Instructional Resources
Click on the links below to access literacy resources for helping your learners grow as readers and writers:
Anchor Charts are important teaching tools for readers and writers. Click below to access grade level specific charts as well as outstanding professional resources that describes the power of charts and offers tips on how to create charts that will positively impact learning in all aspects of your day:
Commercially available charts leave you hanging? Want the secret to jump-off-the-wall charts that stick with kids? Trust Smarter Charts.
Did you ever want to know:
-
What do great charts look like?
-
How many is too many?
-
Where are the best places for them in my classroom?
-
How long do I keep them?
-
How do I know if they are working?
This text can be purchased through Heinemann, and while it is recommended as appropriate for K-2, teachers will find many tips that are applicable to all levels of learning. It offers outstanding recommendations for the creation and use of charts to enhance classroom literacy learning. This book can be purchased through Heineman.
-
Smarter Charts, Math, Science and Social Studies: In Smarter Charts for Math, Science, and Social Studies, Marjorie and Kristi share how they learned to make truly effective content-area charts with students. You’ll turn complex ideas into kid-friendly visuals, help children internalize content processes, and even increase your instructional time. This book, too, can be purchased through Heinemann.
-
Chartchums! Visit the Chartchums site to view lots of great charts that have been used in clasrooms and then click on the about section to sign up to receive periodic, free blog emails from the authors of the Smarter Charts books. You'll love receiving charting tips in your inbox!
Classroom
Libraries
To grow as readers, students need access to a VERY large volume of books.
Readers must have choice in selecting books that match their passions as well as interests. They must be able to read both fiction and information texts. Readers need access to books that they can read with accuracy, fluency and comprehension.
Most of the books in classroom libraries should be leveled using the lettered leveling system developed by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. Each building in CCS has access to the Fountas and Pinnell Book on-line leveling website. You can access the site for your building by clicking on the link above. To see how other leveling systems align to the F & P system, please access thie CCS Correlation of Text Leveling Systems.
Components of a Mini-Lesson Chart: Click here to access this chart as a reminder of all the essental elementes of your daily Reading and writing mini-lesson.
Conferring
Engaging in one-on-one conversations with readers and writers is at the heart of workshop teaching. During conferences, teachers listen carefully to the learning that is going on for the child and then decide on a teaching point based upon this conversation. Click here to access a conferring "boot camp" document.
Documentation of conference conversations and subsequent goal setting for the reader and writer determine next steps of literacy learning. Every teacher must find a recording system that works best for him or her. Samples of conference record sheets can be found here.
Classroom Design: Click on the following link to read an article about creating a learning environment where both you and your learners will thrive:
Digital Texts and Online Literacy Resources for Kids and Teachers, too!
BookFlix provides texts and digital resources such as videos to support our K-5 readers. Click on the BookFlix logo to look at the categories of books and the supports that are available for our young readers. Kids will love exploring BookFlix both in your classroom and at home.
The Michigan eLibrary, Mel.org provides a wealth of digital resources for teachers, kids and parents. Start exploring this site and you'll discover not only digital books but also homework helpers, games and activities, a parents' page and even a section called Michigana devoted to our great state.
Do you have students who struggle to read fluently? Readers who are still learning to decode often sound choppy and have difficulty taking meaning from the text. To help grow fluency skills, these fluency phrases, using sight words, can help! Phrases can be put onto index cards and students can practice reading them in the same way that they practiced learning to read high frequency words.
Essentials!
The following documents have been produced by The Early Literacy Task Force, part of the Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators (MAISA) General Education Leadership Network (GELN). They provide identify research-based practices that should be evident in EVERY CLASSROOM, EVERY DAY for EVERY CHILD. Click on each document to access the Essential Practices.
Guided Reading
Guided Reading is an instructional practice designed to help readers move from one text level to another. With support from a teacher who is 'guiding' a child's reading, the reader will be ready to tackle more complex texts. Click here to find lesson plan templates, sample lessons and other classroom guided reading planning tools.
Children need to learn to print and write cursive. The language to use when teaching students to form letters is available as a free resources provided by HWT and can be accessed here. HWT also provides a free tool for creating handwriting practice pages for your students. This A+ Worksheet Maker can be accessed here.
Important Information to share with parents:
What makes Frequent Readers: The Most Powerful Predictors
3 Reasons to Read With Your Elementary Schooler Every Night
9 Reasons to Read More - a helpful chart!
Reading for Meaning - Tips to help your child comprehend what s/he reads.
Portfolios!
