Reading Strategies

Reading Strategies

If you're an elementary teacher, then you are teaching reading strategies.

It's super important to be explicit and clear.  You have to provide kids with a toolbox of strategies to help them navigate their reading.  Stephanie Harvey is amazing and knows all things literacy.  Her book Strategies that Work has been a cornerstone for me.

We all know Reading is thinking.  Kids need to interact with the text.  The strategies are: Activating and connecting to background knowledge, determining importance, "fix up" strategies, inferring and visualizing meaning, monitoring comprehension, asking questions and synthesizing and summarizing.  

Here is one of the anchor charts I made.  I make posters out of them (there is a lot of text) and I made small versions for the kids to glue in their journals.

Now what?

First, read the book so you have a thorough understanding of all the strategies.  As kids are reading in Reader's Workshop, monitor them.  Confer with them and take notes.  The notes will remind you what you've already covered and where to go from there! 

If you need the anchor charts, they are in my TPT store!  

The direct link is here.  There are three versions; two black and white.  One is more simple and the other has sentence stems for the kids.  There is also a color version with tween readers clip art.  Enjoy reading with your kids!  Give them the tools they need and they will amaze you! 

        

CGI math training: Number Talks

What I learned at my CGI math training:  Number Talks

I recently attended a week long CGI math training held by the UCLA math project.  We started with number talks.

What are number talks?

Number talks help students work out math mentally.  It helps build number sense. Kids build a better sense of basic number operations.

We started with a problem on the board. 

First, notice that there is no equal sign.  Instead of equal, we need to start saying things such as “the same as”.

Second, give the kids wait time.  They need to think about it. 

Third, use hand signals to tell you where they are.  Closed fist means I’m thinking.  One finger means I have a solution.  Index and thumb means I have more than one solution.

Now what?

First, have kids pair share.  As they share with each other, walk around and take note of what their strategy was.

Then, choose kids to share out strategically.  You’re looking for different approaches to solving the problem.  Chart it as they share out.

Here is an example of what it would look like charted....

As you can see, the solutions are labeled with the kids names to give them ownership.  And there are three examples here but you only do one problem at a time with the kids.

Things for you to think about as a teacher:

-What mathematical ideas emerged as the students engaged in mental math?

-What opportunities does mental math give teachers and students?

-How are these ideas related to your own CGI journey as an educator?

If you need some activities that are ready to go, check out the CGI products in my TPT store!  My products are read-only Powerpoints for fourth and fifth grades!  Well wishes to you on your own CGI journey!  It'll be great!