Is it wrong to expect kids to look up word spellings in the dictionary?

Looking words up in the dictionary is a necessary skill to learn. And when focusing on editing and conventions, then absolutely, the dictionary and other resources should be used.    read more...

Stronger literature responses with the 6 Traits

Writing about your reading is a typical expectation in middle school writing. But beyond a summary of the reading, Language Arts teachers often work to develop students’ ability to respond to the literature. This might include drawing connections among texts, analyzing the text for figurative language, critiquing the text for a particular characteristic, using the text to support a specific opinion, etc. But what do you do when students repeatedly write weak literature responses? How do you elicit stronger ones?    read more...

Heartfelt conversations

Looking for a quick writing activity to utilize this month? Dawn Beach (sixth grade teacher at River Forest Elementary) has a great idea! She utilizes the seasonal conversational hearts to give students practice with punctuating dialogue.    read more...

Magnetic punctuation marks

The inspiration for this lesson came from a Punctuation Magnet Set purchased by Barb Needler (Sweetser Elementary, Sweetser, IN). She utilized the oversized magnets to have students fill in missing punctuation and fix other editing errors when writing sentences on the board.    read more...

Understanding the difference between revising & editing

There is a clear distinction between revising ideas and editing conventions. Students need to understand the difference so that they know what to do during the two very different stages.    read more...

Hearing punctuation

Many teachers associate speed or reading rate with fluency. That’s true, if a student reads too slowly or too quickly, he will struggle to make meaning. But another key component to reading fluency is how students break phrases and word groupings among sentences.    read more...