Rewordify

Common Core dictates that a portion of your students' comprehension lessons should be gleaned from texts that would be considered difficult for them due to content, structure, and/or vocabulary.  It also calls for lessons to be integrated across content areas for deeper student thinking and connections.  Primary source historical documents are fantastic for these lessons and the content is well worthy of plunking your students in the middle of, but their vocabulary can be challenging to our modern vernacular.  The key is in providing just enough scaffolding to allow the students to tackle the meaning without pre-digesting the text for them.  You might find help in this endeavor from Rewordify.com.  At Rewordify, you can enter a text passage that contains  tier 2 words or , and it will highlight the difficult words within the text and replace them or provide sidenote synonym or definition - your choice.   Pretty fantastic for vocabulary building and accessibility to higher level texts.  Check out this example of the first sentence of this post rewordified.

Neat-o huh! Check it out !

This Is Hard Work

Keeping up with a blog is hard work.  Life seems to interfere everytime I think about posting, and age interferes so that I rarely think about posting!  Oh well, I'd like to promise to do better, but the best I can do is say I'll try.  Honesty is the best policy after all.  To make it up to you I'd like to offer you a FREEBIE.  That's right a little something I made just for you.   Well, just for you who teach 2nd and 3rd grade...Sorry K-1 and 4-5, I haven't forgotten you, I'm just getting started.  Just click on the words below picture and download this little Fact and Opinion Sorting Activity.  Please let me know what you think. :)

                   That's a Fact, Jack! Freebie

Monday Meme

Close Reading Isn't Rocket Surgery

As we approached the move to Common Core, I heard many teachers worrying over the buzz words "close reading."  Even experts in the field of reading have argued over the push for students to engage in text that some say would be too hard for them to read and comprehend.  So the confusion and anxiety over incorporating this into our reading routine is understandable though unnecessary.  

Close reading isn't a foreign language, and it isn't rocket surgery, lol.  In its most basic form, close reading is like an overgrown "lap read" with groups of children instead of just one one.  It is an opportunity for true teaching rather than scripted lessons.   It can be whole group or small group.  You read and talk your way through a book or passage sharing insights, asking questions, and guiding connections the in the same way you would do with your own child during bedtime or lap time reads.  You certainly don't follow a script then, but I bet you take every opportunity to teach and ask and connect all along the way.  

Close reading in the classroom, unlike your one on one spur of the moment lap read, involves some preparing ahead of time.  You have to read the text you want to teach and then read it again...and maybe again.  Each read allows you think about the text from different angles of understanding.  You look for teachable moments ahead of time rather than finding them by happy accident along the way.  You need to have a good idea ahead of time of what you want the students to gain from the text.  In other words, what do you want to point out to the children, where do you want to stop and demonstrate thinking and connecting, what vocabulary do you want to teach, and why is this text worth reading.  In a close read you can't wing it or go in blind because you run the risk of bird walking all around the important stuff and losing meaning in all the minutia.  

Close reading is fun and engaging.  It can be done with traditional and non-traditional text materials and the children enjoy it!  There are some fabulous resources on the web to help get you going and make close reading a part of your daily reading class routine. 


Check out the Close Reading Linky Party for great ideas and insights on getting close reading up and running in your classroom.  Just click HERE for your first stop.  

Stress Test

So, how's your year going?  

Do other professionals get asked that question?  Do other professions lump the ups and downs of a given week into a projection and prediction of the whole year?  Hmmm, I don't think so...

We teachers often find ourselves caught up in the microcosm of our classroom and view our destiny as set and defined; our fate unchangeable (I'll never survive this group of kids!).  But it's not unchangeable.  Just because this week is bad doesn't mean that every week will be.   Let's take our school year day by day and week by week like the rest of the world tackles their work time.  Let's be flexible and make changes.  Let's research and learn.  Let's view our school year as something to build how we want it not something fate doled out for us to survive.  There is much MUCH we cannot change in our profession (and what a wonderful world it would be if we could), but we can change ourselves and our attitudes and habits.  We can be willing and open to try anything and everything to make it work and make it better and make it a school year in which we and our students can be successful.   

I'm going to borrow Tim Gunn's words as my motto this year.  "Make it work!"  

Meme Monday

Today is (sigh) Monday.  To lift your spirits as we start a new school week, I'm going to have Meme Monday.  I'm not much on inspirational thoughts, but I'm all about the funny stuff, so here's Meme Monday's first offering. 

  

Youtube at School? Yes You Can!

There are so many great videos available on youtube to use in your classroom but since we can't open youtube at school I thought you might want to know how to download them at home in the evenings or weekends and save them on your computer to use at school.

You first need to download a program such as http://youtubedownloader.com/ to download and convert the youtube videos into a (MP4) format you can use.  

Once you download and install "youtubedownloader"  all you have to do is open the downloader program (you can minimize it to your toolbar).  Now go to youtube and find your video.  While your video is pulled up and playing you click on the minimized "youtubedownloader" to show it.   Click on the button that says "Paste" and it will automatically download, convert it and save it in your "my videos" folder.

And that's it :)  You'll have videos you can use to enhance your lessons!