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Sequencing Pictures to Tell a Story: Why it Works Have you ever had a student mix up a story or struggle to tell events in the right order? They might be recapping a movie they watched over the weekend, but the retelling doesn’t quite make sense. Being able to retell and sequence a story is an essential piece of the comprehension puzzle because, without it, our students can’t fully make sense of a text! Using pictures in story retell activities is a great way to make the activity accessible for all students and to keep them interested.  What is Sequencing...

Surviving ELA Test Prep: 3 Skills to Teach Testing season is almost upon us, and we know it is chaotic - for teachers and students. We can still remember that sweaty-palm feeling as we sat down to take a test. It’s easy to want to review every skill and concept that could possibly be on the test, but that will only cause more chaos in the minds of our students, and our own! During this season of chaos, it’s important to stick to reviewing the essentials. There are three ELA test prep skills we suggest focusing on: topic sentences, supporting details, and annotating texts....

Valentine's Day writing prompts are a sweet way to get kids excited about writing.   Lessons are always more engaging when we can give students a fun and creative way to express themselves, especially if they include a holiday theme like Valentine's Day. Writing prompts provide a starting point for students to write about their feelings, thoughts, and knowledge related to the holiday. But that's not all! Writing prompts can also help students improve their writing skills. For example, they can work on vocabulary, sentence structure, and mechanics. And who doesn't love creating a good story, right? Another benefit of...

3 Valentine’s Day Writing Activities for Elementary Students We’ve talked about it in the past, but we are huge fans of thematic units. As Valentine’s Day approaches, we brainstormed ways to bring the theme of Valentine’s Day into your ELA block. And we have some great ideas to share. Valentine’s Day writing is the perfect opportunity to expand on students' writing skills, while also engaging them in the holiday spirit.  We are sharing three ways to bring Valentine’s Day writing to your classroom! All of these activities are effective for elementary students, no matter what stage of writing they are...

6 Rules of Capitalization Your Students Need to Know There are lots of rules to the mechanics of writing, and yet they are so important! From conveying meaning to editing their work, we want to prepare our students for life outside of the classroom - and that includes knowledge of mechanics. This influences how people read and interpret what we write. One part of mechanics is, of course, capitalization rules. In this blog, we’ll dig into the six capitalization rules your students need to know.  How do you teach capitalization rules?  Capitalization rules are just that: rules. They require memorization,...