When it comes to reading comprehension , it can be difficult to know if your students truly understood what they read. It can also be difficult to know if your students are reading the entire passage, or if they are going right to the questions and skimming the passage for the answers. Teaching summary sentences is an excellent way for teachers to see what their students are taking away from the different sections of the passage, which can lead you to see how well they understood the passage, from start to finish. WHAT ARE SUMMARY SENTENCES? Summary Sentences are sentences used to summarize different sections, or parts, of a passage. These sentences can be used with every text, whether it be long or short, fiction or nonfiction. The point of taking the time to write summary sentences is to help students quickly see what each section was mostly about, which will help when answering comprehension questions.  The summary sentences will help students find evidence from the pass...

If I were to complete a multiple-choice test about my 17 years as a classroom teacher, this could be one of the questions. Instead of staying home where I should’ve been, I ... A) taught 3rd grade while passing a kidney stone. B) drove to school with a bucket on my lap to put together sub plans in between episodes of vomiting. C) went through two+ boxes of tissues from the classroom donation supply in less than 6 hours. D) all of the above Spoiler alert: The answer is D. I left off the time I set off the silent alarm (that I didn’t know existed) on my portable which summoned the police, and my principal in her pajamas, in the predawn hours as I was writing sub plans at my desk for that day. You’ll be happy to know that I finally got my act together and went from being ill-prepared (pun intended) to being a Sub Plan Rockstar (Disclaimer: I awarded myself that title and it’s not a real thing...but it totally should be). I now love teaching other teachers how to be r...

The first year that our 1:1 iPads were released, I taught primarily reading and writing. I love technology, but I was more than a little concerned about my students' writing skills declining. I had used a lot of technology in the past for research and creation in project based learning, but had also used journals and other hand written forms. While many other teachers fell in the trap of shiny reading and writing apps, I was determined to make sure that my lessons stayed consistent with what I knew were the essential lessons my students needed. We continued to integrate writing into  project based learning , but my writer's workshop and other mini-lessons went totally digital. Here are my tips after spending a few years implementing writing on 1:1 devices. Model, Model, Model I've always heavily modeled writing, but it became even more important when we were 1:1. The great thing about having the devices was that I could share my model digitally. At first, I t...