Latest in Literacy Blog
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10 Ways to Explode Your Students’ Excitement for Reading!
Read more: 10 Ways to Explode Your Students’ Excitement for Reading!How do you get kids excited about books? Over my 25 years of teaching, I’ve discovered many ways to spark excitement. Here are 10 to get you started: 1. Start an After-School Book Club Invite a guest reader from the community to kick off the meetings. After the read-aloud, the kids spread out to read…
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12 Simple Tips for Helping Your Child Become a Better Reader
Read more: 12 Simple Tips for Helping Your Child Become a Better ReaderCheck out these 12 simple tips from Dr. Andrew Johnson to help your child become a better reader! Read to your child Expose your child to words Use pretend reading Expose to rhymes, rhyming books, nursery rhymes, poetry, music Reread the same book Read bedtime stories Have books laying around Make regular trips to the…
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Let’s Leverage The Fun To Connect Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing!
Read more: Let’s Leverage The Fun To Connect Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing!The young students frantically waved their hands high in the air. They couldn’t wait to run to the front of the gym and participate in a game I call, “5 in Ten!”. I recently spoke with hundreds of students in different settings (urban, rural, and suburban) and they all enjoyed “5 in 10’!”. The gist…
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Guided Journaling for Self-Awareness
Read more: Guided Journaling for Self-AwarenessJournaling is a common way to encourage young learners to express themselves while also supporting the academic skills of reading and writing. As a reflective tool, journaling is popular among therapists as the therapeutic benefits of journaling are well-established. It’s not surprising that journaling can also be an effective way to help children enhance self-awareness,…
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Reading to Reach the Stars
Read more: Reading to Reach the StarsWe want our kids to reach for the stars, dream big, think for themselves and grow up with a life and career that they happily built. But how when the winding path to achieve such goals involves so many variables and, sometimes, challenges that may be out of our control? Well, there is a way,…
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Promoting Classroom Conversation
Read more: Promoting Classroom ConversationEvery single day we are tasked with ensuring that our students are entering into our building safely, that they are to learn wholeheartedly, and that they get to experience a wide variety of knowledge along the way. In doing this, as educators one of the pivotal roles we play is to promote classroom conversations. These…
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Reading Supports Social Emotional Learning
Read more: Reading Supports Social Emotional LearningHow reading helps children learn social emotional skills I am a lover of all things book and the written word. As a child, I was precocious and very curious. Thankfully, my father had a great passion for reading and ensured that I, along with my siblings, understood the importance of literacy and that it was…
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Using Children’s Literature and Stories to Change Culture in Your School or Classroom
Read more: Using Children’s Literature and Stories to Change Culture in Your School or ClassroomUsing children’s stories to bolster a sense of community connectedness and improve the culture at your school Imagine this… You are a classroom teacher or a counselor or a principal. You see and feel the culture of your learning community and note the need for a change. It is 2021 and people from all walks…
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How writing can help you read
Read more: How writing can help you readDuring meetings, are you a notetaker? I often find myself scribbling down notes throughout a meeting only to never refer to them again, simply because I remember what is on them. The act of writing down the information helps my brain convert it to long term memory. The same thing happens when children write. Even…
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7 Ways to Get More Books
Read more: 7 Ways to Get More BooksHow to get more books and build bigger libraries for your young readers Parents always ask how they can expand the Kids Read Now summer reading program into the rest of the year. Here are seven great ways to get more free or almost free books. This will keep your children building their reading skills…