Often, graphic organizers are simply   viewed as a glorified worksheet, but ask any teachers who use them yearly, and you may find that graphic organizers are much, much more.   In my own experience, I have witnessed graphic organizers improving comprehension and understanding of the text, improving student engagement with the text, helping students develop vocabulary skills, as well as helping students better understand text structure. 1. Improves Comprehension When students write about the text that they are reading, comprehension improves. Graphic organizers can be a key component in students organizing their thoughts and writing about the text. Rather than assigning students an essay about a text that they have read, a graphic organizer can enable students to break apart and write about the main elements of a story. Graphic organizers also help guide a young learner to organize his/her   thinking. By having this visual guide, learners are le......

Reading teachers cover a wide variety of  genres: realistic fiction, folktales, fairy tales, mysteries, historical fiction, etc. One genre, tall tales, may be considered by most a genre only for lower grades, but there are many wonderful reasons to use tall tales in upper grades as well! Using tall tales to teach reading in upper grades can be fun and beneficial for our students. My Favorite Tall Tale Books There are many wonderful tall tale picture books that are perfect for upper grades. These books contain wonderful stories with rich characters that make perfect read-alouds to model many types of reading lessons. Some of my favorite tall tales for upper grades include Swamp Angel, Thunder Rose, John Henry, Dust Devil, and Dona Flor. Swamp Angel is a tall tale set in the Appalachian Mountains. The main character, Angelica, is larger than life, literally, and encounters many problems. This a fun read-aloud, especially using a Southern accent. Kids love the extr......

It's raining outside (cause). I used an umbrella. (effect). Cause and effect, particularly in upper elementary, is a text structure riddled with opportunity for our reading instruction. BUT we must be careful about whittling down cause and effect to only basic, isolated examples that ignore the complicated and nuanced reality of the concept, because if we do, we can quickly cover up a meaningful angle into understanding a text. Take the raining/umbrella example above. This morning, as my oldest daughter was walking out the door to her bus stop, I say, "Hey, it's raining. Why don't you get your umbrella out of your backpack?" She stands on the porch and claims it's not raining that hard. "I'll be fine," she says. I insist. "You have a soccer tournament this weekend. We don't need you getting sick." Daughter, with attitude, proceeds to take out umbrella, grumbling, "Dad, nobody else at the bus stop has an umbrella. I lo......

English Language Learners deal with some of the greatest challenges.  Can you imagine how completely overwhelming it must be to walk into a room full of active children, full of noise, talking, and words everywhere - in a language that you don’t understand? As if acclimating to the environment is not enough, students that speak English as a second language are also expected to learn the same standards as their grade-level peers. Over the years, I have found that graphic organizers are one of the very best ways to aid ELLs in learning the standards. **Be sure to Download my FREE Graphic Organizer Below! Why Graphic Organizers? Graphic organizers help ELL students narrow down information into chunks that can be more easily understood and less overwhelming. Organizing information through this vehicle is possible in all subject areas! Developing Vocabulary Visually A graphic organizer is a visual representation used to organize information.  Using a wo......

Reading strategy groups are a highly effective way of grouping your students during Guided Reading.  Instead of grouping students by ability, you are simply grouping students based on the strategy they need help with.  While this way of grouping sounds ideal, there are some problems you may run into if you've never grouped this way before.  Here are a few tips to help you along the way. Don't forget to grab the FREEBIE! Tips for Grouping Your Students Once you have worked with your students enough, you'll start to learn their strengths and weaknesses that go beyond their reading levels. It is important to recognize if a student is struggling with a particular skill, or if they are just struggling with reading the passage. Here are a few tools you may want to use to help you decide if/when a student should be placed in a strategy group. Classroom Reading Assessment - group students that miss similar problems on an assessment. Conferring Notes -......

     Over the years I have come to the realization that I am a visual learner. Actually, I think I am a mix of visual and kinesthetic. When learning something new, it really helps when I can see and do it. Is there anybody else out there that can relate?       So, I am sure that you have kids in your classroom that are the same. Using visuals when teaching can greatly help with increasing understanding. And I am sure that many of you use visualization strategies in reading, but I am here to tell you that you can use the same types of strategies during your math lessons. I hear you asking "How?" Let’s get to the math!      One way is to use graphic organizers. They are great for organizing content and ideas.  There are many different types that you can use to help students internalize what they are learning.      It was a hard decision, but here are my TOP 5 graphic organizers that are ......

Our teachers at my school have invested many hours in learning some of the best practices in teaching reading strategies. In fact, we just attended a workshop this week that helped us validate that the lessons we have been teaching and applying in our classrooms are exactly the type of lessons that we should be using with our students. One of those lessons that my fourth graders had recently was a nonfiction reading strategies lesson on using details to write a summary of the text. What fourth grader does not love reading about animals? That is one reason this lesson began with the book Polar Bears by Gail Gibbons. Another reason was that it was also a great tie-in to the animal studies that the fourth grade had been doing in science.    I gave each student 3 sticky notes before I began reading Polar Bears .  The students were told to listen for and jot down information that they heard about what polar bears are , what pol......