A recent article in Scholastic’s Instructor magazine reports what many primary teachers already know. There’s not enough time for children in kindergarten and other grades to play. So since we’re aware of it, we better do something to address the play deficit. Certainly time is an issue so I thought I’d use this blog entry …
Category: Open Court Reading
Royalty Free Images for Teachers
Here’s information about where to get images from when submitting powerpoints to the site and/or making movies, powerpoints in your classroom. Teachers often search google to find images. When you’re looking for a picture of a conga eel to explain what one is to an English Language Learner, for example, nothing really beats it in …
Get Your Students Involved: Service Learning
Reading Founders of the Children’s Rainforest? Approaching the Kindness unit? On the Cooperation or Friendship units? Get your students involved in a service project of their choosing. Do Something.org is a site where ideas are posted for making a difference and students can connect with others around the world to participate in service projects.
How to Be a Good Reading Teacher
This week, City Teacher from one of my favorite blogs, Teaching in the Inner City, reflects upon what it takes to be a good reading teacher and asks us to reflect upon our own experiences learning how to read. My response is here: I think teaching reading is really about teaching students to love reading. …
Culturally Relevant and Responsive Education (CRRE)
There is an ongoing movement in Los Angeles Unified School District toward Culturally Relevant and Responsive Education (CRRE). Teachers are required to attend six hours of training on the subject which encourages cultural sensitivity and an appreciation of students’ home cultures. The one area where I believe these trainings miss the mark is that they …
Home School Connection
Thank you to Bernice Alegria for contributing a letter to parents in Spanish and English, letting them know about the current Open Court unit and asking for them to send in artifacts for the Concept/Question Board. You can find her leter on the School Unit page. Also available is a letter for Risks and Consequences …
Reading Strategies Tip
It’s important to remember that the purpose for teaching reading strategies is for students to take ownership of the strategies and begin using them independently from you. If teaching the reading strategies is boring to you and your students, chances are you’re doing too much modeling and haven’t handed over control of strategy use to …
Newsletter #6: Back to School
The Open Court Resources.com Newsletter Monthly Newsletter #6—August 28, 2007: The Back to School Issue Dear Friends and Colleagues, I hope you have enjoyed a restful and relaxing summer. This has been a busy summer for Open Court Resources. Many pages have been redesigned to make it easier to quickly locate activities. Additional resources such …
Break A Leg!
Wishing everyone a healthy and productive school year and a great start this week!
See Your Test Scores (with graphs)
submitted by Francie Kugelman The 2007 CST scores are available in beautiful graphic form at this website: Schooldigger.com You can track your grade over the past four years, and you can also compare your grade’s scores with other schools nearby. I take a screen shot, and then paste that jpg into a word file for …