Teaching students to read nonfiction is not harder than teaching fiction, it's just a few different strategies that make the difference.

With that said...do you know the nonfiction reading strategy your students really need? Let me just tell you upfront. It's using text features.

If we’re honest, we know most students skip over the text features when reading nonfiction texts. They either don’t know what to do with them or it feels like it’s just one more thing to do or the text features feel disjointed or separate from the text, and students don’t know when to pay attention to them. Well...

I've got a system for that! [Shocking, right?!] 

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Are your students confident in using text features when reading nonfiction texts?

There are definite steps to teaching students to read nonfiction effectively. We certainly can't just throw them in and expect students to read and...

Sometimes I feel like technology has taken over classrooms and inhibits what teachers are able to teach or inhibits their students learning deeply. I know those are fighting words in our tech-savvy [and tech-addicted] world.

But, I stand behind it. Listen in to hear why and how to change your teaching to use technology as an effective tool, and bonus, grab back more teaching time.

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Do you ever feel like all the programs and required technology application minutes your students have are stealing your teaching time?

You're NOT alone! Between students' required minutes on programs like i-Ready and all of the programs your district has paid good money for and wants you to use, it can feel like there is almost no time left to teach! What's a dedicated teacher like you got to do around here to get in more than little snippets of teaching time?!

There's more requirements every month in education and...

This time of year classroom management and behavior problems can start to surface or become even worse than they already were…

So today, let’s chat about getting a reset or restart on your classroom management. Sometimes we have to retrain and restart to gain a firmer foothold with managing our classrooms and dealing with student misbehavior. It’s easy to forget that our students are just that – students – kids - and they are still learning so many things. Including how to behave ALL day long.

That’s why we need to retrain periodically. We also need to remember…we are human and prone to making mistakes. Maybe we are not being as consistent as we were in the beginning of the year [because let’s face it…consistency is the root of most – not all - classroom management problems].

So, let’s take a break from reading strategies and talk classroom management today.

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What's so great about writing by hand when we live on our screens? I hear it more than you'd think. Honestly, teaching students to write, especially in cursive, is a touchy topic. It seems so benign…it’s just writing. What’s to get all hopped up about?! But we do.

While printing seems to be pretty firmly established still as a norm in kindergarten and first grades, penmanship and certainly cursive are not. And why not? That answer is simple...time and keyboards.

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I'll be honest with you, there was a time when I thought cursive was not that important until I started reading the research.

Handwriting is not a waste of time! It's a slow down so your students can speed up later on strategy. Let me explain a bit. Writing by hand, both printing and cursive, activates parts of the brain that control learning and memory. This in turn opens the brain to new learning. Pretty cool, right?!...

The main idea vs. theme can be so tricky for students to understand not only the difference between them but what each one actually is as well. So, let's be clear from the beginning. Begin by teaching each one separately, then you can talk about the difference between them.

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To start, the main idea tells us what a text is mostly about. You can often sum this up with one sentence. When we can figure out the main idea then we know the purpose of the text.

Some questions you might ask for main idea are:

1. What is the title of the text?
2. Who or what is the text about?
3. What is the topic?
4. What is the most important information about that topic?
5. Is there information that is repeated [in different ways or the same way]?

Here's a YouTube video from McGraw Hill on Main Idea.

A theme is a lesson, message, or moral the author wants the character or reader to learn. You can often use a few words to explain...

Monitoring comprehension is not a given no matter how many comprehension strategies we teach our students. Learning to use the strategies in concert to continually check in with themselves is the only way students will truly be able to monitor their own comprehension. Understanding what they have read will only be possible for our students when using comprehension strategies is a habit.

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A habit is something we do without thinking. We've done it so many times that we no longer have to think about how and when to do it. 

Think about it...you see your shoe is untied and simply tie it. You don't think about how to tie your shoe or when to tie your shoe. The situation calls for it, so you do it.

Using the reading comprehension strategies you've spent so much time teaching, is something you eventually want your students to do without thinking about it. Choosing which strategy to use at any given time is only...

Do you remember the last time you got a real piece of mail? Not the junk mail that fills up the mailbox (not to mention the shredder), but real someone-put-a-stamp-on-an-envelope mail. Do you remember how exciting that is? Even if it's a birthday card, it means someone took the time to remember you. Letter writing isn't a lost art. Think about how important a well-crafted email is (there's another place that junks up quickly). Teaching students to communicate through writing is a timeless skill.

Today, I have some tips and resources to teach your students the art of letter writing.

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Don't limit your students to just letter writing! They can practice writing cards, postcards, or party invitations. No, the recipients don't have to be real (my students love writing letters to my dog!) and that's a great opportunity to connect with book characters.

Resources mentioned:

• The Post Office Book by Gail Gibbons
...

When’s the last time you talked about comparing and contrasting and didn’t use a Venn diagram? Venn diagrams and comparing and contrasting seem to just go together, don’t they? It’s not the only way…

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Did you know there are many benefits of being able to compare and contrast? Here's a few...

Comparing and contrasting is a strategy that helps us evaluate various aspects of a text. It prepares your students for higher-level analysis of texts. When your students compare and contrast, they are improving their comprehension of the text by drawing their attention to important details. Students are clarifying their thinking and looking deeper at a text. This improves their memory of the text as well. And that's just the beginning...

There's lots of activities we can use for teaching comparing and contrasting. It's a simple reading comprehension strategy to teach and to use with...

Do your students struggle with writing a summary?

That's actually very common. [‍Who knew?] Summarizing is quite difficult when you’re first learning how. It seems so simple to us on the other side with all the knowledge, doesn’t it?! Even though it’s tricky, stick with it! This comprehension strategy is an important one for your students' long-term learning success. 

In case you haven't figured it out yet, today's episode of The Teach Joyfully Podcast is all about teaching the summarizing comprehension strategy.

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So what exactly is summarizing? 

Well...according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "a summary is a restating of a text in your own words which gives the meaning of the original text in a condensed format". We do NOT add our thoughts or opinions in a summary. That can be tricky for some students. Also, a summary is not the same thing as a retelling. They are related...

Do you ever skip making predictions or just have your students make them before you read but not during or even after? If that’s you, it’s ok. You’re probably not alone.

This little strategy can seem silly or not as important as other comprehension strategies. In fact, teaching your students to make predictions might seem like a basic thing they should already know. But…do they?

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In this episode of the Teach Joyfully Podcast, I’m making a case for teaching your students about making predictions. We’ll talk about the how, the why, and great books to use as mentor texts for this important reading comprehension strategy.

Listen in to the full episode to find out:

• Why the making predictions strategy is so important.
• How to go about teaching this comprehension strategy
• some of my favorite mentor texts for teaching students to make predictions as they read.

Listen to...