CCLS-Aligned Reading Curriculum | A blog post sharing free resources for aligning your ELA curriculum with the Common Core standards for Reading, Writing, and Fluency!

A CCLS-Aligned Reading Curriculum

Like many other teachers, after having experienced the rigor and high expectations of last year’s NYS Common Core Assessments  for grades 3-8, it became apparent that I needed to reflect and make some changes in my teaching for this school year. Although I thought I did a pretty good job last year with aligning my instruction to…

Using Ipads for 1:1 Reading Conferences

Using iPads for 1:1 Reading Conferences & Assessments

iPads in the classroom are powerful tools, especially for meeting the diverse needs of 21st century learners. My goal as a Literacy Specialist is to find a balance of technology-use within my small group instruction and to find ways for the iPads to support my current targeted interventions. There are many fun apps, but not all…

Visual Discrimination is difficult for many students. These similar word pairs can be used for assessment and practice, to help students develop accuracy with visually similar words.

Practicing Accuracy Using Similar Word Pairs

Do your students make a lot of visual errors? Visual discrimination is a tough for many readers who struggle with decoding. Many of the substitutions I see with my students include words with similar shapes, blends, vowels, or word chunks. I like to dig deeper to find out what TYPE of visual errors the students…

Snowballing Sentences | Activity for expanding writing sentences to include details and reading with fluency phrasing. | FREE RESOURCE

Snowballing Sentences

Are you looking for a way to help your students expand their sentences to include details? Do your students need help with grouping words together while reading for fluency phrasing? Try integrating this simple Snowballing Sentences activity! Writing Read through the completed sentence page as a whole-group. Then, model and guide the students through the process of…

Daily Fluency Activity Packets | Perfect for fluency centers, fluency stations, small group interventions, warm-up activities, and so much more! Each activity page includes tasks for students to practice the different components of fluency. (Sample pages included in this post)

Introducing Daily Fluency

So you completed Fluency Boot Camp… Now what? Fluency is a reading skill that requires maintenance and practice, especially for students who struggle with fluency.  After explicitly modeling and teaching the components of oral reading fluency, you should make it a priority to schedule time for practice and reinforcement throughout the school year. Fluency Reinforcement…