The sight words were hung on the word wall with great care,
in hopes that their reading skills still would be there.

The kids were nestled 40 to a room,
the teacher was of thinking imminent doom.

When out on in the hall there arose such a clatter,
the kids sprang from their desks to see what was the matter.

Away to the hallway, they flew like a flash,
doors opened up through which all the kids past. 

When what to their wondering eyes should appear,
but a principal who had had it up to here!

With a big old hammer, so lively and quick,
they knew in a second that he must be sick.

More rapid than eagles his smashings they came,
smashing of every left over candy cane.

Now Johnny, now Jessie, now Leslie and Claire, what you learned must STILL be there!
Now back to your classes and pay attention, or you will all wind up serving detention.

So back to their classes, the teachers they flew,
attempting to teach them anything new. 

They spoke not a word, but got straight to their work,
a little scared of that principal jerk.

As the school bell rang at the end of the day, the principal stood out front and started to say…
“Vacation is over, it’s a new year, go to sleep early and get your butts in gear!”

Sound familiar?  Going back to school after vacation can be as hard as the first days of school!  That first day back doesn’t have to be a lost teaching day!  The kids will be tired, and most likely storing a forbidden candy cane somewhere for that mid-day sugar rush.

Start Slowly!  You wouldn’t jump into a cold pool would you?  You would dip one toe in at a time!

On that first day back to school, ease them into school with some bellwork.

Talk about their vacation.  It’s a great thing to practice writing with in older kids.

Create graphs with who stayed home, who traveled, who celebrates Christmas, types of presents.

Don’t attempt to teach a really difficult concept that first day.  You’ll just have to teach it again!

It’s a great time for review…pick up where they left off in December.

It’s a wonderful time for science experiments.

It’s a great time for history- especially if you work at a religious school!

Never underestimate having PE that first day back!

Most of all, remember you are tired too!  If you overextend yourself, the kids will feel it and react.

I love to read.  I read all the time, however, I am not reading Chaucer or Thoreau. I am reading books that I enjoy. I prefer to read fluffy, light-hearted material over literature. I do read to educate myself, but it has to be something that I am interested in.

When we ask our students to practice reading, why do they have to read about something they hate? Of course there are times that your students must read what is provided for them, but on their own, let them read what interests them!

First, you must understand why the student hates reading. Is it hard? Is she a slow reader? Is he not exposed to enough? Are there learning problems that prevent him from reading? Once you determine the reason, you can then work on increasing their reading ability and desire.

I have a student who was a very slow reader and reading several grade levels behind. Once he found Harry Potter, he read every single book and now reads at or above grade level- all in one year! “John” actually enjoyed reading Harry Potter and as a result, he was able to practice reading with no pressure.

Reading for pleasure should not be overlooked. I cannot stress enough how important it is to like what you are reading. If you feel like you are being tortured every time you pick up a book, are you likely to pick one up?

There are many ways to encourage reading for pleasure with your students.

• Give them a questionnaire so they can determine what they would like to read about. Make copies for yourself so you can refer back to their interests regularly.
• Expose them to the library where they are thousands of books to choose from.
• Have a book swap in your classroom. Each student can bring in books that don’t interest them and swap them for books that do.
• Deviate from the curriculum (gasp!) and bring in materials that will interest your students.
• Read a great book aloud to your class (my 6^th grade teacher read The Outsiders to us and it is still one of my favorites to this day!)
• Have students bring in their favorite books and display them. Make a list of all the titles and distribute it to the class so they can read ones that interest them.
• Learn about new authors

Yes, it’s important that they know that there are times when they have to read something that is low interest, but the more high interest they read, the more excited they will be about reading, and the more likely to muscle through it!

The end goal is to have each student fill their own personal book shelf with books that interest them. Even if every single book is on tigers, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they are reading.

Most often when students are talking about something they’ve read, they give their opinion, connection, visualization, judgment, etc. It is given as a statement about their own thoughts. It is not balanced with any evidence from the text. They do not explain what it was in the text that prompted their thought.

A balanced response would include a text citation or reference and a personal statement. This might sound something like this:

“In the text it stated that the teacher loved when her students slept in class. I think that is pure fantasy because any teacher I know would be furious if students slept in class.”

Or:

“The author said, ‘Marcie fell out of the window on the thirtieth floor of the school.’ I could visualize her floating down each floor till she woke up at the twentieth floor.”

