The BEST Thanksgiving Picture Books for Upper Elementary Gobble, gobble y’all – looking for the BEST picture books for Thanksgiving for upper elementary to read aloud? I have a fabulous list that you and your students will love to bring in some seasonal fun to your November. Also, please know that I have read A LOT of Thanksgiving books. I kept this list to 5 books because I want it to be a list of five books that you will absolutely not go wrong reading. I have a lot of things that I like in a read-aloud: length (not too short but not too long), fun illustrations, entertaining, and heartwarming. All these books fill my perfect read-aloud quota If I...
Five years on, it's easy to take for granted what an immediate tectonic shift "Call Me by Your Name" represented for queer, romantic, and contemporary cinema. It's one thing for a film to tell a love story between two men as sensitively and perceptively as it did, capturing every one of its microscopic inner movements and honoring their cumulative enormity, with both parties allowed to come alive so thoroughly as characters. To do so while also offering up one of the decade's most profound treatises on the mysteries of human connection, the nuances of identity, and the existential significance of giving oneself over to another is something else entirely.In countless different ways, "Call Me by Your Name" is a wholly unique film, and...
Christmas is a time for family, friends, and lots of reading! But finding Christmas reading comprehension activities at the right level for your fourth-grade students can be challenging. Most holiday-themed materials are either too easy or require too much preparation. They don’t always focus on the key skills students must practice during the holiday season. My Christmas reading comprehension 4th-grade packet is perfect for guided reading groups. The activities are designed to help students develop their skills in characters’ points of view, story elements, and theme. Whether you’re looking for a way to keep your students engaged during the holiday season or searching for some Christmas-themed enrichment activities – this Christmas reading comprehension 4th-grade packet is sure to be a...
There's nothing quite like the feeling of struggling to read or write. It can be frustrating, overwhelming, and even a little bit scary for kids. But there's hope! I often hear the question, "What can I do to help my struggling readers and writers?" While there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, there are a few strategies and activities that can be used to help struggling students. Supporting your students If you have a wide range of reading abilities in your class, it is important that you find ways to support all your students in developing and expanding their skills and knowledge. One of the best ways to do this is to create reading groups of similar abilities so...
Unit 2 of Pathway to Fluency is here, and it’s packed! Unit 2 is where you really start seeing all of the hard work of teaching phonological awareness, letter sounds and heart word practice pay off! Students can begin taking the basic phonics skills practiced in Unit 1 to start decoding and encoding CVC (Consonant, Vowel, Consonant), simple double consonant, plural CVC, and CVCe words. This is a HUGE milestone for many beginning readers. Therefore, it’s one of my favorites! If you are unfamiliar with this reading program, I’ll break it down for you. Pathway to Fluency is a complete and comprehensive Science of Reading (SoR) Aligned Curriculum! Simply stated, it has everything you need for your whole-group, small-group and one-on-one...
