ELA News
December/January Edition
Upcoming Sessions for 2018
Continuing Education...............................
Writing Tidbit: Peer Conferencing
Many students find working with a partner to be very motivating. It’s important to carefully structure peer writing conferencing because it can get out of hand easily. Set a specific goal such as helping each other check for capital letters at the beginning of every sentence, rereading to make sure each sentence makes sense, or looking for words that could be traded out for something more interesting. Another way to structure peer conferencing is to use the “Love and a Wish” system. Students read each other’s writing. Then they share one thing they loved about it and one thing they wished. For example, maybe they loved how their partner described the taste of their birthday cake and they wished there was more about the games that were played at the party.
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Coming Soon..........
Dyslexia Screening for Kindergarten and First Grade.....Really?!
Research continues to support the need for early identification and assessment (Birsh, 2011; Sousa,2005; Nevills & Wolfe, 2009). The rapid growth of the brain and its responsiveness to instruction in the primary years make the time from birth to age eight a critical period for literacy development (Nevills & Wolfe, 2009). Characteristics associated with reading difficulties are connected to spoken language. Difficulties in young children can be assessed through screenings of phonemic awareness and other phonological skills (Sousa, 2005).
(p. 13, HB)