Instructional Strategies
The Differentiated Cook
ERG has a friend – we’ll call her Sally – who appears to be easy going, but in reality, she is pretty high maintenance. She has to sit in the front seat or she will get car sick, she only wears a certain brand of cosmetics, and she has a zillion demands about food. But…
Read MoreQuestioning and Students’ “Inner Voice”
As we have discussed in previous blogs, using picture books with upper level readers has many benefits. If you have students who have a hard time tracking their “inner voice” and often get a tangled up with comprehension, you can teach them how to question as they read. Student-generated questions are different than teacher-generated questions.…
Read MoreRereading + Picture Books = Higher Comprehension
Well-crafted picture books make the reader yearn to come back to it many times. The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg is one of those books. Through his text and artwork, the reader has a natural inclination to read and reread as a way to understand more of the story. Helping students notice how rereading is…
Read MoreUsing Picture Books to Increase Critical Thinking
One reason we love picture books at ERG is they not only look inviting and feel wonderful in our hands, but also have layers to dig into! The themes that often emerge from picture books provide our students with ideas to explore, opinions to express, and rich conversations to be had. One magical quality of…
Read MoreNo Baby Books November: Verdi
Picture books. Most of us love them. Picture books are the instructional chameleon. They work in a variety of literacy lessons, formats, and purposes. They are brightly colored and engaging. For many of us, we are emotionally attached to these texts due to the rich stories and wonderful memories we have from either reading them ourselves…
Read MoreSpring Challenge #4: Read Aloud with Purpose
Raise your hand if you believe the Teacher Read Aloud is like the Jan Brady of literacy. Keep your hand up if you identify with any of the following: It’s that thing we do when we need to fill time. It’s often unplanned and lacks focus. It’s heavily fiction, regardless of the genre we are…
Read MoreSpring Literacy Challenge #3: Develop Agency
Agency. In a discussion with several professionals recently, we all had different ideas about what this idea really means. However, we could all agree it was something we needed students to embody in order for lasting learning to take place. In her new book What’s the Best That Could Happen?, Debbie Miller unpacks the idea…
Read MoreSpring Literacy Challenge #2: The Reading Process
Are you teaching The Book or the reading process? We know you have data, more data, and even more data on top of that. We suggest that as you think about the data, and as you consider the weeks leading up to testing season, you take time to consider that question. Are you teaching books,…
Read MoreSpring Literacy Challenge #1: Let Them Read
It’s (finally) spring, and along with the warmer temperatures comes testing season. This year, before you kick into test prep/worksheet hell, try this simple literacy challenge to fine-tune the coming weeks: Track how many minutes students spend reading during one school day. Research is really clear on this: students who read more achieve more. (And…
Read MoreMoving From the Drawbacks
“When a teacher begins a math lesson with direct instruction they completely disregard and ignore their students’ background knowledge and strengths. Resources that promote this approach contradict a focus on equity and access.” So tweeted Drew Polly, an associate professor at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Wow! That is quite an indictment of direct…
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