One huge challenge in getting students to write about their readings is to foster that balanced responding. However, first they have to be able to speak what they want to write. I call that “oral rehearsal”. In the beginning, I give students sentence starters to aid their balanced thinking. Depending on the grade level, the starters are something like this:

• For the text citation/evidence:
  • In the text it states . . .
  • The author said . . .
• For the opinion or response from the student:
  • That reminded me of . . .
  • That made me . . . (wonder, visualize, think, etc.)
  • So I think  . . .
  • Because of that I predict  . . .
  • Therefore, in my opinion . . .
• In order to get a more complete response with some detail:
  • Tell more
  • Explain
  • Elaborate ( I teach the meaning of the word elaborate at about 2^nd or 3^rd grade and the students quickly learn to understand if I say something like, “where is your elaboration, or your elaboration made me really understand your ideas”.

I use the Read Aloud to demonstrate both unbalanced and balanced responses. We practice with the comprehension strategy I am teaching. It can be: connecting, visualizing, wondering/questioning, predicting, or any combination. With younger students I use my body, arms stretched to the sides, to demonstrate a balance scale, tilting from one side to the other as I verbally model an unbalanced response. I complete my idea with a balanced response and my body balanced.

Click to download PDF

As I continue with the Read Aloud I invite the students to respond. As a younger student begins to respond, I tilt my outstretched arms down to the side to show lack of balance, and then, if the student adds the balanced response, I move upright to a balanced stance. With older students, I just point to chart showing the side of the balance that they are using and then point to the other side when the student moves to complete the balanced thought.

After we have practiced this type of responding orally long enough for it to become habitual for the students, I add it to the use of my sticky strip method. After the students have placed a sticky strip in their reading wherever they have engaged the focus strategy, they are to use a graphic organizer to collect a few of their most important thoughts. I demonstrate use of the graphic organizer for when they finish reading the book, chapter, or whatever is appropriate. A sample of this organizer is shown below. (Writing while reading interferes with comprehension!)

Click to download PDF.

Once the students are adept at using the organizer on their own, this becomes a very important independent reading activity. They then learn to share orally from the organizer, speaking in a manner that gives a balanced summary of their reading that day. This leads to using the organizer for a written response that is complete and balanced. You will find that, once they can speak in a logical, balanced fashion, they can write that way. Don’t short change the “oral rehearsal”!

Snowman 6″ Designer Cut-Outs by Creative Teaching Press!

I will admit, as a Kindergarten teacher, holidays were my favorite because there were so many things to do!  And with such diverse students in our classrooms, holidays are even more fun because you can learn about many different cultures.

Holidays can be incorporated all throughout your school day.  Reading, math, science, history (especially history!) and art and music can all be made holiday themed.

Language Arts:

Younger students

• Have your students choose a holiday themed book for you to read aloud to the class.  Provide a worksheet about the book.  The worksheet can include coloring, answering questions, predictions, writing, matching, and the list goes on.
• Photocopy a holiday story and have students search for high frequency words, word families or rhymes.
• Read students a book without showing them the pictures.  Have them draw the pictures for the story and create a class book (this can also be done by having students re-enact and take pictures)
• Create holiday themed skits that they perform in front of the class.

Older students

• Provide different versions of the same holiday story and have students determine similarities and differences.
• Have students write their own holiday story (make sure to set guidelines or be prepared for someone to kill Santa in a story!)
• Give students a holiday and have them write a research paper on that holiday
• Have student write a paper on their holiday traditions or a compare/contrast of holiday traditions throughout the world.

Math:

Younger students

• At the dollar store, or a buy-in-bulk website, find holiday themed manipulatives
• Estimation- How many Christmas lights on the tree, sprinkles on a cookie
• Menorah math- practice adding and subtracting the candles
• Take a gift survey and create graphs in the class about what students want for the holidays (can also be done with holiday travel, which holiday is celebrated, etc)

Older Students

• Dreidel  math- probability of landing on a particular side of the dreidel, prediction of possibly outcomes
• Holiday themed word problems
• Percentages and sales tax (great for holiday sales and Black Friday) to determine the greatest discount
• Give each student a Christmas carol- have them do research to determine how many different people sing that carol.  To add depth, they can also go on iTunes and determine which one is the cheapest and most expensive to purchase and chart it.  They can also chart by popularity, decade, gender and/or age of singer, etc.
• Track one or two stores sales (i.e. Target and K-Mart) for several weeks.  Have groups of students choose 4-5 different items and track their sale prices and percentage discounts over those few weeks.  Groups then present when is the best time to buy based on their analysis of sales trends

Science:

Younger students

• Track winter temperatures in different cities throughout the world
• If you live in a snowy climate, determine the rate of which a snowball or icicle melts at different temperatures (warmer climates can use an ice cube or shaved ice)
• Create hypothesis on how Santa will get to every house in one night.

