I have shared Linda Rief’s Quickwrite Handbook at many of my writing sessions, as it has such practical and thoughtful suggestions for upper intermediate and secondary students.  Linda has come out of retirement to share this:  Click here

Thank you Linda Rief!

Carol Jago, author of The Book in Question: Why and How Reading Is in Crisis, has put together a poetry lesson in PDF form that is easy to download and share — Ideas for writing poems in a pandemic.    click here

Donalyn Miller writes about how many of are feeling right now about reading, and makes a few suggestions.  Thank you for writing this, Donalyn!

Click here to read

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