4th November, 2009 - Posted by Meggin - No Comments
Why in the world would you have ‘class sets’ of dictionaries? Because that’s what everyone else does? You are smarter than that, right? To explore that further, please answer the following questions: Do all of the students in your class read at exactly the same level? Does any dictionary have ALL the features, words, tools, and resources that you » Read More
4th June, 2009 - Posted by Meggin - No Comments
An article in Reading Teacher a few years back (2004, pp. 766-768) presented the idea of creating ‘Literacy Mystery Boxes.’ The idea is to put together a box with various items that represent concepts in a book that the teacher is going to read to the students, thereby building background knowledge and increasing students’ suspense » Read More
6th May, 2009 - Posted by Meggin - No Comments
If you are conducting a workshop or series of workshops for mathematics and science teachers, particularly if it’s related to content area literacy, consider using one or more of the following learning logs as a way of learning more about your participants and what they are thinking and learning in your workshops. Learning Log Entry #1 People » Read More
6th May, 2009 - Posted by Meggin - No Comments
Several years ago, I wanted to make a list of words that I could use in a workshop I was doing for teachers – a list from which they could choose words that described them. Well, at first I had about 50 words and then it kept growing and growing and growing. I took on » Read More
6th May, 2009 - Posted by Meggin - No Comments
Reading books – and doing book reports – has been part of the school’s curriculum for a long time. Most of us remember writing book reports on books we never even read – so we could hurry up and get that out of the way and go back to reading. Well, maybe I’m only speaking » Read More
6th May, 2009 - Posted by Meggin - No Comments
Reading the same old, same old in book reports is not much fun for you as a teacher. And, writing the same old kind of book report is not much fun (or much challenge) for the students. What you want is to have an array of ways to give your students opportunities to ‘report’ on » Read More
6th May, 2009 - Posted by Meggin - No Comments
There are times to ask and expect all students to read the same novel in a classroom – and of course, that’s always a book you have read once – or MANY times. It’s reasonably easy to determine whether a student has or hasn’t read that book because you are so familiar with it; if » Read More
27th February, 2009 - Posted by Meggin - No Comments
Children love to play with words. Using homophones is one way to encourage children to be fascinated with words, their spellings, their origins, and how words are used in our language. English is filled with homophones and once you get your students tuned into to this concept, they’ll find more and more examples to bring to your attention, too. Read More
6th February, 2009 - Posted by Meggin - No Comments
Many teachers have used the ‘close’ technique with the classroom. It’s a tried-and-true method where you omit particular words, usually with some kind of parameter, such as omitting every 10th word, all adjectives, or the like. Read More
6th February, 2009 - Posted by Meggin - No Comments
Assessing students comprehension of stories, novels, or other narrative text that they might be reading is essential. However, if want to provide students with multiple options for their reading, as teachers, we might NOT have read everything that they are reading. If you wonder whether you can adequately determine their comprehension of a novel, even if you haven’t read it, then see if some of these questions will help you with that worry. Read More
