A Concept Sort is a vocabulary and comprehension strategy used with students to introduce new topics and/or familiarize students with new vocabulary.
Introducing Ideas and Vocabulary with the Concept Sort
Grades
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Using Paired Reading to Increase Fluency and Peer Cooperation
Grades
K - 6
Strategy Guide
In this strategy, students read aloud to each other, pairing more fluent readers with less fluent readers. This strategy can also be used to pair older students with younger students to create "reading buddies."
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Teaching with Zooming Slideshows through Prezi
Grades
6 - 12
Strategy Guide
Through Prezi, a web application, students create "zooming" presentations for various purposes, such as presenting research, defending an opinion, or sharing a digital story.
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Bringing Lessons to Life with Animoto
Grades
5 - 12
Strategy Guide
Using Animoto, a free Web 2.0 tool, students can develop short digital videos that include music, photos, video clips, and text as well as share their creations electronically.
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Speak to Me: Teaching with Voki
Grades
6 - 12
Strategy Guide
Through Voki, a Web 2.0 tool, students create customizable avatars for class presentations for various purposes, such as presenting biographical information, expressing an opinion, or reading a poem.
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Shared Reading Opportunities for Direct Literacy Instruction
Grades
K - 12
Strategy Guide
Shared reading affords teachers the opportunity to teach reading strategies in larger groups. The shared text and teacher support offer unique opportunities for instruction.
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Supporting Students As They Read Independently
Grades
K - 12
Strategy Guide
This guide includes basic theory and practice for supporting students reading independently, which is the last instructional context along the gradual release of responsibility.
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Using Guided Reading to Develop Student Reading Independence
Grades
K - 12
Strategy Guide
This guide presents basic structures for implementing guided reading, which involves working with small groups of children possessing similar strategies and challenges when encountering new text.
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Teacher Read-Aloud That Models Reading for Deep Understanding
Grades
K - 12
Strategy Guide
This guide describes the basic elements for reading aloud to students in ways that demonstrate thoughtful and deep interactions with the text.
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Promoting Student-Directed Inquiry with the I-Search Paper
Grades
8 - 12
Strategy Guide
The sense of curiosity behind research writing gets lost in some school-based assignments. This Strategy Guide provides the foundation for cultivating interest and authority through I-Search writing, including publishing online.
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Inquiry Charts (I-Charts)
Grades
3 - 12
Strategy Guide
This guide introduces I-Charts, a strategy that enables students to generate meaningful questions about a topic and organize their writing.
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Question the Author (QtA)
Grades
3 - 12
Strategy Guide
In this guide, you'll be introduced to a strategy that requires students to challenge their understanding and solidify their knowledge while reading a text.
Grades
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Exit Slips
Grades
K - 12
Strategy Guide
This strategy guide introduces the concept of using Exit Slips in the classroom to help students reflect on what they have learned and express what or how they are thinking about the new information. Exit Slips easily incorporate writing into the content area classroom and require students to think critically.
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Power Notes
Grades
6 - 12
Strategy Guide
The strategy examined in this Strategy Guide teaches students an outlining technique to help them differentiate between main ideas and details in their reading and writing.
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Performing Poetry
Grades
K - 5
Strategy Guide
Performing poetry incorporates oral reading, literature, and the performing arts. This strategy can benefit content area readers, English language learners, or learners with special needs.
Grades
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The (Un)Making of a Reader
K - 8
Professional Library
| Journal
Through looking critically at the underpinnings of "story mapping, a teacher uncovers a contradiction between the author's definition of reading as a constructive process and the reductionist nature of story mapping, which she shows inhibits students' potential to explore a diverse range of personal responses by promoting comprehension over response, uniformity over diversity, and control over freedom.
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Alternative Book Reports
8 - 12
Professional Library
| Journal
This article describes different ways that students can report on books they have read other than the traditional "book report."
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Sound and Sense in Children's Picturebooks
K - 8
Professional Library
| Journal
Explores (from the point of view of the writer, a children's author) one aspect of learning about language that is present in the picture books he writes: the relation between sound and sense.
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"Genre Studies"
K - 5
Professional Library
| Journal
In this issue you will read about elementary children who are introduced to genre primarily through their teachers reading aloud. The children are invited to become inquirers who continue to explore books as they meet in small groups to write and read on their own—from fantasy to African folktales to poetry.
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Fifty Alternatives to the Book Report
8 - 12
Professional Library
| Journal
Offers 50 diverse suggestions intended to offer students new ways to think about a piece of literature, new directions to explore, and ways to respond with greater depth to the books they read.