dictionary to get their meaning is considered THE WORST instructional practice for vocabulary instruction," according to the research studies shared by Nell Duke at the Virginia State Reading Conference. 

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5 Easy Ways to Encourage Self-Selected Reading

One thing all teachers can agree on is that students need to read. We give them self-selected reading time during class. We assign 20 minutes of reading for homework. We encourage reading every chance we get, but sometimes we run out of ideas. Here are a few things that are working well to get my students excited about reading!

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8 Fun Carrot Activities for Spring

Spring - Hurry up and get here! 

Am I the only one who has early Spring Fever this year? I think my students have it too! Our winter has broken records for snowfall and low temps so we have had so many indoor recesses and snow days. It was fun at first, but now I'm completely over it! Bring on Spring! We still have a few weeks since March 20th is the first day of spring, but I'm OK with it feeling like spring much earlier. Forget what that grumpy groundhog had to say!

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Character Resources for Reading

Characters are a huge part of reading. Most of our fiction texts have characters. I would go as far as saying characters are what make reading so much fun.

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Ideas Old and New for Working With Letters

Do you have students who are still struggling to learn the letters of the alphabet? Or are you rethinking how you want your students to work with the alphabet next year? Using letters in different ways helps students learn and use the letters of alphabet in meaningful ways.

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Sparking imagination in the Classroom

Imagination can sometimes be scarce in a classroom. Does it deserve a place? It seems to be forgotten with the weight of additional testing, less recess time, and arts sometimes being excluded. When we try to find a place for imagination in our lessons, the lessons are usually more exciting and meaningful to the students and can result in more concrete learning.

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Building Comprehension With Prediction Strategies

Studies on good readers have proven that prediction strategies are one way to deepen reading comprehension. Prediction strategies can be used before and during reading to increase understanding text.

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Can competition lead to increased comprehension?

Can competition lead to increased comprehension? This seems like a bad combo. We've nearly eliminated competitiveness in some schools -- sometimes to ridiculous extremes. However, we usually try to avoid it in class. We don't want one student to be the best at something -- all students can succeed. So, why would I have this idea and what successes have I experienced that prompted me to explore this idea?

80's Childhood and Reading Machines

I have to briefly go back to my childhood in the 80s first. I was a voracious reader as soon as I started reading. I was one of those kids who had a book for every car trip and tried to read in the dark (you know, wait for each street light so you can read a few more words). My school had a reading tool that they used. I have searched for the actual item on the internet and haven't found it. If you know what it is, please let me know! We called it a reading machine. You had a reading passage that you would feed into the top of the machine. It would roll around a large cylinder and only show you a line at a time. It would continuously advance based upon the reading rate for which it was set. Once you finished "reading" the passage you would take a comprehension quiz. If you passed the quiz (I can't remember if you needed 100% or some other passing grade) you would advance on to the next speed. Now, I am not recommending this method and haven't thought about it in a while. I wouldn't say I was reading for enjoyment at all, but I did learn to skim passages quickly which is a great skills for more advanced courses. I loved it. I loved challenging myself to advance to the next level. It was like a game. A game for good readers. I'll share a few tips below for individual competitions.

Scholastic News for Close Reading

Fast forward to last year in my 3rd grade classroom. We use Scholastic News and last year we really enjoyed all the benefits of using the additional resources in the electronic version. The students loved voting on issues and seeing if their results matched the results of kids around the world. The other thing that was a huge hit were the quizzes. I didn't start out doing them all the time and then the kids kept asking for them. I was completely sold on this version of quizzing when I saw some close reading taking place. The game board has different point rewards for each category. The least complex questions would gain the fewest points, etc. I would divide the class into teams. The team (either a team representative or someone I chose) would choose the category. I would display the question and the team would decide on an answer. If they didn't immediately know the answer, the whole group would grab their Scholastic News and start searching and reading everything again carefully! That's what we are always hoping they will do!

Valuable Competition

I think some competition can be valuable. You can compete against others or top your own records.

For individual competition, my students enjoy a reading board that has bead chain necklaces. They get a bead for each 100 minutes that they read. They get a special bead or charm for each 500 minutes that they read. Some of my students have been very motivated to read as they see others start to fill their necklace.

Team competitions can be a quiz like the ones I mentioned or a variety of learning games. Make sure the teams are fair and change players at times. Be mindful of any team winning all the time. Then you would want to switch things up and make it more equitable.

