The Open Court Resources.com Newsletter The Concept Question Board Introduction Many teachers, myself included, have struggled with integrating the Concept Question Board meaningfully into the Open Court Curriculum. Even those who have beautiful looking Concept Question Boards often put it up on the first day of the unit and leave it there as the best …
Category: Open Court Reading
Teaching Sight Words
The Sight Word Turtles are located here and are available for kindergarten and first grade. They are aligned with the Open Court decodable books. The Turtles are a way of organizing high frequency words to make them fun for students. For teachers, they can be used to assess student knowledge of sight words. For example, …
Chants! Everything You Always Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask
WHAT ARE CHANTS? Chants are rhythmic poems you can recite with students to teach unit concepts and reinforce key vocabulary. HOW DO YOU WRITE A CHANT TO CORRESPOND TO AN OPEN COURT STORY OR UNIT? Decide on key concepts you want to teach for a particular unit. For example, for the first grade folktale unit …
Reading Fluency Benchmarks: A Reasonable Approach
How to help students meet their goals and improve self-esteem (yours as well as theirs) by Mathew Needleman, Open Court Resources.com Say Goodbye to Fluency Charts First let me tell you what I do not do. I do not put up a fluency chart on the wall showing where everyone is reading. Gail Tompkins confirmed …