According to research, it’s important that teachers explicitly teach students how to use comprehension strategies even before students are reading fluently. • Here’s a one page comprehension strategies “cheat sheet” that lists the strategies, definitions, and has a sentence frame for each to assist teachers and students in using the strategy. Teaching students how to …
Category: Open Court Reading
How to Plan a Technology Lesson
The Blue Skunk blog presents 7 Stupid Mistakes Teachers Make With Technology. I’d like to address poor technology planning that I’ve written about in the past. I think poor planning pervades education and isn’t a problem specific to technology use but one that many classrooms suffer from. There’s nothing new or different about my method …
A New Blog
Frank Guttler, who used to lead great screen education workshops for the American Film Institute (AFI), now leads the same workshops on his own (since AFI downsized its K-12 education department). Frank has his own blog and I look forward to reading. I’ve added it to my blogroll in place of the American Film Institute …
Educational Technology Fluency Independent Work Time Macintosh Tips Open Court Reading Reading Fluency
What To Do With Student Data
To paraphrase Chris Lehman in his five minute Ignite Philly speech on the Schools We Need: Good data costs more than we want to spend in this country and the best data is the data that teachers collect every day. The best data is the work kids do every single day. I agree with this …
Video in the Classroom Blog Carnival #1
I have renamed the Digital Storytelling Carnival to the Video in the Classroom Blog Carnival with this which would be edition #7. As before, the carnival spotlights blog articles on using video production in the classroom which includes digital storytelling and general video production. I’ve come to understand that digital storytelling refers to a specific …
K12 Online 08 Week Two Review
I watched all of the presentations from Week Two that were available as movie files. I skipped any wiki presentations and audio podcasts. I’ve heard from other teachers who prefer the latter kind of presentation but I feel like I can see wikis and download podcasts any time. What’s unique about the conference in my …
K12 Online: Week One Review
The first week of the free K12 Online Conference is over and it has been great fun to download four presentations each morning and have the chance to watch them later in the day. I also participated in the live chat at the conclusion of week one. I am in awe of the thinking, planning, …
Unit Openers for Unit 2
Unit Specific Unit Openers Second Grade, Kindness Ideas Third Grade, City Wildlife Ideas Fourth Grade, Dollars and Sense/Dreams to Jobs Ideas Fifth Grade, Astronomy Ideas I hope you checked out: Jose Rodriguez’s Open Court Unit Opener Ideas including incorporating realia. City Teacher’s ideas for Collaborative Unit Openers where teachers split responsibilities across a grade level. …
Literacy Blogs
For literacy coaches and those interested in increasing student literacy, here are a few related blogs that you might be interested in reading: Reading Rockets Blog written by a mom raising young readers, this is a practical blog about teaching children to read from a trusted organization Angela Maiers A mix of traditional literacy and …
What Do I Do During Independent Work Time?
I received this question by e-mail today: Hello Mr. Needleman, I was wondering if there was an Internet source or a book that gives ideas for Workshop? My school is a “Ditto” and “Worksheet” IWT kind of school and I am scrambling for ideas. I am starting IWT over today and am hoping for ideas …