Open Court Reading Unit Openers

Back to School Week: Unit Openers

Alice Mercer has her unit opener plans completed do you? Do you know how to plan a unit opener? Here’s a few ideas to get you started for Unit 1: Kindergarten: School Unit Openers First Grade: Look Who’s Reading/Let’s Read! Unit Openers Second Grade: Sharing Stories Unit Openers Third Grade: Friendship Unit Openers Fourth Grade: …

Continue Reading
Concept Question Board Open Court Reading Unit Openers

The Concept Question Board of the Future

I’ve mentioned elsewhere teachers who have used blogging as a modern day platform for their Concept/Question Board. Alice Mercer has now re-imagined the Concept/Question Board using VoiceThread, an online digital storytelling platform. Here, students record their voices asking questions and telling what they know about the coming unit. See VoiceThread Online Concept/Question Boards: Third Grade: …

Continue Reading
Unit Openers

Making A New Nation: Five Ideas for a Unit Opener

  The American Revolution Unit contains several wordy stories of American History. The goal of the unit opener should be to assess prior knowledge and plant the seeds of recognition of a few key characters and motivations so that the following stories are comprehensible and relevant. Unit Opener Objective Students will be able to explain …

Continue Reading
Open Court Reading Unit Openers

Unit Opener Planning Week is Back

Back in October, I hosted a Unit Opener planning week for Open Court units #2. It resulted in some terrific ideas being posted by web site visitors and fellow bloggers and those ideas are now linked to from the unit opener pages of those units. As teachers at different schools have different pacing, editions, and …

Continue Reading
Open Court Reading Unit Openers

Heritage Unit Project Ideas

submitted by Francie Kugelman 1. The students can research a family recipe that is handed down from generation to generation. They must cook it, and write step by step what they did in order to make it. They must also include the history from the recipe. 2. The students can create a fictional story about …

Continue Reading
Open Court Reading Unit Openers

Bill Pinkney’s Back

  The Incredible Voyage of Bill Pinkney is now available on DVD.   This is a fantastic film which brings the story to life. It’s long.  I would not play it in its entirety in one sitting but would play a piece every day as you read the story. Some teachers find it objectionable that …

Continue Reading
Open Court Reading Unit Openers

Unit Opener Planning Week Reflection

A thank you to all those who participated in Unit Opener Planning week by posting, reading, and responding.In addition to the ideas presented on this blog:Here’s the schedule for this blog (entries posted at 7:30 AM PST): Monday 10/15  Best Practices for Unit Openers/Anticipatory Sets Tuesday 10/16  Virtual Guest Speakers: Videoconferencing Made Easy Wednesday 10/17 …

Continue Reading