Hello Mrs Sykes

Good morning, Sunshine!!  I hope you're off to have a fabulous day...  Here's a chart I made to help my green beans remember basic expectations when Responding to Reading .  Enjoy!!

I notice many of my struggling readers in grades 3-5 have a language deficiency. Their teachers are beside themselves as they look at their writing, and come to me asking what do I do? Here's my answer: practice speaking in complete sentences. I bring in photos from magazines or project an interesting picture, and ask students to describe what they see in complete sentences. A small group is a supportive environment for risk-taking, especially for your English Language Learners. I usually spend a couple of 20 minute small group lessons on describing the pictures using complete sentences. Model how to describe the pictures using complete sentences. If you expect elaboration and details from your students, be sure to model that as well.  From there, move on to... Practice Writing Sentences Those pictures you've been practicing talking about? Use them again, and this time have them write their thoughts in sentences. Remind them about the format of a sentence - it needs a ...

We know reading and writing are linked, right? Many of our struggling readers need help with writing, too. Unfortunately, time is tight, and mClass assessments require written response! Here's a quick look at strategies that I use with my struggling second, third, and fourth grade readers to boost their written responses.

We've been at the beach this week, and I thought I'd share a little tidbit that I use with my own children... Credits:  Mr. Magician ,  KG Fonts For our beach trip, I made a whopping investment - at the Dollar Tree.  I purchased a 3-pack of Mini Composition books and gave 2 of them to my kiddos, along with some ball-point pens from the depths of my purse I picked specifically for them.  I told them it was their track-out notebook, for them to put anything they wanted to remember from their vacation.  Check it out: You could decorate it... but I just gave my kiddos a pen.  They are so excited to write in pen. My Kindergartner has a cold.  He thought it was important.  His sister wrote the sentence.  He is learning to speak forcefully to get the dog's attention - thus, the yelling. He found a cool leaf.  He taped it in, and wrote an L because leaf begins with L.  The line is for the rest of the letters. This i...

My 2nd graders just completed their Animal Research Projects as our expository writing project this quarter.  They turned out so cute!!  We pulled a lot of the ideas from the "Not Your Average Animal Research Paper" unit from Lesson Plan SOS .  To begin, we pulled *tons* of 2nd grade appropriate books about animals from the school library.  {Love my Media Specialist - she was so a-maz-ing-ly helpful during this process!!  I came back to class with about 50 different interesting animals for the kids to choose from!}  The kids did a gallery walk with the books, previewing lots of interesting texts to select the animal they would like to learn more about.  Since I had such a wide array of animals, we didn't have many issues; I had 2 girls who both wanted giraffes, but one of them decided to study Harp Seals instead. Anywhoo, then the modeling began.  As a class, we studied the Giant Anteater using this book .   I modeled how to use non-fic...