It's hard to believe that we are nearing the end of January 2020. This newsletter will provide you with some information to assist you as you come into the second semester of the school year.

Planning is the framework for successful classrooms. It often can get daunting with the other duties that teachers are tasked with on a daily basis. There are numerous lesson planning sites that target teachers with their planning, but recent studies are showing that these sites may not be as helpful as many teachers would believe. Read the following article for an interesting take on lesson planning sites: Click HERE.

• Grades 3-8 can have one of 4 types of field test passages: Reading, Paired Reading, Revising, or Editing.
• Grades 3-8 can have field test questions on TEKS not included in the assessed curriculum, such as short answer response, research, etc.
• During 2020, grades 3-8, only overlap reading SEs from 2017/2009 TEKS will be scored (see Reading Assessed Curriculum below).
• Writing assessed curriculum remains unchanged in 2020 for grades 4 & 7 and will be scored.
• Even though K-8 is implementing new TEKS, test scores will count toward accountability.

Per House Bill 3 (HB 3), passed by the 86th Texas Legislature in June of 2019, all kindergarten through third grade teachers and principals must attend a teacher literacy achievement academy by the 2021-2022 school year. For simplification and to avoid confusion with other grant programs and past literacy achievement academies, the Texas Education Agency is referring to this latest requirement as the HB 3 Reading Academies. (Texas Education Agency, 2019.) Region 7 will provide more information about the HB 3 Reading Academies in the upcoming months.

Please visit the TEA Reading Practices webpage for additional information.

• January 29 - Walk in My Shoes
• February 5 - Fluently Speaking
• February 4 - ELAR Hot Topics Webinar: TEA Updates / Strand 2 and 3 of TEKS
• February 19 - ELAR Strand 5-Author's Purpose and Craft
• February 27 - ELAR Strand 6-Composition
• March 3 - ELAR Hot Topics Webinar: TEA Updates / Strand 5 and 6 of TEKS
• March 18 - Advancing Phonics Through Morphology
• March 26 - The Art of Conferring
• April 7 - ELAR Hot Topics Webinar: TEA Updates
• April 9 - ELAR Strand 1-Foundational Language Skills
• May 5 - ELAR Hot Topics Webinar: TEA Updates / Looking Ahead

Region 7 English Language Arts Page

ELAR TEKS Resource Page

Region 7 TEKS Resource System

TEKS Guides (TEA)

Texas Gateway

I was recently visiting a teacher's classroom. I saw a sign that said, "The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book." I smiled at this quote because it is absolutely true. Teachers cannot allow a book to dictate the instructional moves that they make about their students. By being intuitive to what students do and do not say, teachers can infer the struggles that students may have and make informed decisions about the needs of each student. This is teaching from the heart in action.

Angela Venters, M.Ed.

aventers@esc7.net

903-988-6788

Join other ELAR teachers in the region to plan your next unit of instruction using

TEKS RS and your new materials. The next round is set for February Register now before it's full!

K-5 - February 13th

6-8 – February 3rd