More than Language Arts @ GMS!
Coaching Corner
Ideas and Strategies for teaching ELA!
Check out some great strategies/ideas below from our very own talented ELA teachers! ! ELA ROCKS...and so does Griffin Middle School!
How are you creating a positive culture for reading?
Shout out to Ms. Baringer, Mr. Villegas, and Mr. Jennings for this idea! These teachers decorated tables with table cloths and candles to create an AMAZING ambiance. They laid out books on each table to get kids excited about reading! It was super cute! :) Read more below....
Welcome to the Cafe of the Minds!
Hosting a Book Tasting in your library or classroom is a great way to re-energize your students about reading. It can be an opportunity for them to explore and familiarize them with a variety of genres.
"Book Tasting"
In a book tasting, the classroom is transferred into a restaurant experience, but instead of serving a three course meal with food, students instead sample three different books to decide if they’d like to read them and to expand their reading tastes.
Students excited about reading!
As an extra bonus, they get to practice independent reading and find books that are fit for them. At the end of the tasting, they all end up with a list of books that they can't wait to read. :-)
What are you doing with your RI (reading index) scores/data?
Shout out to Ms. Stephanie Jackson for initiating RI score tracking throughout the school year with her students! This is a helpful tool that can be used by students to track their yearly progress and Lexile level using the Reading Inventory. This allows students to chart their progress after each test, compare their scores to grade level benchmarks, set goals for future tests and even compete or receive incentives.
Data Charts
Goals Achievement and Celebrations
Reading Resources to promote growth
Interactive Word Walls!
I've been receiving lots of questions about interactive word walls. Hopefully this will help clear it up as well as some examples from teachers pictured below. :) An interactive word wall is a tool to use, not just display. Word walls are designed to promote group learning and be shared by a classroom of children.
Goals
- Support the teaching of important general principles about words and how they work
- Foster reading and writing
- Provide reference support for children during their reading and writing
- Promote independence on the part of young students as they work with words in writing and reading
- Provide a visual map to help children remember connections between words and the characteristics that will help them form categories
- Develop a growing core of words that become part of a reading and writing vocabulary
Mr. Joiner's student created word wall
Mrs. West's student created word wall
Ms. Jones/ Gonzales' interactive/ matching word wall with visuals
Frazzled with Springboard??? ........
Holla at Mrs. Evans! Mrs. Evans has her classes "springing" into strategies (pun-intended) Please feel free to reach out to her for strategies and ideas as you check out just a few that she uses below!
Unpacking Embedded Assessments
In the Springboard Curriculum, each unit begins by having students examine what they will need to know and do for the first major assessment. Mrs. Evans used this anchor chart to model with children and help them unpack. Students then created in their versions using a choice of template. See example below....
Students personal ongoing "QHT" chart
Students are using this as their personal QHT chart that is house in their interactive notebook. This strategy is used to review vocabulary students have learned previously, either in class or previous grade levels. Students keep track of content knowledge vocabulary and can add or remove words into columns as the unit progresses and unknown words are mastered.
Student Embedded Assesment Wheel
Example of Student Created Unpacking:
What do you have to do?
For example: Use.... Write... Create....
Include Structure... Ideas...Language...
Reading and Writing Strategies
Mrs. Brownlee's independent reading board
In an effort to continue to promote student reading, Mrs. Brownlee created (hand-drawn by the way...) this request board in which students can request books that they would like to read. This is a great idea as students need a variety of new and interesting books to serve as an option for independent classroom reading.
Mrs. Crump's Book Talks!
Mrs. Crump is pictured conferencing with one of her students during independent reading time. What better way is there to:
- promote reading sustainability
- know your students struggles with reading
- build relationships with students
- compliment the reader and teach them something new
- hold students accountable for their reading and thinking
Interactive Notebooks with Mrs. K. Moore
Have you been wondering how to begin setting your students up with interactive notebooks? Holla @ Mrs. Moore! Mrs. Moore requires her students to keep independent progress of each of their activities. Interactive notebooks enable students to be a creative, independent thinkers and writers. Interactive notebooks are used for class notes as well as for other activities/ strategies in which you want your students to express their own ideas and process the information presented in class. As pictured, Mrs. Moore strategically models the process to students and has them to cut, paste and glue information/resources into their composition notebooks.
Rockey Anderson
Email: rockette.anderson@cobbk12.org
Website: elawithanderson.weebly.com
Phone: 678- 842- 6917