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(including NonFiction)
Standards
Standards
The Non-Freaked Out, Focused Approach to Common Core
by Dave Stuart, Jr. Good for grades 4-5 especially.
Reading Resources
Reading Resources
Teaching Strategies
Teaching Strategies
The Six Elements of Effective Reading Instruction: Every Child, Every Day
Four Teaching Moves that Promote a Growth Mindset in All Readers
Differentiation ideas for Reading
Sometimes Student Choice isn't the Answer in Reading
John Spencer discusses the benefits of mixing it up: some student choice, some whole class reading, and gives you strategies for shared reading experiences.
A Simple Exercise for Encouraging Independent Reading
This strategy of choice and "choose something in your comfort zone and something outside of your comfort zone" (or reading as a mirror and a window) can be adapted to any grade level, and is great for informational text, but can be extended to fiction as well. Yes, the article is about high school, but if you use an elementary resource like NewsELA it would be awesome.
What they discovered is that no matter how foreign a topic feels initially, you can nearly always find a way to connect to it and learn something valuable...when her students shared what they chose, “all of our worlds widened with new understanding.”
9 Teacher Tested Ways to Build Student Ownership into Informational Reading
Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School
Great guide, not only for ELs but for your struggling readers/writers, can be downloaded as a .pdf.
Teaching Reading Skills and Strategies for Struggling Readers (free to join website)
Alternatives to “Popcorn” or Round Robin reading
Are Classroom Reading Groups the Best Way to Teach Reading? Maybe Not.
Crazy Professor reading strategy
See below. His website w/more: http://www.wholebrainteaching.com/ (Info on working w/challenging students)
Along the same lines, Don't Read Like a Robot
15 Tips for Building Fluent Readers
15 Fun Ways to Build Language & Literary Skills in Young Learners
Mistakes in Reading Program Design that can Hurt Struggling Readers
Three Dos and Don’ts of Implementing Reader’s Workshop
Dos and Don’ts of Implementing Reader’s Workshop Part 2
Teaching the Talk, not the Text
What DOESN'T Work: Literacy Practices We Should Abandon
Supporting Independent Reading (Just say "No" to reading logs)
5 Effective Note Taking Techniques
Your students from 3rd to 8th need to learn to take notes. Here are a few of the most common techniques. It's good to teach them a variety of methods, then eventually they can pick the one most effective for themselves.
Cornell Notes and Visual Note Taking
Spelling
Lesson Plan Resources for Reading
Lesson Plan Resources for Reading
Lesson plans from NCTE (The National Council for Teachers of English)
CommitLit Units
ELA units with extensive lesson plans, graphic organizers and readings, gr. 5-12, as of 2018 adding library of 3rd-4th grade readings.
Better Lesson Common Core ELA Lesson Plans K-12
English Companion
Language Arts ideas, lesson plans, resources, discussions-free to join-more upper grade
Steve Peha’s organizers
FANTASTIC, join English Companion (above) & you can download it: Writer’s Workshop, Reader’s Workshop, and a gazillion other useful things.
Think Social Studies and Science for reading, even music for the lyrics! Use images or videos for writing prompts, read together and discuss interesting articles, reading goes with any subject!
Achieve the Core-Materials for ELA/Literacy
Hyperdocs English Language Arts
Created and shared freely by other teachers...use, tweak, get ideas.
Reading and Writing Workshop resources
Graphic Novels in the Classroom
2016 NY Public Library list of Best Books for Kids and Teens
20 Empowering Childrens Books that Celebrate Diversity and Social Justice
Google Earth - Folktales from around the world
Lesson plans, neat stuff!
30 Poetry Games and Activities for Students
Poetry Videos for Elementary Students
Reading texts to download or read online
Reading texts to download or read online
Reading AtoZ leveled reading (subscription)
Epic - Free ebooks K-5
Storyline Online
Children's storybooks read by a variety of actors with corresponding activity resources available. Choice of using SchoolTube, YouTube or Vimeo to watch the videos.
ReadWorks
Free K-12 reading passages for assigning digitally, printing or projecting for students. New, a student library for students to continue reading on their own. Audio available for all texts. Teacher Resources included. Translations to 7 languages for your ELL students. Nonfiction, fiction, all subject areas.
Owl Eyes
Literature, also has lesson plans, free
Poetry by Heart
This is the children's section...very much UK poems, but also valuable are the resources at the Learning Zone, for teaching or learning how to recite poetry by heart, with feeling. Everything (poems & resources) are free to download, and can be used with any poem.
