Conferencing

How do I get it all in? This is, by far, the question that I hear the most. Although I wish I had the magic solution to the amount of time and emotion we put into our work, I’m sorry to say that I don’t. What I hope to do in this position is provide you with support, both professionally and emotionally.

In this 2 minute video, you will hear a teacher talking about her experiences with conferencing.

Conferencing

Please, take time to reflect on your conferencing. Does it take too long? Do you have strategy groups in place? Do you students know their goals? Are you able to meet with the students in your room at least once a week? Are you meeting with a variety of students?

Choice Literacy is another great website. Although it is not free, they send a weekly email with tips and inspiration, just like Daily CAFÉ. If you need support or have questions, please let me know.

Strategy Groups

Back in January, I mentioned using The Daily CAFÉ website to gain ideas through reading articles and watching videos. You can also set yourself up to get a Tip of the Week emailed to you. At times, this can become one more thing to read, but I find the quick articles to be inspiring and easy to read.

One thing I know, is that conferencing is always on a teacher’s mind. How do you get to all your conferencing needs?  Strategy groups may be just what you need.

Unlike guided reading groups, strategy groups work with students who have similar goals, rather than similar reading levels. Having a group of students with varying reading levels can expose students to new thinking, and build a feeling of community in your classroom. Learners need to be able to apply the strategies to their own good-fit books. Strategy groups allow you to get to more students in a day, when used efficiently. These groups are flexible to allow students to move in and out of the groups as their needs change. Not all children in your room will be assigned to a group, some students will need their needs met through individual conferencing.

There are many great articles on The Daily CAFÉ, ranging from how to get started, how to refine goals, and how to collect data. If you need help getting started with these groups in your room, or would like to see it in action in your room, please let me know. 

Overwhelmed with Indiana Literacy Liaisons?

If you are anything like me, you place all the Indiana Literacy Liaisons emails into a file telling yourself you will read them later. Then, you have a hard time finding the time to get back to those emails. When I woke up Tuesday morning of last week to 18 new emails, starting at 6pm and streaming through until 6am, I thought maybe there was a virus involved. As I moved through the emails, I found there were some resources I had already used and determined the emails were from a credible source.

I went through the emails and found a few great resources. The items I am sharing with you are all free, although many require a username and password. Here is a quick synopsis of the resources I thought would be helpful…

A to Z Teacher Stuff

 A to Z Teacher Stuff is a teacher-created site designed to help teachers find online resources more quickly and easily. Find lesson plans, thematic units, teacher tips, discussion forums for teachers, downloadable teaching materials and eBooks, printable worksheets and blacklines, emergent reader books, themes, and more. It includes Popular Lesson Planning Themes (Dr. Seuss, Space, Plants, etc.) and Theme Resource Pages by Month. This website is geared to lower elementary.

BetterLesson  

Common Core standards based, and requires you to create a free account. Educators can find and share curricula and instructional resources, including standards-aligned lesson plans. It offers over 10,000 complete Iessons, searchable by subject, grade, or standard.

Blendspace  

Teachers can join for free, add classes up to 35, and create lessons in five minutes. The site also lets you Organize (collect web resources in one place and share with just one link), Assess (measure student understanding with built-in quizzes), and Track (monitor student progress and adapt to student needs in real-time).

Educade

Educade is a free website offering engaging and interactive lesson plans to use with 21st century tools, such as apps, games, and maker kits. The lessons are searchable by subject, grade (including special needs), tool type (such as an app, augmented reality, or video), or platform (e.g., web browser, iOS, Android tablet). Individuals can create accounts that save lesson plans, and can easily create their own using the site’s templates.

fit 4 the classroom  

According to this website, “Being fit takes more than just eating right and exercising. It also means doing simple things to help you make healthy choices throughout the day. Discovery Education, Sanford Health and WebMD teamed up to create a new program for elementary educators and students called fit 4 the classroom, which brings the four pillars of the fit initiative – mood, move, food, and recharge – into the classroom. The fit initiative, located athttp://fit.webmd.com/, contains a suite of free resources designed to empower children and parents to make healthy lifestyle choices.

NextLesson  

NextLesson is a free website featuring lesson plans and projects using a variety of resources, including video, worksheets, websites, references to apps (where appropriate), and a comprehensive teacher guide. Lessons are fully searchable by subject area, grade, Common Core standard, and 21st Century Skill. The projects and lessons integrate with a task management tool for students, and teachers have a view of their progress.

ReadWorks.org

ReadWorks is a nonprofit service that has cataloged hundreds of lesson plans and more than one thousand nonfiction reading passages aligned to Common Core standards. Recently, ReadWorks added a new batch of science passages with accompanying question sets to use in elementary and middle schools. ReadWorks provides units, lessons, and authentic, leveled nonfiction and literary passages based on research-based instructional practices in reading comprehension. Lessons can be filtered by grade level, skill/strategy, or unit theme. Materials are free, online, and aligned both to Common Core State Standards as well as standards for all 50 states. In their free account, teachers can create digital binders of the lesson plans and reading passages that they want to use.

ReadWriteThink  

ReadWriteThink, sponsored by the International Reading Association, offers a free searchable database of lesson plans and resources focused on reading, writing, and thinking. It is searchable by key word, grade level, learning objective, theme, or resource type. Lesson plans are well thought out, and each one has been aligned to the IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts as well as individual state standards.