Children love sharing their learning with friends and families and portfolios provide the perfect vehicle for doing so! Whether through a binder or a digital platform, the story of child's school year journey can be beautifully documented. Below are resources to make this sharing a reality!
Binder Portfolios
Binders provide a way for students and teachers to share printed evidence of a child's learning. To see what teachers across Clarkston are including in Binders, click on this link. The folders you access contain teacher designed tools for communicating a child's story of learning with others.
Digital Portfolios
Digital Portfolios provide a means for sharing a student's story of learning through photographs and, videos. To access a free platform that can showcase student learning across the year in a digital way, click on the Seesaw logo. Once registered, a teacher may find that using Seesaw will provide a unique way for children to share their learning! Many CCS teachers are currently using SeeSaw. Contact Lori Banaszak if you would like to use SeeSaw during the next school year. A limited number of premium licenses will be available.
Publishing Student Writing: Click on the links below to access sites for the publication of student work.
Kidblog provides teachers with the tools to help students publish writing safely online. Students exercise digital citizenship within a secure classroom blogging space. Teachers can monitor all activity within their blogging community.
Kid Standard is a locally published magazine that is committed to featuring the artwork and writing of Clarkston area writers. Click on the Kids Standard Logo to access the site and discover how your students may submit work for publication.
Every parent of a student in grades Kindergarten through Third Grade will receive this booklet of ideas on how to grow a child's literacy skills. Click on the link above or the booklet to access great tips for helping young readers and writers grow,
Reading Logs: Reading logs are an important tool to help children set goals for reading and keep track of their progress toward that goal. You can access logs for Clarkston by clicking on the links below:
-
Tally Reading Log for readers who are not yet reading chapter books (Levels E-I)
-
Traditional Reading Log for readers who are reading at Levels J and beyond)
In the Reading Workshop, learners are expected to read independently and continuously for large chunks of time. It is essential to track the amount of time spent reading each day. A sample Reading Stamina Chart can be accessed by clicking the link above.
Shared Reading
Shared Reading is a fun, engaging and critically important component of Clarkston's balanced literacy approach to developing literacy. It should occur daily in grades K-3 and often in grades 4 and 5,
In upper grades, shared reading may take place during transition times in the form of a song or poem. It might also include the reading of content materials such as portions of a social studies or science text. Shared reading is a perfect vehicle for reading primary source documents such as the Preamble to the Constitution or Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech.
To access and make a copy of a 5-day lesson plan template for Grades K-2., click here. A template to be copied for a 3rd Grade 5-day lesson plan, can be found here.
Clarkston's Literacy Coaches have modeled and video-taped shared reading lessons in Grades K-3. To access these amazing videos, click on the links below.
Young Fives Shared Reading Video
Kindergarten Shared Reading Videos
First Grade Shared Reading Videos
Second Grade Shared Reading Videos
Third Grade Shared Reading Videos
One of the challenges that teachers face is the ability to match readers to appropriate texts. Determining when a child is ready to move to new levels of independent reading books should be based upon multiple sources of data, including running records, anecdotal conferring notes, student jots and post its, conversation with partners, student engagement data, etc. Click here, or on the Text Complexity Headline to access a document that identifies characteristics of readers at each independent reading level and the skills they need to successfully read texts at each level.
Word Study
Words Their Way- Word Study Resources from Silver Edition, Donald Bear book: Clarkston has adopted the Words Their Way program to help our readers and writers learn how words work. Teacher resources available through the link at the back of the Silver, Donald Bear book have been dowloaded onto our CCS Google site and can be accessed by clcking on the link above.
Words Their Way - Word Study Resources from the Pearson, Teacher Resource Guide. The resources from the CD-Rom that is part of the Coach's Kit for this program, are available by clicking on the link below. Games that are referenced for every sort, in each of the five student books, are available by clicking this link. You will find all of these resources in the folders for each of the 5 WTW stages. Click on this link to access these resources: Word Study - Coaches Kit Teacher Resource CD.
Clarkston teachers have created a wide variety of resources that support Word Study in their classrooms. Click on this CCS Teacher Created Resources link to see how Clarkston educators are managing groups and using home grown supports to help our students grow their phonic and spelling skills.
If you wish to integrate handwriting into Word Study, click on this WTW/Handwriting link to access a folder that contains handwriting/word study practice sheets. You'll find words from each sort printed, as well as written in cursive.
Children also need to learn to read and write high - frequency, sight words, or Word Wall Words. To access a high-frequency word assessment as well as printable word wall words, please see the High Frequency Word section on the Assessment page.
WTW Parent Information can be accessed by clicking this link. This letter may be sent to parents to help them understand our district's approach to spelling instruction and word study.