Ninja Notes

Let us help you teach like a ninja!

Reading

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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