Older students

• Gather all ingredients needed to make a candy cane, but do not give the quantities of each ingredient.  See which student produces the best candy cane. (A discussion of what each ingredient does may be necessary)
• Plot temperatures across the world and determine the hottest and coldest locations on any given day (or rainiest/driest, darkest/lightest, etc)
• Determine which country celebrates the holiday first and which one last based on time zones.

History:

• Read about the history of Christmas/Hanukkah, etc  (you’d be surprised how few people know the actual meaning behind them)
• Discuss historical differences in the way each holiday is celebrated
• Create a timeline of traditions, etc from when each holiday was first celebrated
• Learn about the meaning behind a Menorah, dreidel, Christmas tree, Christmas wreath, etc.

Art and Music:

You can Google holiday activities and you will get a million results, but some of my favorite are:

Art:

Christmas tree with foamie paper.

• Make a Menorah with your hands.  With a large stamp pad (yellow, blue or gold are best), ink the palms of both hands completely.  With thumbs together, spread fingers wide and press hands against white paper.  Take one fingertip and ink with an orange stamp pad.  Use that fingertip to make the fingerprint flames on each candle.  You can decorate the flames with glitter too for some added sparkle.
• Christmas trees- cut up green foamie paper into small squares (from 2 inches all the way down to half an inch).  Cut enough for about 10-20 different sized squares for each student.  For the base- use either thick white foam or Styrofoam in a 3 x 3 inch square.  Place a small stick in the center of each base (I like to use BBQ skewers broken in half).  Give students a handful of green foamie squares and place them on the stick to create their Christmas tree (ideally they would use the larger squares on the bottom and the smaller squares towards the top- but everyone beats to their own drummer).  Add a star to the top of the tree by sticking two star stickers back to back.  Drizzle the green foamies with tacky glue and sprinkle with glitter.
• I prefer to work with snowmen this time of year because of the different backgrounds of my students.  You can never go wrong with the cotton ball snowman.  For students who are a little older, you can use Styrofoam balls and hot glue them together and give them pins to make the face and to stick on clothing.

Music:

• Not only can you play music that is specific to each holiday, you can study up on the meaning behind the songs.  Many old Christmas carols have a history to them!
• If you are a really brave teacher- you can teach your students how to play Jingle Bells on the recorder!

However you and your class choose to celebrate the holidays, it can be a lot of fun and a great way to add variety to your school day!

Happy Holidays!

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I asked them, “How many of you have a computer at home?” Sixteen parents raised their hands.  But of those, four said they didn’t know how to use the computer and wanted to learn more.  They explained their need to understand how to use computers so they could better help their children at home.

In today’s world, technology literacy is an essential component of literacy, both for adults and for children. Assisting our parents to be effective users of computers and other technology will enhance their ability to communicate with the children, the school, and others in their communities.  Developing children’s technology literacy is vital to their education. When we can help parents and children connect on this level, we are facilitating communication, literacy, and supportive home environments that contribute to school success.

Some of our schools also incorporate computers into their PACT time (Parent And Child Together) by having parents and children work together on computers. This is great fun, as often the children become the teachers, and the parents the learners. Parents are wide-eyed when they observe their children navigating the web sites to locate e-readers or math games on-line.  Typically, the instructors have the children show the parents their school home page, and then find the links to the on-line educational sites that the school provides. Our ELL parents love this because they, too, can use these sites to develop their own math and reading skills, along with their children. They have so much fun working on the computers together!

Many of the schools in our district do NOT have the regular evening Family Literacy program that I supervise. So… a good number of those schools hold occasional Literacy Nights for their communities, inviting families by grade level to attend and engage in age appropriate literacy activities together as a family.  The new Intermediate level Partners in Print kit provides numerous workshop plans for using technology to develop literacy skills. This is a common resource in our school district. The kids love to come to the Partners in Print nights at school, especially when they are working on computers, or using cell phones to practice text messaging! These are particularly effective events for the upper elementary age students, who typically don’t like to come to school with a parent.

Parents can encourage children’s learning by modeling literacy behaviors, including technology literacy. Helping families to learn together, and to set patterns for positive learning behaviors at home, can enrich the home learning environment and contribute to higher achievement in school.

What about the families who do NOT have a computer at home? We also offer a list of other public locations where computers can be used. But today, we see that a very high number of parents have smart phones, so they are accessing the Internet through those tools.

The world is changing rapidly, and no one wants to be left behind! That includes the English language learners in our Family Literacy programs.

How do you incorporate technology into your Family Literacy program?

