Do you know the back story to Jingle Bells? What is it really about? Jingle Bells is a great song to use when teaching students to use comprehension skills. Students are reading to find out the overall meaning, make inferences about the author's intentions and characters, and make connections from the historical setting to present day setting-all while singing!

Using a holiday song as a shared reading is an engaging and rigorous reading activity! Standards that could be addressed using this song:

• Making inferences about the character's goal
  
• Making inferences about the setting
  
• Drawing conclusions about the impact of the setting on the characters problem and the events of the story
  
• Monitoring for comprehension by visualizing
• Making Inferences about the Author's Craft (mood, tone, and word choice)

Great Holiday Songs for Shared Reading:

• Jingle Bells (Click here for full karaoke version)
• You're a Mean one, Mr. Grinch (Click here for full karaoke version)
• Oh, Christmas Tree
• The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
• Last Christmas

Recently I was asked my opinion about how much time should be spent on ELAR in the elementary classroom each day. I started thinking about how much instruction and practice it takes to reach our literacy goals. Students need hourly opportunities to use language and literacy skills if they are to continuously grow in their reading and writing skills. By the end of the year, not only should the student be at a higher reading level, but be able to explain and select strategies that they use to process a variety of complex texts.

Instructional time should be organized to ensure that students are listening, speaking, reading, and writing in all areas of the curriculum. If students are doing activities that do not deepen their understanding and help them process at deep levels of comprehension, we should discard the activity and use the time for more authentic and meaningful practice opportunities. Anything else is distraction that prevents the learning goals from being achieved as quickly as possible.

Here are some ideas for authentic practice that develops content knowledge, language and literacy skills.

1. Draw a picture or act out important ideas from informational texts. This type of activity is a great way to show what the student knows about the content while practicing literacy skills.
2. Create a puppet for a storybook character or to narrate an informational text. Create puppets using paper bag , popsicle sticks, or by sealing an envelope, cutting it in half vertically, and drawing a face on each half of the envelope. Students will love being able to use puppets to act out stories or give commentary.
3. Write a speech that includes important ideas, opinions, claims, and textual support about a topic. Then create an avatar who delivers the speech. Apps to use include Tellagami, GoAnimate, and Chatterpix. Be sure students write a draft first. After they have revised the draft of their "speech" and practiced reading it, record the speech using the app. Be sure to save the recording and post it on your class website or wikki. Most apps will allow you to save and send a link to parents.

Hopefully, these ideas answer the question "What should students be doing while I work with small groups to differentiate instruction?"

Academic language needs to be heard, seen, spoken, and written in order to be efficiently stored in permanent memory. Practice makes permanent!

Kelly Harmon & Robert Marzano teamed up to writePracticing Skills, Strategies, & Processes. The book is part of the Essentials for Achieving Rigor Series.

Practicing Skills, Strategies, & Processes: Classroom Techniques to Help Students Develop Proficiency explores explicit techniques for mastering this crucial strategy of instructional practice. It includes:

• Explicit steps for implementation
• Recommendations for monitoring students’ ability to develop fluent thinking
• Adaptations for students who struggle, have special needs, or excel in learning
• Examples and non-examples from classroom practice
• Common mistakes and ways to avoid them

For more information click here!