Part I of IV. In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I’ve developed this “Taxonomy of Reflection.” – modeled on Bloom’s approach. I…

After working with my students with this reciprocal teaching framework for the past month, I realized that they need a lot more expli...

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Levels of thinking found on Post-its. Great for Reader's Notebooks!

Our students are saturated in a world of technology. As educators there is immediate buy-in when we connections between our students’ real worlds and our classrooms. One of my favorite (free) resources to do this is called ifaketext. It allows users to create faux iPhone text conversations. The website lets you fit between 35 and...

This is Lea, one of the presenters from Teacher's College...she's an absolute nut and writing workshop super smartie! She has taught me a ton about conferring, the language to use, how to research the writer and what to say to kids in a conference "this is what it looks like to [insert teaching point here...add strong feeling words, collect seed ideas, tell a small moment across some pages], now watch me do it in my writing." She taught us the architecture of a mini-lesson, how to plan and…

Tabletop Twitter: The teacher chooses a passage from a book for students to respond to. Student write their own response and then move around to respond to what another student said. Since this is a Twitter-inspired activity there is no talking and short responses.

Guided reading questions. This is totally an easy way to differentiate.

Hello! My name is Marsha McGuire from A Differentiated Kindergarten and I'm so psyched that Mary invited me to join her 15 Days of K Celeb...

...growing readers one best practice at a time!

Signs of possible dyslexia. To many kids are missed diagnosed. Not every child with a learning problem is adhd.

In several classrooms, students were working at literacy stations creating wanted posters. They were learning about personality traits and physical traits. Right now they’re making wanted pos…

I'm the kind of person that likes to get ready for the next year before the end of this year. I know. You can call me crazy. It's ok. I understand. But it's the way I am. So what am I getting ready? Forms to send home during Meet and Greet: My Parent Survey (it's free!). I keep this in my communication folder. This is what I send home so that I can take pictures for my blog. I know it has my information on it, but if you need it for something else, then maybe you can use it as a template…

One of my main goals this year is to up the critical thinking skills of my group of talented and gifted kids. They are so “outside the box” so much of the time, but other times they can be painfully literal! I have been brainstorming ways that I could work on that, and there are ... Read more