By Rachel Lynette
Hi everyone! I’m Mary Beth from Brain Waves Instruction, and I’m so happy to be sharing ideas with you all today. Rachel, thanks for letting me stop by! Like most teachers, I’m constantly on the hunt for engaging ways to help students become more confident, effective, and critical readers. Sometimes, I even go “old-school” and have my students read passages out loud in class…but reading
Today’s guest blogger here on Minds in Bloom is Sara from Secondary Sara. She’s written a post that I know you’ll find incredibly helpful: It’s about five ways to prepare your students for middle school. Enjoy! Ever wonder what the middle school teachers receiving your graduates really want? Not sure how best to help your 4th, 5th, and 6th graders transition from primary to secondary
Hi! I’m Gina of PerfettoWritingRoom. Special thanks today to Minds in Bloom for co-hosting this article! It is one of the very best blogs on the block, if I do say so myself. My most inspired writing project is a freebie I’m sharing with you today: 4 Senses Guided Short Story Activity. Calling it a prompt isn’t fair. Truly, it is an EXPERIENCE that is
We’re delighted to have Sharon from Classroom in the Middle guest blogging for us today. She’s written a great post about choosing informational classroom text, which we think you’ll find helpful and informative! The good news about informational text is that there is LOTS to choose from. The problem is deciding which informational articles will work best with your class. Catching the kids’
Say hi to our wonderful guest blogger, Alicia Christian, aka The Elementary Professor! Vocabulary practice is something teachers are always trying to increase. Now, with more reading in the content areas, it has become critically important for students to have a well-developed vocabulary to both understand a subject and to increase fluency while reading about it. But what can we do to give students repeated experiences with
Thank you to Claudio Enriquez from Two Boys and a Dad-Teacher for his guest post today! When it comes to inferencing, many of our students fail or come up short with their answers. The Common Core Standards for both informational and literature standards are very clear as stated in Anchor Standard 1: Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite
Minds in Bloom is thrilled to welcome Jessica from Ideas by Jivey to the blog! Jessica is sharing some information about her favorite topic: mentor texts! I love a good piece of literature, don’t you?? And I REALLY wish that I could just read all day long, but I can’t. There just isn’t enough time! (Can I get an AMEN?) So instead, I maximize my time
I have heard close reading called “abusing the text” and that it kills the joy of reading, which is probably true in many classrooms. Close reading is like salt. A little is a very good thing – a lot, not such a good idea. I think this is especially true with literature because most kids (and adults, too) gravitate toward fiction when reading for pleasure.
Here is a little round up of the best Minds in Bloom Posts of 2014! Each of these posts has had over 10,000 page views, and many have gotten quite a few more than that! As you can see, most of them are guest posts, which is awesome! You will find a wealth of information here, and if you like something, then be sure to
Minds in Bloom presents Laura of First Grade Spies, with her post on small group instruction. Enjoy! I love working with small groups of students! Working with small groups gives me the opportunity to really get to know my cutie pies, to gently guide them through their journey of discovery. It’s such a great feeling to be sitting in the “front row” and seeing that
Here’s a familiar scene: Your students are reading paragraphs out loud. The first student reads in a monotone voice, while there are no actual mistakes, she has less expression than Siri on your Iphone. Student number two sounds great, except that she has guessed (wrongly) at two of the words in the paragraph and skipped over two more completely. The third student to read has
Minds in Bloom presents Brenda of Teaching…Seriously with this post jam-packed with information on Common Core standards mastery! Sprinkling standards into my existing literature program just didn’t work. Then realization struck. My students needed direct instruction, modeling, guided practice, and independent practice for each standard. This required a paradigm shift. Instead of teaching multiple standards with each story, I had to use multiple
Of course, we all want our students to become readers – we want them to read way beyond the classroom, not just when they have to but also because they want to. In many ways, that is becoming more and more difficult. While the emphasis the Common Core puts on informational text will likely benefit our kids in many ways, in many classrooms it is at
Minds in Bloom is happy to present another stellar post from Shelley Rolston on Writing across the Curriculum. Enjoy! I heard it a lot from students when I taught the upper elementary grades: “I’d like science if I didn’t have to write about it.” Or, “This is not math, it’s writing!” Have you ever heard this? In the younger grades they don’t often express
One of the reasons I did not dig into close reading sooner is that it seemed really intimidating. But, it turns out that while it does go deep – way beyond traditional comprehension – it is not all that mysterious. Once you learn the key pieces – what makes close reading close reading – it becomes less intimidating and more intriguing (or at least it
Friends, I’m Monica Schroeder, and I am so excited to be writing this guest post for Minds in Bloom! The amazing Rachel Lynette has allowed me to share my Close Readings with QR Codes! I am here to show you how my students have been using QR codes to practice their reading skills. Now, please know that we have been practicing our close reads all year