Diverse Book Lists
Diverse Book Lists
Non-fiction resources
Non-fiction resources
NewsELA
Awesome! can also change Lexile level of article) free, or you can pay if you want more features
ProCon
Free, articles that offer argumentative writing, article pro and con different issues. Good for mentor text as well as seeing both sides of an issue
CommonLit
Free, can create a class, has text from gr. 3-12, leveled, with lesson plan resources. Also provides paired texts, teachers guide and parents guide. You create a class and assign the texts...students can read, have the text read to them, highlight, look up words in the dictionary, translate words from English to Spanish -a number of other languages as well (not the whole text). There are assessment questions and discussion questions, and now connects with Google Classroom. It also has a guided reading feature. Worth a look!.
ReadWorks
See above in Reading Texts to Download,,, has both nonfiction and fiction passages.
NuSkool
High interest articles w/lesson plans ($70/yr) but you can read articles & take a quiz for free.
Websites with high interest reading:
Wonderopolis
What are your students wondering? It's a fun place to browse and read. You can also receive an email of a daily wonder. Pages can be listened to or printed as .pdfs.New Atlas
(Upper grade) Articles on Lifestyle, Science and TechnologyLive Science
(Upper grade) Some of the sections: Planet Earth, Animals, Tech, Health, Strange News, SpaceKids Discover Online
(Upper grade) Interesting topics and articles with great illustrations and animations. You can search by grade level and standards, plus students can choose Lexile level. In addition, it allows students to explore and read about a topic in the order they wish by using Discover Maps. Richard Byrne explains how this works:
Free, but you can monitor your class and have access to more articles with a subscription.
To give your students control over the browser/web page:
To give your students control over the browser/web page:
1) Text to Speech (for reading support)
Text to Speech in Chrome: Get the add-on "Speak It!". Once you've added it, highlight the selection, and click the speaker icon.
Text to Speech in Safari: Highlight the text, then Edit, to Speech, then Start Speaking. If you want to change the voice, go System Preferences to Text to Speech.
Dictate is a new free add-in for Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook
2) Use Reader View on a web page if the ads are distracting. Look for the icons circled in red below...
Safari Reader View
Safari Reader View
Firefox Reader View
Firefox Reader View
Chrome Reader View
(install the app first)
Chrome Reader View
(install the app first)
3) For Students with eye problems: Teach students how to zoom in and out of browser (some students you don’t realize can’t see the text!!) It’s usually Control & + or Control & mouse wheel on a PC, and Command + on a Mac
4) Other add-ons
This doc (created by Steve Wick & Melissa Wilson) has tons of tools, apps and add ons for Chrome and Google Classroom, all Language Arts based.
Writing Resources
Writing Resources
"We can't talk about reading without writing. Reading is breathing in, writing is breathing out." -Ernest Morrell
Teaching Strategies & Lesson Plans
Teaching Strategies & Lesson Plans
Steve Peha’s organizers
FANTASTIC, join English Companion (free) & you can download any of his resources: (Writer’s Workshop, Reader’s Workshop, and a gazillion other useful things.)
Always Write
This is a really dense website, full of ideas, but almost too overwhelming- be prepared. There are tons of great ideas if you can wade through them.
A Soft Start to Writer's Workshop
Reading and Writing Workshop resources
Art of the Sentence w/Kinder
But inspirational for any grade! See video below.
A Simple Sheet for Writing Conferences
A sheet to help you and students remember what their goals are, what you talked about, etc. Nice!
Roving Paragraph Frames
An activity for collaboratively, yet individually, writing a paragraph.
Thinking Like a Coach
Ensuring that writing feedback is effective.
The Science of Storytelling
Infographic, for gr. 4 and up, nice STEM or STEAM connection!
826 Digital
Gr. 1-12, Free to educators. Featuring writing "sparks," lesson plans, projects and sample writing pieces. "826 Digital champions student writing. By providing engaging, adaptable, standards-based resources—designed to captivate young writers and empower their educators." Tie to Writers Workshop, Social Emotional Learning
Achieve the Core-
1- Planning for Argument Writing
2-Introduction to Argument Writing
The Best PD Resources for Writing Instruction
Teaching Students about Plagiarism
4 Strategies for Teaching Students to Revise
Why Revise? Because you Have an Authentic Audience
Transitional Phrases for Informational Writing
Writing Prompts -make it fun!
Writing Prompts -make it fun!
It also helps to give students a choice!
