Brain Ninjas

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Reading

How to Set Up Your Reading Comprehension Schedule

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If you use our weekly reading comprehension sets (or maybe you want to learn more), come see how we schedule the first month and get some ideas for how you can use these reading and grammar activities in your classroom whether your instruction happens in the classroom or online.

If you are struggling with reading instruction in your classroom, you’re not alone. Upper elementary teachers are often not trained in how to teach students to read, despite the fact all the students in their classroom are unlikely to be reading at grade level. Setting up a reading comprehension schedule is one way to get on track.

We designed our Weekly Reading Comprehension Skills specifically for our students. We needed reading material for science and social studies that were at the right reading level and needed to teach grammar and reading skills. You might want to read this post about how we came up with them: Add Great Content to Your Literacy Lessons.

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Add Great Content to Your Literacy Lessons

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There are so many things to teach and just not enough time for it all. We started using content from science and social studies to teach grammar and reading comprehension. Game changer! Come find out what we did and how we did it in our upper elementary classroom literacy lessons (even during distance teaching).

It took fifteen years of teaching and professional development before we felt confident teaching reading to students in upper elementary. Reading is one of the most important skills any teacher is responsible for, but it is often taught by stabbing at strategies until something works-only to find it doesn’t work for the next student. Literacy lessons were hard to design and we didn’t really know where to start.

The most important thing we’ve learned is that reading comprehension skills are also skills related to grammar, word parts, word families and patterns, and writing. The same skills are used in a variety of ways.

If a student missed one of these skills, they trip over it in everything other subject. By the time students get to the end of Grade Three, if they aren’t reading at grade level, they are statistically unlikely to catch up. So, what is a teacher to do?

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How to Run Your Guided Reading Instruction

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Are you learning to run reading groups in your classroom as part of your reading instruction? Great! Here's what we do during our reading instruction groups in upper elementary.

You’re giving Guided Reading instruction 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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How to Prepare For Your Reading Groups

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Teaching reading is as much organization and planning as it is about teaching. Get yourself organized with these tips that will get you ready for the whole year from our classroom experts. Come read the whole post.

You’ve been asked to do teach reading as part of your Language Arts program and you’re a little worried. It seems overwhelming. Teaching reading can be challenging.

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 teaching reading.

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How to Teach Small Groups and Keep the Rest of the Class Busy

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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. Come read more!

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 Teach Reading

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Are you being asked to teach reading but you haven't learned how? That's because education programs don't actually teach teachers how to teach reading. This training is usually done on the job, but don't worry. We've got everything you need to get started with guided reading.

Have you been asked to do Guided Reading or teach 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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Practical Strategies for Reluctant Readers

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Do you have students who avoid reading? Check out these step-by-step effective strategies for reluctant readers so you can get all of your students to enjoy reading.

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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Research Skills: How to Teach Text Features

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Understanding text features is one way to help your students with reading comprehension. Come learn how we teach our students about text features while reading nonfiction texts. We even had some free tools for you to use in your upper elementary classroom.

How often do you give your students a book and they can’t find any information in it? It seems if a page isn’t blinking and flashing they can’t seem to work it. Explicitly teaching text features can help your students understand how to process information better. This won’t just help with their reading, but it will help with all of their research, following directions and locating information quickly in all their subject areas.

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Your Big List of Must Have Books for Ramadan and Eid

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If you are looking for books about Ramadan and Eid to use in your upper elementary classroom, check out this list put together by our school community.

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.

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How to Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day

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Are you looking for ways to celebrate a love of poetry with your upper elementary students? Try taking part in Poem in Your Pocket Day as part of National Poetry Month. This can be done any time of year and is a great activity to explore poetry throughout your school. Come read the whole post to get ideas how you can celebrate poetry.

We’re hosting a “Poem in Your Pocket” day as a celebration of completing our poetry unit in Language Arts. It coincides with the National Poem In Your Pocket Day held each year in April. It’s coming up soon! You can join us this year even if you haven’t taught poetry in your classroom yet!

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How to Use Google Meet to Run a Book Club

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If you like to run Book Clubs in your upper elementary classroom, then you should try using Google Meet to run them. Come read through our post to see how we put these in place and get yourself some useful tools to make it all go easier.

Are you looking for a twist on a Book Club to help spice up your reading instruction? Using Google Meet can be just the twist you need to get students reading, writing and talking about books. If you’re teaching reading, you need to give this a shot!

The point of book clubs is to have students (or people) read the same book together and then discuss the book. It is not about reading a book and then doing comprehension questions. No one wants to do that (or mark that). It’s about fostering a love of reading for life.

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How to Teach Reading With Book Clubs

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Using book clubs is a great way to help students read books with support while enjoying books they've chosen. We put together all our book club tips in one post to get you started. Make book clubs part of your language arts instruction. Come have a read.

Our students love to have some choice over what they read as part of our Language Arts program. Book Clubs are one way to encourage reading and discussions just like adults do. Students read for enjoyment and then talk about what they have read and recommend books to others. Setting up book clubs can be a little confusing, especially if it’s your first time. Don’t worry! We’re here to help you out.

You’re going to love book clubs!

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