I love books. I love fiction books, nonfiction books, chapter books, and picture books. That's one of the reasons I love incorporating mentor texts into my reading and writing workshop lessons. I use mentor texts to model thinking strategies, as examples of quality writing, to

Every year I have a couple students who need a little {sometimes a lot} of extra work on phonics. This can be quite a challenge, because that isn't something I teach in a whole group lesson. I like to create a guided reading group whose emphasis is phonics {and sight words if

I don't always include literacy stations in reading workshop, but when I do, I make the activities purposeful and authentic. Anyone catch the reference? In the spirit of full disclosure, there are years when due to scheduling requirements I can't fit in literacy stations. Those

I always struggle at the beginning of the year with determining how long to spend teaching rules, procedures, and various classroom management lessons. I absolutely believe that these management lessons are essential for a smooth school year. I've tried to skip some of these

Reading fluency is an incredibly important component of reading instruction. Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, with proper phrasing, and with expression. It is important for readers, because it allows students to comprehend what they read, rather than

I've got my visual pacing guide for language arts ready, and I hope you're not disappointed!  You'll see that there are quite a few missing units in this pacing guide, and that's because they're still a work in progress.  I've been working like crazy all summer, but these big

There is something about planning for a new school year that I absolutely love.  As in I really love planning and obsess over it all of the time.  I feel a little nervous this year, because I haven't been able to get into my classroom yet.  I am impatiently waiting on the "all

I'll be the first to admit that teaching grammar was never appealing to me. I have memories learning about AND teaching parts of speech where my eyes were completely glazed over. I thought that it was almost, if not, impossible to make parts of speech fun and meaningful. Despite

I will be the first to admit that my first year teaching I had no clue how to teach writing! I knew how I learned writing as a student, but I didn't know how to teach it so that all of my students could become good writers. I made writing instruction my professional development