I am a fan of Kelly Gallagher’s Article of the Week. His website is loaded with weekly articles you can use to give students interesting topics to which they can write. I recently read an article in Education Week and asked the author, Anothy Cody, for permission to turn his article, Color Coded High School ID …
Exit slips are as tool to check for understanding and get a sense of where your kids are on just about any topic you want. They are so easy to implement. I’ve written basic directions and examples for using exit slips in your classroom. Don’t let this idea slip away! Click here to download the …
A quick-write is a literacy strategy that can be used in any content area. In this activity you give students a topic or let them choose one of their own and then give them five minutes or so to write quickly about the topic. I’ve included brief directions for using Quick-Writes with your students and …
Writing is a tool for thinking and learning. It doesn’t matter what content area you teach, you’ll find many opportunities to help students think through writing. This quick overview gives a couple of ideas for having students write about data from a line graph. Download the overview sheet and examples of having elementary students write …
In this pdf, I’ve included examples of analysis questions for two different line graphs. Both of these are for the elementary level. For each set of questions, I’ve also included a large size of the graph that you can project and/or give students as they work to answer these questions. Download the pdf of the …
Fractions, fractions, fractions. For so many students, these are quite the challenge to learn. One of the first things that adults should do when students struggle with an area of the curriculum is to make sure we’ve clarified the content that students are to learn. As you know, one of the ways to do this …
Content Card – Adding Fractions With LIKE Denominators Read More »
One of the simplest things you can do to help students think deeply about visual material is to write analysis questions for the different types of visuals you use with students. This example is for bar graphs – and I’ve included two examples to give you an idea of how these questions might look. (I’ll …
I want to share a piece I wrote a number of years ago. I love the rubrics designed by the fine folks at Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, but I wanted to unpack the rubrics. By unpacking the rubrics, I can get to data that allows me to see the specific parts of the problem-solving process …
You’ve likely heard about using data to inform student achievement. You’ve also likely used assessment data from your state tests to try and do that. There are many ways to use data, including the kinds of data you collect in your classroom. This short piece describes how to use data from a rubric to form …
Using Data to Form Flex Groups – Kindergarten Writing Read More »
This three-page handout has an example of a developmental rubric that can be used in kindergarten. Download the pdf of the kindergarten rubric and ideas for its use. You may also want to see my post related to using the data from this rubric to form flexible groups.