Maya’s Book Nook is a website created by Speech-Language Pathologist Dr. Lakeisha Johnson. The Behind the Book section houses a bank of materials to accompany a diverse, culturally relevant children’s book. Equally useful for both parents/caregivers and educators, these handouts include target vocabulary words, as well as questions to support dialogic reading to build language comprehension.
Children’s books reflect the attitudes in our society about diversity, power relationships among different groups of people, and various social identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, and disability). The visual and verbal messages young children absorb from books (and other media) heavily influence their ideas about themselves and others. Depending on the…
Dr. Lakeisha Johnson, Speech-Language Pathologist, highlights the importance of shared book reading with diverse, culturally relevant texts in this PaTTAN webinar.
This article highlights practical activities to support structured instruction of writing, including word-, sentence-, and paragraph-level techniques.
This is a fabulous collection of cursive writing resources created by the OCDSB Occupational Therapists and Learning Support Services Department. It includes a document with background knowledge of why cursive is important (including research and curriculum links), a slide deck with animated demonstrations of letter formation, and practice sheets for each letter. Note that…
This visible thinking routine developed by Harvard Project Zero uses observations, inferences, and questions to develop vocabulary and background knowledge, and foster conversations among students.
In this article, the authors present some considerations for abandoning decontextualized strategy instruction and instead provide some ideas for how to shape comprehension instruction around the texts we use in the classroom. They offer some guiding theories, some key considerations, and they present examples for classroom teachers.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Right to Read inquiry concluded that running records and reading level assessments have not been effective in identifying students who need additional support or in providing teachers with accurate information to guide instruction. We now know that there are more effective ways to understand student reading skills and ensure that…
Far too often, students who struggle with reading and language are given simplified, uninteresting texts. These texts are judged to be “at-the-students’ language or reading level” but deny students access to rich, interesting, age-appropriate text. This guidance document outlines some ideas for fostering conversations around “juicy sentences,” where students learn to deconstruct and reconstruct sentences,…
In the webinar, Margie Gillis and Nancy Eberhardt explored the effective use of syntax in teaching reading and writing. The webinar highlighted the role syntax plays in enhancing language and literacy. Gillis and Eberhardt highlight a “function-first” approach to teaching syntax, a key element of the Ontario Language curriculum. Specific instructional activities to teach syntax…
In this webinar, Nancy Hennessy, Nancy Eberhardt and Sheryl Ferlito unpack syntax instruction. This webinar provides a high-level overview of best practices for syntax instruction. Hennessy and Eberhardt highlight a “function-first” approach that is aligned with the Ontario curriculum – instead of naming and identifying parts of speech, effective syntax instruction involves explicitly teaching students…
In this one-hour webinar, author and educator Joan Sedita explains the Writing Rope, a framework that integrates key elements of evidence-based writing instruction. The model includes critical thinking, syntax, text structure, writing craft, and transcription.
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