Many students in the primary grades struggle with writing stories and reading with fluency. When I noticed that my first graders had mastered writing a good, basic sentence, but couldn’t string a few together, I knew a needed to find a solution. They also needed to work on their reading fluency, so I decided to solve both problems at once:…
If you’re working towards making your classroom more inclusive and reflective of the wider community, pictures books can be a great tool to showcase diverse families and home life set ups. In addition to using more inclusive language, teachers can use read alouds to help students both see their family and other family make ups. It’s a great way to…
Being Reflective is one of the IB Learner Profile characteristics that we should be encouraging in students. Here are some of my favorite books for encouraging this important skill. This post contains affiliate Amazon links. That means that if you click on a link and make a purchase, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. In…
Teaching new sounds using science of reading based approaches doesn’t have to be complicated. In my first grade classroom, after we review letter sounds quickly, we begin to introduce a new sound each week based on the sound progression from our phonics program. Here are the simple and effective ways we learn a new sound in first grade. Day 1-…
Teaching open syllables to your students can help them decode and write a large number of words. Single syllable open syllable words are some of the most common words used in the English language which means they are very important to teach young students. Here is how you can teach open syllables to your first grade, second grade, or kindergarten…