Algebra didn’t come easy to me, and still doesn’t. I don’t understand proofs, and still don’t understand what purpose they serve in society! We had to do proofs on the board in Mr. Smith’s class. I remember that day it was my turn and I was so sure that I knew what I was doing on this one. I got about four steps right and then starting messing up. Mr. Smith, in front of the whole class, said in a frustrated tone, “Jamie, what is so hard to understand about this?” and then proceeded to fix all of my mistakes in a very annoyed tone. I cowered at my desk with my cheeks red and ready to cry.

It wasn’t necessary for him to berate me (and others) in front of the class. He could have made constructive criticism. He could have corrected me where I went wrong and then had me move on. He could have anticipated that I would do it wrong, because I always did, and not had me go to the board. I’m not too adept at poetry either, but my English teacher would look at me when I raised my hand as if to say ‘let me save you the embarrassment and put your hand down.’ It would have been nice if Mr. Smith had exhibited some of that empathy.

It is probably harder to know all of your student’s weaknesses in high school when you are seeing over 100 students a day, but get to know your students. Know who is a bit more sensitive or has some more weaknesses. Be gentle with those students. Don’t embarrass them. Don’t call them out. Work with them quietly or after school. Just remember what you say today might stick with them down the road.  I was in Mr. Smith’s class 20 years ago, and I remember that day like it was yesterday.

This message has now become even more real to me. I’ve begun teaching a class in reading and writing at the local Junior College for a group of adults who cannot read or write well enough to enter into GED classes. I have a very diverse group of students with a wide range of skills and needs. Their strengths and needs are all very different from each other, and different within their own knowledge base. They range in age from 19 years old to 82 years old. There is a 64 year old woman who wants to get her GED and be able to read well enough to volunteer in nursing homes to read to “older folks”. For the woman who is 82 years old, getting her GED is on her bucket list – just because she’s put several children through college and advanced degrees and she wants to prove she can do it, too. Some of the students are there because they want to go on to the Junior College to pursue a trade or career. Others just want to be able to say they have a high school equivalency, and to hold their heads up a little higher in the world at large.

Most of these adults can decode at a reasonable level. However, their lack of ability to express their thoughts in writing and to comprehend what they read has kept them below the level necessary for entering the GED classes. As we’ve been working together I have noticed that I must spend an increased amount of time in discussion before reading or writing because these adults have been functioning in the real world for some time and their oral language is automatic, that is to say, they don’t realize when what they say is not clear, concise or doesn’t address the topic.

It is amazing to me that all the strategies I’ve taught in reading and writing hold true for these adult learners. Best Practices are just that, best practices.  We have begun working on main idea with details, and making connections in reading. In writing we are working on summarizing using the main idea and details and reacting to text using our connections – exactly what I’d do with younger learners. And, we are spending lots of time in oral discussion before any reading or writing.

During the discussion time, I am modeling and scaffolding the students in their efforts to express their ideas. I am also teaching them to use “Accountable Talk”, whereby each student who speaks must recognize the person’s idea that has come before theirs.  We have a chart with some possible ways to do this. These include using the following sentence starters before a student expresses his/her idea or opinion:

I agree with ___________ (person’s name) because . . . .

I would like to add on to what _____________ said . . .

I have a different idea from ____________________.    I think . . . .  because . . . .

More ways to use “Accountable Talk” will be added to the chart as they occur in our discussions.

The joy of this experience for me is that most of these adults are in my class because they want to “better themselves”. They are open to my teaching and request my correction and clarification. In future blogs I would like to share more about the teaching techniques I am using with this wonderful group of learners because it spotlights the efficacy of Best Practices in a different and challenging situation. I’m learning a lot from these wonderful people!

Pacific Learning staff and I were joined by 30 teachers, coaches, and administrators of Long Beach Unified School District’s Transitional Kindergarten program for an introduction to Partners in Print, a powerful parent-involvement program for literacy.

Transitional Kindergarten (TK) is an opportunity created by the Kindergarten Readiness Act signed into law in 2010 for young students with fall birthdays. It gives them a full year of developmentally appropriate instruction to prepare them for academic, social, and emotional success in Kindergarten. Long Beach Unified School Districts one of the many in California who are implementing TK this year.

It would be hard to find a more dedicated or professional group of educators than this. They participated enthusiastically in the activities, discussions, and planning activities on a Friday afternoon after a long week of teaching large groups of four-year-olds, warmly sharing many of their own anecdotes, favorite books, and teaching experiences.

An abundance of research supports the importance of parents’ involvement in their children’s literacy development. Partners in Print provides support for school staff and volunteers to conduct a series of workshops that encourages parent participation and ensures the effectiveness of their efforts. It provides step-by-step support for workshop planning, staff training, and publicity, and models the program in action.

