Spooky Reading Day!

Younger Students

Invite students to bring in a flashlight and umbrella for Spooky Reading Day. Students can read independently or with a partner by the light of their flashlights under their umbrellas.

Older Students

Display mysteries and ghost stories around your classroom. Be sure to include short stories and true stories. Give a book talk on one per day. Ask students to share their favorite spooky text and even write their own to share. R.L. Stine, Mary Downing Hahn, and Stephen King provide a range of great reads that your students won't be able to resist.

You will never get a second chance to make a first impression. The same rings true for the way we learn. Brain research tells us that we remember what we see the first time we see it. The first way our brain views something is a strong imprint. Seeing grammar, mechanics, and spelling incorrectly used is meaningless for most learners, but it is what they are likely to remember. It's very difficult to change and see it correctly used. Students need to spend a lot of time seeing, thinking, and experimenting with grammar and mechanic rules correctly before finding errors.

Teach Conventions in Context

The most effective way to teach grammar rules is in context. Over a week, you can have students explore a grammar rule in a way that will move the learning from short term to permanent memory. Each step below can be addressed in five to ten minutes.

Using a mentor text, students need to see a grammar rule in the correct form FIRST. This how we want them to remember it.

How Does One Teach in Context?

1. Select your grammar rule of the week

Example: Sentence Combining

2. Select your mentor text

Example: The Article from USA Today 'Dancing': Rose, Hough Talk Body'

Sometimes the most important thing you can do for someone is to simply listen. As easy as this sounds, it's actually not! Listening is a skill that takes both self control and compassion for others. When you stop and listen, you are putting aside yourself and focusing on others. Listening with empathy and understanding is one essential skill that students need to see modeled, authentically practiced, and discussed often.

I have used Art Costa's "Habits of Mind" as a springboard for discussion.

Using children's literature or novel studies, we can help students identify with characters who demonstrate examples or non-examples of positive academic behaviors. Below are a few books you can read and discuss during the first weeks of school.