Reveal visual triggers for comprehension strategies

South Adams Elementary School teacher Kristi Geimer (Berne, IN) utilized information from previous Smekens' workshops and developed a growing bulletin board to aid her students in reading comprehension strategies she's been targeting...    read more...

Foster opportunities for students to think while reading

One of the strategies readers need to develop is the ability to think while reading. For some this does not come naturally; this needs to be fostered by the teacher. In order to get students to think about their reading, teachers need to build in deliberate opportunities for them to think while they're reading.    read more...

Dabble with alternatives to the traditional research paper

Have you ever considered options beyond the traditional report? Check out what four different teachers did to dabble with research writing in their classrooms.    read more...

Incorporate “Answer of the Day” in your morning-work routine

One teacher finds that the best way to get students to write great questions is to simply give them the answers!    read more...

Parent involvement for literacy

We would all agree that the more involved a parent is in a child's life, the more likely that child is to succeed in school. But parents don't always know what to do. Many parents struggle with how best to help and would love some simple ways they could come alongside.    read more...

Writing across the curriculum

Content-area teachers often cringe when administrators mandate a school improvement goal for writing across the curriculum. And they're right; you can't ask students to write personal narrative essays to explain the lab experiment they just completed in chemistry. But writing across the curriculum is so much more than simply adding an essay question to your latest chapter review test.    read more...

Keeping track of mentor texts for reading comprehension

Using mentor texts to build reading comprehension connects students to literacy as they learn specific skills through practice with brief passages. Picture books or short passages from longer works make perfect companions for this type of practice. But how do you keep track of all the different books and passages you want to use?    read more...

Engage more students with highlighter tape

West Side Middle School (Union City, IN) seventh grade teacher Carla Durham likes to engage her students with fun reader and writer tools in the classroom. One tool that she has found many uses for is highlighter tape.    read more...

Write strong 20-word summaries

Teachers want students to do more than just memorize facts in science and dates in social studies. They want their students to do more than just remember information in health or processes in FACS classes. What content area teachers really want is for students to see the bigger picture.    read more...

Picture-based note taking helps students’ comprehension

When teaching content area topics, students are often expected to take notes. During this note taking time, it is huge for students to have more than just the names, dates, facts, and details written down. More that just memorizing the information, we want students to understand the significance of the information. We want them to synthesize and see the bigger picture.    read more...