Picture this: You have the most well-thought out lesson plan for your read aloud complete with questions that are designed to get your students talking and sentence frames to help your students answer your discussion question. You read the book and then try to get start your discussion and…CRICKETS. It’s happened to me MANY times. The one type of book… Read More
How many times does this happen? You’re having a classroom discussion, your students are talking and then…crickets. You’re a great teacher, so you know that you need to provide adequate wait time, but that silence is deafening. All too often, I used to jump in and provide an idea or add a follow-up question to try to keep the conversation… Read More
Have you tried to do virtual read alouds? Maybe you’re doing virtual read alouds because of distance learning due coronavirus pandemic/ Covid-19. Perhaps you’re in the classroom and you’re trying to simplify your read alouds. Regardless of your situation, Google Classroom, Google Slides, and Google Docs can be powerful tools to make your life easier and engage your students with… Read More
Not all classrooms are face-to-face, but discussions are still very important. It helps students share their ideas, hear new ideas and learn how to respond respectfully to new ideas. Learning is constructive! Distance learning or virtual learning is becoming more and more prevalent at all levels of education, so providing opportunities for virtual classroom discussions is essential. In previous blog… Read More
Generally read alouds and technology have never really meshed. With the advent of distance learning or virtual learning as my district calls it, we’ve learned that they do indeed mesh. You read aloud a book. Maybe it’s an e-book that you might play on BookFlix or Youtube or the like. Or even more scarce in our increasingly more digital classroom… Read More
As teachers, we talk a LOT more than we realize. During student discussions, though, we really need to let the students talk. In this post I’ll be focusing on some of the main reasons that teachers jump into discussions and ways for decreasing teacher talk. It may not be easy, but you can do it! Watch how your student discussions… Read More
