Greetings and salutations, friends! It’s been a busy, busy couple of weeks in my household with my niece’s wedding and the start of a new school year. The literacy center where I currently teach has been buzzing with new students, new teachers, and lots of new ideas to explore! It’s given me some new content and new ideas to explore, and I am excited to do so in the coming months.
I have a great many projects and activities planned for this upcoming school year with my job, Signum University, and with this blog. The greatest aspect of teaching, I have found, is that it is a sharing community. Many mentor teachers have been gracious enough to share ideas, projects, and worksheet with me, and it is my hope that I can give back to other teachers and parents as well.
To that end, I have created a Teachers Pay Teachers store called “Elise’s Learning Literacy Lounge.” Here, I have and will continue to provide graphic organizers, worksheets, and assessments for teachers and parents to use.
Asking a student (child or adult) to read and analyze a text can be a difficult assignment. For many, reading and analyzing is an automatic process that can take seconds. For others, it requires a more explicit, visual map to jot down notes, ask questions, and think critically about the answers they choose to give to that assignment. These graphic organizers are based on Jennifer Serravallo’s “The Reading Strategies Book,” which is a resource that I cannot recommend enough for all teachers and parents who want to incorporate literacy strategies (no matter the subject) into their lessons. These strategies help make the process of reading explicit and allow room for students to grow in their analysis skills. Currently, my store features reading strategies specifically for analyzing characters in a fictional text, but will soon feature strategies for other components in a fictional text (plot, conflict, themes), informational texts (big ideas, vocabulary, text features), and other literacy skills (asking questions, writing about reading, speaking and listening). If you have any questions regarding the resources I provide or are interested in learning more, don’t hesitate to email me through my Contact page or leave a comment!
For a fantastic list of Back to School children’s books, click here!