Mentor Texts is one of my favorite presentations to give. It is simply about learning how to look at any book and pull out the everyday reading and writing skills. Through powerful Mentor Texts you can teach to any of the Common Core Standards you need to teach in an authentic and exciting way! Know your students, know your needs, pick the mentor text of your choice and you're on your way! Having a few powerful Mentor Texts in your back pocket to pull out at any time is a tool that all teachers should have.
Phonemic Awareness is one of the five pillars of reading. It is a critical skill for early readers. Learn about some of the key elements that make up phonemic awareness, how to teach these skills and assess them.
Developing Fluent Readers is an important skill - one that is more complex than just the rate at which a student reads. Learn about the many components of fluent readers and ways to develop readers rate, expression, accuracy and awareness of punctuation marks and their effects on fluency.
6 Traits of Writing is a common tool used to teach and assess student's writing. Using the 6 Traits of Writing helps you go beyond the grammatical conventions. It is a way to look at the whole writer and know areas of strengths and weaknesses for each individual student. This allows you to meet every student's need and mold writers that not
only know the grammatical conventions of writing but also understand and use the craft.
Vocabulary Instruction is a critical component in any Balanced Literacy program. What are the Best Practices in teaching vocabulary? How do you get the vocabulary words you teach to stick? There are so many words - how do you decide which to teach?
Conferring with students on both their reading and their writing has been proven to be an extremely effective one-on-one strategy to reach learners' various needs and guide them along to see results. However, how do you do this on a daily basis? What language do you use when conferring? How do I document this time spent? Learn some effective strategies to make your conferring time valuable for both the students and the teachers.
