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Ninja Notes

Let us help you teach like a ninja!

Reading

What You Should Be Doing With Your Guided Reading Group

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Are you learning to run Guided Reading groups in your classroom? Great! Here's what we do during our Guided Reading Instruction in upper elementary. #teachingreading #guidedreading

You’re giving Guided Reading a try. Great! Do you know what you should be doing with your Guided Reading groups and reading instruction? You’re going to teach students to read. But what does that mean?

We teach in upper elementary (usually Grade four or five) which means we have readers in our classroom reading from Grade one through to Grade six. We have English Language Readers, students with learning difficulties, avid readers and all the ones in between. This means we often need to use more than one strategy to teach reading.

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Preparing For Your Guided Reading Groups

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Guided Reading is as much organization and planning as it is about teaching reading. Get yourself organized with these tips that will get you ready for the whole year. #teachingreading #guidedreading

You’ve been asked to do Guided Reading as part of your Language Arts program and you’re a little worried. It seems overwhelming.

We’ve been there. It feels like you have to learn so much on the spot and you’re concerned that you won’t do a good job. Here’s the truth. You’ll learn as you go and you will get better at it. Everyone has to start somewhere.

A big part of doing a good job maximizing your teaching time with students comes from being prepared and organized. So, let’s dig in and get you organized so you can do a great job of Guided Reading.

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Help! What Do the Other Kids Do During Guided Reading?

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Are you trying to teach small groups at a table when there are non-stop interruptions? Get some practical tips on how to get the other kids working while you teach. It can be done and we want to help. Click to read more! #guidedreading

Hands down, this is the biggest question we get asked on a regular basis when working with teachers in the classroom. In fact, this is a question we ask ourselves daily. What will the other students be doing while I meet with my Guided Reading groups?

First of all, before you can make your time with your Guided Reading groups count, you need to establish the routines in your classroom. If you don’t have your classroom management down pat, your small group instruction time will be constantly interrupted and your students won’t progress. Nothing good will come from everyone being frustrated.

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Help! I Don’t Know How to Do Guided Reading

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Do you have to teach Guided Reading but have no idea where to start? Don't worry. This is the beginning of series to get your Guided Reading lessons ready to go. #guidedreading #readinginstruction #readingactivities

Have you been asked to do Guided Reading in your classroom, but have absolutely no experience and don’t even know where to start? We’ve been there. Let us share our combined years of experience that took us from beginning teachers to literacy specialists.

This is the beginning of a series that will get you set up to do Guided Reading in your classroom, but honestly, it is a long game. Take the pressure off yourself now because you’ll have to give yourself time to get this whole how to teach reading thing down. We’ve been teaching reading for over fifteen years and there is always room to improve. There are always new things to learn.

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Strategies for Reluctant Readers

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Check out these step-by-step effective strategies for reluctant readers so you can get all of your students reading! #teachingreading

Do you have students in your classroom you would label as reluctant readers? A reluctant reader is usually considered to be a person who doesn’t read for pleasure, but we’re about to debunk that myth and help you out in your classroom by giving you strategies to engage reluctant readers in ways you didn’t even know you needed.

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Books for Ramadan

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Reading is a huge part of our classroom and it’s important to us to make sure the books and characters reflect all aspects of the lives of our students. That includes books about and including different faiths, backgrounds and cultural beliefs.

Ramadan is an important part of our classroom culture so we searched high and low to find books that our students could use to learn from and reflect on. Here are some of the titles we found and thought you should check out yourself. [Read more…] about Books for Ramadan