In my classroom, adding the element of competition has also shown increased engagement, an opportunity to practice teamwork, purposeful answers (to make sure they get the points) and reading things more carefully.

Powerpoint Classroom Quiz

1. Create a quiz using this powerpoint template (or use the included African Animals quiz and research pages). Just click on the picture above to download this quiz and 3 African animal research papers. Click here to get a powerpoint with the blank game board. Just add your own text boxes.  

2. Everyone reads the passage silently (chapter, multiple passages, etc.). Tell them there will be a game with questions from the passage so they need to read carefully.

3. Divide the class into teams (2-4 teams). Choose a team to start.

4. Show the board. The 1st team chooses a category and point value. They can look back to find the answer. Designate someone as an official team spokesperson (someone who will listen to others).  Ask, is that your final answer to make sure the team agrees. If they miss it, you can tell the answer and/or show where it is in the passage. The team only gets points for the correct answer. 

5. The team with the most points wins!

Have a great week!

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DIY Reading Game

Are you looking for a quick and easy way to engage your students? I put together this quick game, which can be used in many ways and easily differentiated for many different skills and levels. Using a dishwasher tablet container, green duck tape, and some construction paper, I whipped up this little "CHOMP" game. You could call yours whatever you see fit. Now comes the fun part, you can put skills you want your students to work with on cards and put them inside! Make sure a few of the cards say CHOMP on them, when the student draws that card, they have to put all of their cards back in. The object of the game is just to collect as many cards as possible.  

I have to admit that when I saw this container, I instantly started thinking of ways that I could make it into an alligator for my students, and then I started trying to figure out what kind of game I could use it for to keep them engaged in their learning.  Once the dishwasher tablets were gone (many moons later), I got right to work making it into an alligator. Now, I have to tell you that I have also searched this on Pinterest and there are MANY other teachers that had the same idea. I'm not claiming this as my original idea by any means because I'm sure that most primary teachers (or mothers of toddlers) would easily be able to see that this would make a great alligator! Today, I'm sharing how I made mine and the quick games that I use it for.

Like I mentioned, I started out with an empty dishwasher detergent container and green duck tape, but you could just tape or glue green paper around the container if you wanted. Then, I used construction paper to make the eyes and nostrils for the alligator/crocodile. I figured that if the kids tore up the construction paper, it's pretty easy to make another set and glue it on. Also, you will probably be able to cut out better circles than I did!

Next, just use paper or index cards to put skills inside that you would like your students to practice. You can easily have multiple bags or envelopes of cards with the game and different groups of students can use the cards that they need to work on, then put them back in the bag when finished. Instant differentiation!

To play, students take turns reaching in and drawing a card out. Each student reads the card or answers the question. If it's correct, they keep it. If incorrect, they put the card back in.  If they draw a CHOMP card, they have to put ALL of their cards that they have back in. The person with the most cards at the end of the game (when this center/station is over), would be the winner.

Instead of a total DIY,  I have created some cards already for my preschoolers at home, along with some for my 2nd graders that I teach! Click on the picture below for a link to those!

I'd love to hear what skills you decide to add to your DIY Chomp game!

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5 Reasons I {heart} Read Alouds in Upper Elementary

Hi! I'm Jamie from Not So Wimpy Teacher. I am a third grade teacher, wife, mother of four, blogger and curriculum writer. I am super excited that I was asked to guest blog today for Classroom Tested Resources! 

During my first couple of years as a teacher, I always had a class read aloud sitting on my desk. It would take months to actually finish it because I so rarely had time to just sit and read to my third graders. Too many standards and assessments. Too many interruptions and mandates. I am embarrassed to admit that I started to feel like taking a break and reading to my kids was a luxury that I didn't have time for. Thank goodness that I have evolved as an educator! My thinking has done a 360 degree change! A day does not go by in my classroom when I don't take the time to read to my students. It is one of the best parts of our day and something that I am passionate about!

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Learning To Use Picture Cues When Reading

One of the first strategies that students learn to use when they encounter an unknown word is to look at the supporting picture. Here are 3 tips for teaching students to tune in to visual cues.

Do you have students who don't know what to do when they come to an unknown word? In my class, my students need explicit instruction on using picture cues. Today I am sharing 3 ideas that have been successful in my classroom. 

