The Mitten by Jan Brett

Make (or have one of your knitter friends make) a very large, white mitten.  Read the story The Mitten by Jan Brett.  Let your children recreate the story by putting animals into the mitten and retelling the story.  Great for vocabulary, retelling skills, and for your English language learners!

EEEEK - There's a bat in our room!

I love this time of year when Shadow comes to visit my classroom.  The children have so much fun every morning looking to see where she is sleeping.  Each morning there is a letter to the students from Shadow. The children correct her letters.  They even write back to her. They try to keep quiet so that Shadow can sleep.  (It usually doesn't work!)

                  

Fiction vs Non-Fiction

There is a push toward the use of more non-fiction materials.  This is important to get our students reading and analyzing information, and to ensure that they are college or career ready.

When teaching thematically, you can add fiction selections to your read aloud or assigned reading.  Look at the language arts standards.  They include character analysis, describing the setting,  and identifying the parts of a story.  All of these standards deal with fiction texts.

By combining non-fiction texts with fiction selections on the same topic, you strengthen your instruction.  Students will increase their knowledge base as well as their vocabulary as they learn about a topic in depth.

Common Core in ALL Subject Areas

We continue to hear about how literacy skills need to be taught in all subject areas.  That is only half of the equation.   In addition to teaching reading and writing in science, social studies, etc,  we also need to realize the potential for teaching other content during English language arts time.

By using a thematic approach, children are able to learn so much more.  The average basal reading series emphasizes the teaching of literacy skills.  These same skills can be taught through the content area.  When fiction and non-fiction texts about the same topic are matched, they aid in retention of vocabulary.  When children are given writing prompts that match the theme, they are encouraged to use that vocabulary.  Research shows that children need to hear a word many times before it becomes part of their vocabulary.  By teaching thematically, students will hear the same words many times over a two - three week period.  

Books on the same topic should be available to students during read to self, partner reading, and listening to reading times.  This will help students increase their vocabulary and content area knowledge.  Students should also be encouraged to discuss the topic with other students in the class.  This can be accomplished by setting up a language activity and having a few students model it for the class.

We need to use our time wisely.  Teaching reading in isolation does not make the best use of our time.  Teach reading and writing during all subject areas.  Also, remember to teach content area during reading time to maximize student learning.

Common Core Standards Not Presented in Proper Order

In order to maximize instruction time and student learning, ELA time should always be linked to content area instruction.  The National Governors Association released the literacy standards along with the math standards prior to releasing science and social studies standards.  Teachers have begun looking for ways to meet the standards that have been published.  Unfortunately, this has pushed most teachers toward teaching literacy in isolation.  This is not productive.

The Next Generation Standards have recently been released.  Creating theme based units that meet both science and literacy standards is the way to begin planning for the next school year.  Here is a link to the Next Generation Standards
http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards

Happy Planning!

How thematic teaching helps all of your students

      By incorporating science and social studies standards into your language arts lessons, you are helping your students gain knowledge in both areas.  In the past, language arts had frequently been taught with a basal series.  Although the text book companies that produce these products claim that they have themes, they are very loosely based and have little depth to their topics.  They produce a very disjointed curriculum.
     When an educator opts to combine the language arts with another subject area, there is more time to focus on content and to delve deeper into the topic.  This allows students to internalize their learning.  They hear the same words and concepts.  Their vocabulary improves.  Thematic teaching is especially helpful for English language learners and for students who come from the lower socio-economic status.  These students generally have smaller vocabularies.  By spending the majority of academic time on one subject children are able to make connections, learn content, and increase their vocabulary.

Map out your Year....

You will want to create units based on science and social studies standards.  These units should be at least two weeks long.  They may be much longer depending upon how much material there is to cover.    It is best to decide how long each of your units will be and to map them out on the school calendar.

Next you will want to look at your language arts standards to see where they will fit with the science and social studies units you've created.  There will most likely be language arts standards that will not fit into the units you've created.  An example of this might be poetry.  You could set aside a couple of weeks during the year for a unit in poetry.  Again, it is best to look at all of the common core standards  you need to cover, and make sure they fit within at least one of the units you've created.