Category: Learning at Home

Thank you very much to Nicole Wilson, grade 4/5 teacher, at Parkcrest Elementary School.  She has created a SEL calendar for the month of May, and has generously agreed to share it with us!

Some of the ideas were created with Indigenous teachings in mind.  Some Indigenous stories and connections to the Seven Sacred teachings from the Anishinaabe people are included in these activities.

Click here to download the calendar.

This video is great.  Jennifer talks about the challenges of remote teaching, and shows us how to have a reading conference remotely.  This video was on Facebook.

Click here

Here are some bookmarks that might be handy for you and for your learners!

Good fit books bookmark click here

Using the Reading Strategy Bookmark

Catching Readers Bookmarks

Teaching Our Learners Remotely Powerpoint

Thank you to everyone who turned up today for our presentation.  Here is the powerpoint:

Click here for powerpoint

Storytelling Prompts Click Here

Thank you so much to Kristine Mraz, for sharing some suggestions for story telling with students!

Sight words are critical to reading not only because they are used so frequently, but also because many of them cannot easily be sounded out or illustrated. … Because they are used so often it is important that readers be able to recognize these words on sight (hence the term “sight words”).https://www.k12reader.com/what-are-sight-words/

Here are a list of sight words.  Click here for sight word list

Here are some sight word games!Click here for sight word activities

Ideally, we are connecting with all students in our classrooms each week.  Have you tried a reading conference with each learner?  This could be done through Teams, or even over the phone.  Attached is a reading conference form you could use to guide the conversation.  I have created it so that the conference shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes.  The student doesn’t need to read the entire book to you.  Perhaps they could share their favourite part.  We can learn so much about our students’ reading right now, such as:

• Are they able to choose a just right book?
• Do they have access to books at home, and/or books online?
• What kinds of books are they choosing?
• Is there someone at home who can read with them, or talk to them about their reading?
• Are they enjoying reading right now?  (This is our end goal, ALWAYS!)

Click here to view the reading conferences sheet.  I’d love your feedback.  Together we are stronger!

Tanis.Anderson@burnabyschools.ca

Pioneer Valley Books are sharing their leveled book collection for free, in a digital version!

They have created a webinar, so you can learn how to use these books, either in a guided reading format, and/or for independent reading.  Click here to view webinar

These books would be ideal for students who are developing a foundation of reading, and require books with controlled vocabulary, and predictable text, with pictures to support them.

Thank you to Matt Glover, who has created these wonderful videos for parents, showing them how to support young writers.  There are two videos, and here are the links:

Part One Click Here

Part Two Click Here

I think there are a lot of kids being told to “sound it out” at home right now.  Unfortunately, that strategy doesn’t work all the time.  Here are some prompts you might want to pass along to parents.   Click here