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Month: August 2020

10 Amazing Alphabet Books for Teaching Letters and Sounds
10 Amazing Alphabet Books for Teaching Letters and Sounds

10 Amazing Alphabet Books for Teaching Letters and Sounds

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Alphabet books are a great way to build background knowledge in a young child who is just learning about books.  A parent can start sharing alphabet books with their child very early in life.  I often see parents get really stressed if their kids reach first grade and don’t know all their letters and sounds.  Sharing ABC books is a wonderful, low-stress way to teach the letters and sounds without it seeming like work. The Gunnywolf retold by Antoinette Delaney…

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Distance Learning
Distance Learning: Asynchronous vs Synchronous

Distance Learning: Asynchronous vs Synchronous

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As schools continue to develop plans for coping with the pandemic, educators have spent a lot of time discussing asynchronous learning and synchronous learning.  Colleges and universities have been using both forms of virtual instruction for a while.  Although integrating so much technology into K-12 education at the same time is daunting, it may lead to our students being really comfortable with virtual instruction in a way that their parent’s aren’t. What is Synchronous Learning? Synchronous learning is instruction that…

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Questioning Strategies
Questioning Strategies That Enhance Learning

Questioning Strategies That Enhance Learning

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Great questions are central to a great lesson.  I sometimes begin a lesson by asking students a really interesting question to get them thinking.  Teachers also use questioning to figure out when students understand what they are learning, especially during guided instruction when kids are trying out something new with the teacher there to help.  This is an important part of the “I do, we do, you do” model.  During the “we do” part, a student’s responses let the teacher…

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Gradual release model
The Gradual Release Model: I Do, We Do, You Do

The Gradual Release Model: I Do, We Do, You Do

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Mastery Teaching The gradual release model has been around in some form for a very long time.  When I first started teaching, we planned based on the Madeline’s Hunter’s method of effective instruction, known as mastery teaching. If I were going to pick a single book to give as a gift to a new teacher, it would be this book.  I still have my really ancient yellow copy from 1982, and it is still relevant today.  Teachers who structure a…

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Learning targets
Learning Targets That Help Kids Focus

Learning Targets That Help Kids Focus

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What are learning targets? Learning targets are specific learning goals written in kid-friendly language.  They begin with “I can…” and tell students what they will learn and be able to do.  These can be short-term statements that tell what students will be able to do at the end of class or the end of a week.  They can also be long-term and might describe what a student can do at the end of a course.  I find short-term targets to…

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Education and COVID-19
Education and COVID-19: Staying Out of the Dark Place

Education and COVID-19: Staying Out of the Dark Place

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In recent days, I have been in a few different Facebook groups for parents and for teachers who are going to be teaching remotely this fall.  I have noticed that people have very strong opinions on the merits and problems with remote learning.  It’s fine to disagree but some of these discussions are falling into really dark sessions of complaining and blaming.  They also seem to get really political at times. I think that we are all struggling with fear…

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Bloom's Taxonomy
Bloom’s Taxonomy for Parents

Bloom’s Taxonomy for Parents

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Bloom’s taxonomy has been a part of teacher education for many generations of teachers.  Benjamin Bloom and a group of colleagues first developed the taxonomy in 1956 to describe a hierarchy of educational goals.  The broad base at the bottom of the diagram above represents lower-level thinking.  As you go up the pyramid, the level of thinking increases in complexity and depth. Understanding the different levels can be a help to parents as they work on activities with kids. The…

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Parents sharing a book with their son
Shared Reading With Kids at Home

Shared Reading With Kids at Home

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Shared reading at school is an engaging way to model and teach young readers about how books work.  A teacher typically reads aloud a “big” book to the whole class, usually sitting on the carpet near the teacher.  This gives the teacher the chance to model fluent reading and demonstrate how readers think about the books they read.  Kids often chime in on parts of text that they know.  Teachers will stop and ask questions, ask students to make predictions,…

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distance learning
How Homeschooling and Distance Learning Are Different

How Homeschooling and Distance Learning Are Different

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With COVID-19 impacting pretty much all of society, school districts across the country are making some really serious decisions about distance learning and in-person instruction.    These decisions will ultimately affect the health of our children and families.  Parents in many places are choosing whether to send their kids back to school for in-person instruction or to choose remote learning.  I think we are all feeling the weight of these decisions. What is distance learning? Distance learning is basically instruction…

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Growth Mindset
Growth Mindset and the Language of Learning

Growth Mindset and the Language of Learning

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Growth mindset has been a hot topic in education for a while now.  Carol Dweck wrote her book Mindset: The Psychology of Success in 2007.  It has been a tremendously influential work and is a must-read for teachers and parents because the beliefs that each of us hold basically steer the ship.  We succeed or fail largely because of our view of the world, our mindset.  Our mindset influences how we deal with life’s difficulties. What is a growth mindset?…

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