It's Monday... It's ELA Common Core Day! Tips From The Field

Happy Common Core Monday to you!  Big apologies coming from me - I have been off the radar for a couple of months.  I'm back!  

I had the pleasure of working with exemplary teachers, administrators, interventionists, and student teachers in the Northeast this week.  THANK YOU to the teachers in Albany, Hartford, Boston, Long Island, and Cherry Hill, NJ!  The following tips are their contribution:

• Create a resource web page for your school to share teacher ideas/materials. (Haviland Ave Elem/Audubon Schools)

• Resource: The Decoding Solution: Rime Magic and Fast Success for Struggling Readers by Sharon Zinke (Scholastic)

• Select non-fiction together

• Moo-o.com - record stories and watch animated playback

• Let children use a microphone to read their writings.  They read like professionals!

• www.printablepaper.net - free... tons of paper resources to print

• Use Google Images on Smart Board for student background knowledge (preview first!!)

• Text Talk: Interactive Read Aloud - a vocab-building reading program. Great books. Two of each book - one for teaching, one for your library

• Collaborate with team as often as possible

• Encourage students to talk and discuss

• Read to self with timers/stop watches

• Read to Buddy (improves fluency and expression)

• Center Task Sheets - students check off [their accomplishments] themselves

• Beanie Baby Decoding Strategies

• Samsonsclassroom.com - practice on sight words, spelling, reading

• Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers (Everything is there for you!)

• Pinterest!!!  Having the kids "mirror" my/our objectives

• Recorder Plus. Free APP for modulation in fluency

• Garage Band on i-pad for intonation and fluency

• Time to read

• Story Wheel APP for creating stories and listening to them read back to you

• Talking Carl [Talking Tom, etc] APPs for fluency.  Use for oral reading

• Taxedo.com.  Word spashes like Wordle

• DiscoveryEducation.com. Nonfiction films at various levels.

• PBS - free nonfiction films

• teachingchannel.com

• Farfaria App APP.  The "Netflix" of children's literature at a touch of a button

• Books on tape - "Voice"

• Resource: Comprehension Connections by Tammy McGregor.  Concrete lessons and examples given for inferences, determining importance, etc.  (Highly recommended by 2nd grade teachers at Bristol Hubbell School.)

Read aloud to your students everyday.  And until next time, share a literacy strategy!

Denise Gudwin

Happy New Year - 2013 Thoughts

Mr. Moses lived on the street where I grew up.  From as far back as I can remember, early on New Year's Day each year my mother got up and dressed and let me get up with her so that we were ready and standing in the vestibule when Mr. Moses rang our doorbell.

He got up at dawn, dressed impeccably in a suit and vest and tie and overcoat and dress hat and started at one end of the block, going to each house and ringing the doorbell.  When greeted, he'd take off his hat and step across the threshold just enough so that he was inside. When invited in, he'd decline, saying that he had to keep going but wanted to be sure that the first person who entered our home in the new year brought good tidings and well wishes for all of us. He went to every house, then quietly turned around and walked the length of the long block back to his. It was many, many years later when I'd grown up and moved away that I wondered if there had ever been someone who came to his house to do that for him.

I wish you a year of good health, wholeheartedness, increased commitment, strengthening community, shared laughter, new adventures, continual reward, accelerated compassion, faith, and gratitude.

From a childhood story Mr. Moses by Marian SkottMyhre - As shared with me from my brother, @Rene.