Matching sentences to Pictures

To help students realize that the pictures and sentences connect, we do different centers where students match sentences or phrases to the corresponding picture.

You could also have students match pictures to the correct word in a poem or rhyme. In this picture, we are matching pictures to words in our poem.

Use Interactive Books To Bring Attention To Pictures

Have you tried interactive books in your classroom yet? Interactive books are like GOLD in my classroom!! If you aren't familiar with interactive books, these are books that have picture pieces that match the page in the book. The whole purpose is to focus in on the pictures. Here is an example page from one of the books I use in my classroom:

To make the connection even more obvious, you can have the student point to the word(s) that match the picture. As I said, my students love these books and are so much more open to working on reading with them. Bonus...you can cover a lot of different concepts with these books. We use them for science, social studies, behavior management, math, etc. 

Write About Pictures

Making the text match the pictures is another great way to focus on the picture. One of the ways we do this in my classroom is through class scrapbooks. I take tons of pictures of my students engaged in different activities in the classroom. We then print them out and have the students write a sentence about the picture. 

The picture above is an example of the students writing about a science experiment that we did. I put each page in a binder (after inserting in a page protector) so that students can read it during free read or free time. Someone ALWAYS takes it to read! Bonus...it is really helpful for my struggling readers because they can draw on their memories of the experience as they read. Win!!

These 3 ideas can be used with a variety of resources. Here are links to the materials I used: interactive books, picture matching, classroom scrapbook.  

I hope these ideas have been helpful. Do you have a favorite way to work on using picture clues? Please write it in the comments so we can all learn!

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"Reading" Trash

One of my favorite professional books is Tanny McGregor's Comprehension Connections because she opened up my eyes and made me think outside the box on how to make lessons more concrete.  And our struggling students, young students....well...ANY learner (young and old) can benefit from a more concrete/real lesson.

So we did just that this past week.  Our first graders received their first "formal" lesson on making an inference when reading.  But we did not start with books.  We wanted them to realize that inferring takes place all the time and that they have actually been doing since...really...forever; therefore we brought in trash.

Actually, we started the week off with old shoes.  My teammate and I explained that we can infer a lot about a person by their shoes.  Tanny McGregor encourages students to use thinking stems as they share their inferences about the objects being discussed.  We did the same.

After listening to the students "turn and talk" about a football cleat, we shared with them all the great thinking stems they were already using and encouraged them to use a few others (such as "perhaps" and "I can infer").

Throughout the week we brought in a slipper and a child's shoe.  Our first graders shared what they inferred about the people who owned the shoes by using their schema and providing evidence from the shoe.

And what they found is that they knew a lot about these individuals even though they had never met them before.  Here are some of my favorite examples:

Perhaps the shoe belongs to a girl because it is red with heels and I know boys don't normally where these shoes.

The girl probably wore this shoe a lot because the sparkles are coming off.

I think the slipper belongs to a man because it is falling apart and I know a woman would just throw that away.

(HA!!  That cracked me up!)

The slipper could belong to a person with a dog because I see bite marks on the shoe.

We explained that when you infer you are "reading between the lines" because you must use evidence that is there but fill in unknown information with your schema.  After so many shoe inferences, our first graders were ready to "read" or infer about some trash.  

I told them that I have new neighbors (true) and that I don't know anything about them (very true).  So I took their trash to find out some things about them (NOT true at all...gross!!)

This was not as simple at first.  Some students wanted to infer just based on one single object.  We encouraged them to look at the items collectively, to move the objects around, and to think about how the objects relate to each other.  When we looked at the evidence in this way, we could make inferences about my new neighbors.

What they discovered was that these people may have had a birthday party because there was a candle, gift bag, and birthday cake yogurt.  The neighbors most likely love chocolate due to the 6 candy wrappers.  Someone in this house may have been sick since there was a medicine bottle, tissues, and a tissue box.

Throughout these conversations, we recorded the inferences and evidence (and schema) on a chart paper to help them understand that they were not just making predictions but backing up their ideas with evidence!

After all the learning that occurred throughout the week, we really wanted to see what they would infer on their own. We asked them what they could infer about the owner of this trash can:

If you would like to try this quick sheet out, just click on the image to grab it.

Throughout the week we used books to practice inferring, as well. Some wordless books by Lita Judge were used and some alphabet books.  If you would like to read more about these individual lessons, please click on the words in the previous sentence.

