By Rachel Lynette
Today’s guest blogger is Marcy from It’s a Teacher Thing. Marcy has shared with us five tips for effectively running literature circles in your classroom. Read on to learn more! Don’t be scared off by literature circles (book clubs). They just take a little time and organization. I attempted my first session of literature circles more than nine years ago. I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into,
I’m Erin from Technology Erin*tegration. I am excited to share my technology twist on close reading using iPads. Thanks for having me, Rachel! Just as there are many models for close reading, there are a multitude of apps that will support your students in digging deeper into a text. I am sharing my five favorite free apps for annotating and note taking on the
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
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’
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 is excited to present Heather Earley with her inspiring guest post on making kids WANT to write. She’s got lots of great book suggestions. You’re bound to find a new favorite! My addiction to books has been a long and expensive habit! However, I was never much of a writer in school and dreaded “creative” writing assignments. I was missing the
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
Minds in Bloom presents Yara of Sea of Knowledge with her post on reading comprehension for ESL students. We hope you’ll enjoy it! Reading skills are essential at any stage, but for ESL students this skill can be quite challenging, especially when teachers have a mixture of levels in their classes. My class in particular has about five ESL students of a lower intermediate
Paraphrasing and summarizing are both super challenging skills to master, and what makes them even more confusing is that students often get these two skills mixed up! That is why I created the PARA and SUM acronyms:PARAphrase It! Put the text in your own words. Avoid copying the text. Rearrange similar text. Ask yourself if you included all the important points. SUMmarize It! Shorter than the
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
