I was in the fifth grade when I first met the word quadruped while reading a homework assignment about mammals (“live-bearing quadrupeds”). Miss Patterson showed us how to unlock the meaning of a long or difficult word - even if we had never heard the word before – by finding its roots. My big “aha moment” occurred in the fifth grade, but it can happen to any student at any age. It’s never too late to learn a few roots, and the sooner the better!

If you're looking for authentic reasons to encourage your students to go back into a text and find evidence to support their thinking, we hear you. Monologue takes the skill of finding evidence to a new level. It is a literary empowerment tool for students. Drafting a powerful monologue invites students to read across a set of texts that includes different sources about one subject in order to glean an understanding from multiple perspectives.

Kindergartners come to school with a fear of writing, and we did it to them. As classroom teachers, we need to break down the insecurities and build their independence. It’s easy, if we start from the beginning. From the first day of school, providing clear and concise writing instruction with step-by-step supports, the fear will fall, and the student will soar.

Moving from classroom Language Arts teacher to K-5 District ELA Specialist my first order of business was to gauge where we were with reading scores when compared to the rest of the state. We fell well below the state average in Reading Informational Text, Reading Literature, and Language subtests.

Discover a 5th grade teacher’s journey using Greek and Latin roots switch to a morphological approach helped his students improve their reading level.

The five principles that can be used to help design effective word study instruction are not just based on opinion, they are grounded in research by recognized experts in the field, done in thousands of classrooms nationwide. Learn more about the five principles that can be used to help in designing effective vocabulary instruction.