Teacher Created Materials

It seems the term Social Emotional Learning or SEL is everywhere these days. For many educators, this is met with a collective sigh of relief. At long last, we are talking about more than just academics and standardized testing when it comes to providing students with a quality education. To others, however, the buzz about SEL may be cause for concern. Is SEL merely a trend? Is it just the flavor of the month that will soon fade away only to be replaced by the next big idea in education?

Wordless books can be enjoyed by all levels of emergent readers. They encourage children to apply critical visual literacy skills, which are important for today’s focus on visual images. Wordless books provide scaffolds for storytelling, vocabulary use and fluency, and language learning. Opportunities for creative dialogue and characterization abound when children “read” these stories.

Helping our students learn to write across the curriculum and across genres is a powerful way to provide lifelong skills. We want to give them confidence and the desire to write. But making the transformation from idea to composition can be intimidating to many students. So how can we make writing a fun learning experience? Powerful teaching strategies are the answer! Here are three things you can try tomorrow.

Fiction or nonfiction?  Often, teachers view these two types of texts as separate and distinct, with little overlap in purpose or instruction. However, pairing fiction and nonfiction texts together in instruction can have many beneficial effects. While some students are drawn to fiction, others are naturally attracted to nonfiction. Pairing fiction and nonfiction texts help to engage both types of students, while also broadening their vocabulary and knowledge about a common topic.

Do you notice that students are starting to glaze over each time you read science, social studies, or even math text in class? Try the tips below to pump up the volume, and make content-area reading manageable and fun.

With many of today’s standards calling the use of HOTS, or higher order thinking skills, it can feel really overwhelming at times. So, this may seem a bit oversimplified at first, but I have found it extremely valuable in giving students a concrete way to break down their thinking. In fact, even the most able students have responded to this strategy with, “Well, I already knew the answer, but this helped me see how I got there.” Cool, right?!