Partners in Print is grounded in Brian Cambourne’s Conditions for Literacy Learning, which assert that children acquire oral and written language easily when certain conditions are met in their home and school environments. The workshops for beginning readers offer ideas to show families how to choose books that will engage and delight their children, help them draw meaning from text and pictures, play with words, make sense of what they read, and begin to understand the connection between reading and writing.

An intermediate version of Partners in Print offers workshops to help build capacity and confidence of parents to help their older children on such topics as using the internet and social media safely, sports literacy, nonfiction reading strategies, word knowledge, and other relevant and engaging topics for readers in the middle grades.

When parents and educators collaborate in creating the right conditions for learning, everybody wins.  The parents benefit by active engagement in their child’s literacy success. The schools benefit by increased academic achievement. The children benefit from having the dual support of parents and educators in becoming lifelong learners who celebrate the joy of reading and learning. Isn’t that what we’re all about?

Borrowing books from a library is NOT something that is familiar to most of the Family Literacy adult students in our program. They grew up in countries where there were few, if any libraries– where a person had to pay money to borrow a book, or had to walk a long distance to visit a library, if there was one at all.  So…in our Family Literacy classes, we encourage our teachers to help their adult students learn how to borrow books, and how to use the libraries, both for themselves and for their children.

A mother and her daughter enjoy reading books in their school library.

At one of our Family Literacy sites in an elementary school, the PACT (Parent and Child Together) activity was a visit to the school library. The parents arrived first, and listened to the school librarian talk about borrowing books. She showed them where the different types of books were located in the library. She also offered the parents the opportunity to have their own library account at the school, so they could borrow books for themselves and for their children.

Then, the children arrived in the library to meet their parents and choose books together. Everyone was having fun reading and looking at all the beautiful books. Some families migrated towards the books-on-tape sets, while others browsed in the Spanish books section. Many others gravitated to the non-fiction section, looking for books about animals and outer space. Some parents were reading to their children in English, others in Spanish. The teachers told the parents that when they read to their child in their first language, everything a child learns about books transfers to English, and their children will be stronger readers.

The Family Literacy teachers are working closely with the school librarian to have the school library accessible to the parents. Parents are encouraged to come to the school anytime of day to check books out of the library using their own parent library account.

At another Family Literacy site, the families in the class took a “field trip” to the nearby public library, where they took a tour of the public library and obtained their own public library cards.

Providing parents the opportunity to learn about how our libraries work, and to visit the school library, allows the parents to become more familiar with the school, and less apprehensive about coming in to the school building. The librarian is the perfect person to welcome and encourage the parents to be active participants in their child’s education. I saw many parents smiling and talking with their children as they looked at books together. What a gift to be welcomed into your child’s school!

Have you incorporated library visits into your Family Literacy program? Please share your experiences with us!

25 Ways to Assure A Bad School Year

1. Put up black stripes on the walls so the kids feel like they are in jail.
2. Hand out calculus homework in pre-algebra.
3. Hold a raffle in class. The winner gets to do everyone else’s homework for a week.
4. Put War and Peace, Fountainhead, and Walden on the summer reading list, but never refer to anything but Twilight and People Magazine in class.
5. Choose the largest textbook you can find for class and require that students bring it to class every single day.
6. Write homework assignments in Dutch on the board.
7. Require a 5,000 word essay on what other actors could have played Harry Potter, Edward, Bella and Jacob.
8. Squirt students with a squirt bottle if they answer incorrectly.
9. Grease the ramp to your classroom and set up a video camera. Play video of students falling at pep rallies.
10. Streak at the first home football game of the year.
11. Wear a ball gown every Thursday.
12. Take a student’s phone and send random text messages to everyone in his contact list.
13. Don’t give A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, or F’s.  Give L’s, M’s, N’s, O’s, and Q’s, but never explain the grading scale.
14. Attend staff meetings in your pajamas and bunny slippers.
15. Talk like a pirate for the first month of school.
16. When your principal comes in to observe you, hand him score cards and ask him to score you like an Olympic gymnast.
17. Turn your classroom into a nightclub for Back to School night.
18. Put kids on the wrong bus at least once a week.
19. During an important exam, stand in the corner and scream at irregular intervals.
20. Sneak into the principal’s office and put a dead fish in the back of his file cabinet.
21. Rearrange all of the mail in the faculty mailboxes.
22. Bake cookies laced with Ex-Lax for the faculty potluck and then lock all of the bathrooms.
23. Require that your students make a human tunnel for your entrance into the classroom every day.
24. When a student asks you for help, hand him a copy of School for Dummies.
25. Replace all student pictures in the yearbook with pictures of yourself.