Picture book lesson plans and activities for busy teachers
Who doesn’t love interactive read alouds? Even as an adult I still read books aloud. I’m an admitted picture bookaholic, yes. But what about the rest of the world? At what age or grade level should interactive read alouds stop? While I was doing my student teaching, I split my days between a Kindergarten/1st grade split class and fifth grade…. 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
Welcome to Part 3 of my improving student discussion mini-series: Increasing Quality. If you’re at a point where your students are having discussions and everyone is talking, but the level of the conversation is really low-level. That is, maybe they’re not building off of each other’s ideas. Perhaps they’re repeating the same ideas that someone else said just so that… Read More
Last week I started my Improving Student Discussion Series with Part 1: Measuring Discussion. This was in response to all of the great feedback I received from my post on 7 strategies for getting quiet students to talk in discussions and 3 ways to get your students talking. This week I’m continuing with Part 2 – Increasing Student Talk. Increasing… Read More
Over the next few weeks I am going to be writing a series of blog posts on improving student discussion. This is in response to all of the great feedback I received from my post on 7 strategies for getting quiet students to talk in discussions and 3 ways to get your students talking. I’ll be covering: Measuring Student Discussion… Read More
Wait, you want your students talking in your classroom? Isn’t it a struggle enough to get that overly talkative kid to STOP talking? Let’s be honest, that kid that won’t stop talking is never going to completely stop talking, and you shouldn’t want them to. Student talk in the classroom is incredibly important for vocabulary development, building classroom community, writing,… Read More