Do you have any other concrete lessons that you use to help your students infer?  I would love to add them into our first grade plans!  

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Written Response to Reading

Hello! It's Allison from Stuckey in Second. Hope your year is going well so far, I wanted to share a strategy that I use for reading/literacy. This strategy was NOT created by me, but I use it a lot and have created little cheat sheets to go with it for teaching my 2nd grade students over the years.  

One workstation that my students do every week includes a question about our weekly story from Reading Wonders. They have to use their book to go back and use text evidence to answer. They are also required to answer a similar question on their end of the week reading test.

You could write any question from your own stories that your students have read and include "use two details from the text," for example. My students have been trained (conditioned!?) to use RAPP.... If you haven't seen RAPP before, just wait, I have lots of pictures to show you below! :)

In order for you to understand how much I teach and remind them to use RAPP when answering a question, let me show you all of the places that students find RAPP in the classroom:

Anchor chart at the back corner of the room

(near my small group table for me to refer to anytime I'm there)

Randomly posted around the room, in case they need a reminder!

Across this long bulletin board on the other side of the room:

And, last but not least...ON EACH OF THEIR DESKS!!!

Yes, I may be crazy...but guess what? Some of them still forget.

I also remind students to RESTATE part of the question when they answer people and have conversations. 

Here are some of the tools that I have used to help me along the way. I use these tools on whole group type assignments first, before I let them try them on their own in workstations.

Graphic organizers:

You really don't need to purchase anything to implement this in your own classroom. When I first started teaching my students this strategy, I didn't have all of these fancy forms. I just made an anchor chart with chart paper and markers and kept reminding them to use it. But, as the years went by, I needed more templates to help out my teaching. (That's what I've posted below.)

If you'd like to purchase my RAPP Detective Packet, which includes the posters (color and black/white), bookmarks, desk tags, and graphic organizers, click below:

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Celebrating Read Across America Week with Parents as Teachers

I've recently added a new venture to my already fabulous job. If your unfamiliar with Looney's Literacy I'll give you a little background before I move forward. I've been a K-6  literacy interventionist for 11 yrs. I absolutely love all things literacy! After having my second child, who was diagnosed with an early childhood  developmental delay in speech and language and  proprioceptive sensory disorder; I became fascinated with early childhood development and literacy development. So as soon as a position for Parents as Teachers was open, I snatched it up. Which leads me to the topic of today's post that I'm going to share with you today.

If your unfamiliar with Parents as Teachers it is an amazing program that supports development-centered parenting. For my very first group connection I'm joining with my district's book fair and parent reading night to offer information regarding homemade toys that support age-appropriate, multi-sensory literacy readiness opportunities.

In honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday I will be creating (pinterest inspired) toys, Seuss Style!Because the actual program will not be until March 3rd I will only be showing you the toys I'll be presenting with the information that I'm going to have available for parents to have so they can make their own homemade toys at home! After March 3rd I will try to link up a post that highlights this fun event!

I'll start with the decorations because they are just so cute and I was supper excited to get most of them in the $1 Spot at Target!  

Next, I'm going to share the sensory bags you can make for less then $5 using materials from Dollar Tree & the $1 Spot at Target! Sensory bags can be used to support several developmental stages that will encourage  future literacy readiness. When babies are about 3-4 months old they will naturally lift their head up during tummy time for longer periods of time. This developmental milestone will support future milestones concerning gross motor development like sitting, crawling and walking.

You might be wondering what this has to do with literacy readiness. Well, these gross motor milestones will support core and neck strength which in turn encourages and stabilizes fluid eye movements which will be needed later on for tracking print. The sensory bags will hold your child's attention for longer periods of time and  they offer multi-sensory input.

I'll also be offering a mix of bought and homemade sensory toys that offer multi-sensory input for little explorers. The rattles are made  out of plastic Easter eggs and rice. I hot-glued them shut and then hot-glued ribbon around them.

This is just a brief preview of some of  the toys I will have available at our celebration March 3rd. I will post a link here to the post I will write after the event so you can see all the resources I had available.  I hope you have a fabulous Read Across America week and look forward to hearing what you did to celebrate. 

**Disclaimer - This post is owned by Looney's Literacy. Dr. Seuss is a registered trademark. All Dr. Seuss materials seen in pictures were legally purchased and follow all trademark rules and regulations. 

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