A Year of Picture Prompts: Over 160 Images to Inspire Writing
Explanation 1 Explanation 2
From the NY Times Learning Network:
1- 401 Prompts for Argumentative Writing (.pdf)
2- 300 Questions and Images for Argumentative Writing
3- 650 Prompts for Personal and Narrative Writing (.pdf)
4- WGOITP?
"What's Going on in this Picture?" Start with visuals. The NY Times Learning network posts a photo a week, and students respond to these three questions: What’s going on in this picture? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can we find? Think: writing a claim and backing it up with textual evidence, but with a photo. A great way to train students. -Look at their photos, you don't have to use theirs, pick your own, but look at how interesting their photos are. NYT will post the story later in the week and students can compare their ideas with what the photo was really showing. How teachers use this...Using it in an ELL context...Other teacher ideas
Bored Panda
50 images of what happens when you leave your kids alone (images to use as prompts)
Mentor Texts
Mentor Texts
Mentor Text Children’s Books to Teach Vivid Description
A collection of picture books that help teach "Show don't tell". A list of books that include many different cultures.
12 Great Mentor Texts for Narrative Writing in K-2
This is also a diverse list of picture books!
Tech Tools
Tech Tools
Blogging in the 21st Century Classroom
100+ Ideas and Prompts for Student Blogging Awesome list of types of blogging as well as prompts.
Five Google Resources to Support Student Writing
In a Few Words: Short Form Writing
Ditch the Red Pen - Ideas on How to Give Writing Feedback
WritQ
A Google Docs add-on to help you track your students' progress, and aids in student editing. New, free, not yet sure of the impact! You must teach the tool and give the students the power to remember this tool is a help, but they have the final word...
5 Free Tools for Creating Online Picture Books
Write Reader
Create online storybooks...image banks (including Sesame Street images), ability to create classes and add comments. How-to
Grammar
Grammar
I like using a combination of these two philosophies, and grammar works best if it is tied to student reading and writing:
The Write Guy
Jeff Anderson - Get his books! I used Mechanically Inclined and Everyday Editing, they are fantastic...he has quite a few more as well - it makes grammar fun and interesting...basically it's teaching grammar using mentor sentences, best pulled from a book you are reading with students.
He has a new book out, Patterns of Power, that is focused on Gr. 1-5 grammar, and free VIDEOS that demonstrate his technique. Check it out, so good! Patterns: Notice, Compare/Contrast, Imitate, Celebrate
How to Deal with Student Grammar Errors
Main focus - teach grammar in the context of writing, teach/use lessons as the need arises, make it as individualized as possible
For older students: Mechanics Instruction that Sticks, daily warmups based on Jeff Anderson's ideas (above) and how the author uses them (scroll down) which can be applied to younger students also.
Editing your Writing
by Bret Gosselin A collection of posters to use when you are teaching a skill, or for students to refer to. Nice thorough collection.
GrammarBytes
Can get a daily practice item via Twitter, definitions of various terms, also has online practice activities (can also download a handout), Tips & Rules (but also read the article above!). Their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/GrammarBytes/videos
Great Infographics for Teachers Part 1
(You can use for reference or post!)
Great Infographics for Teachers Part 2
Teaching English Mastery Using Imagery
A presentation by Jon Corippo, he used this DAILY with students!! (And making it fun helps...plus you can make the task simpler if you have younger students.) I wish I knew about it when I was teaching ELA!!!! If you want to see him explaining it go to the video below, start at 21:12 (although the whole video is wonderful-it's just not all about grammar) If you like what you see, the form is here and the directions are here. Once students had that mastered, he turned to writing sentences, the form for practicing types of sentences is here...again a daily practice, and the instructions are here.
Other Resources
Other Resources
Video Resources
Video Resources
Kinder
ABCya (games mostly)
BrainPop has resources for all content areas--
BrainPop upper grades (even to middle school) Subscription
BrainPop Jr.-K to 3 Subscription
BrainPop ESL Subscription
BrainPop Educator (search by standard, info, teacher stuff!)
Discovery Education Subscription, but there are some free resources K-12 and any content area
Other ELA topics
Other ELA topics
Learning how to speak effectively
This article is for middle school, but many tips will work well for younger students. The younger they start, the less afraid they are.
Oracy in the Classroom: Strategies for Effective Talk
Key Takeaways from NCTE 2016
Short but sweet key ideas in literacy and reading.
17 Reps to Build Vocabulary Muscles
Sutori
This is a timeline tool where you can add text, images and videos and even mini quizzes to check for understanding. Connects w/Google Classroom. Can be used by students to create timelines, storyboards, reports...easy to use. Tutorial here.
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