Teaching Summary Writing to Support Comprehension

Watching this webinar from PaTTAN, you will learn why summarizing has been identified through research as highly effective for developing comprehension and writing. It defines a quality summary and how it differs from retelling or paraphrasing.  Practical suggestions for explicitly teaching summary writing based on text and non-text sources will be shared, including scaffolds. The…

Literacy Learning for Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers

This book is an excellent, reader-friendly resource for kindergarten teachers and Early Childhood Educators. While infant and toddler development takes place before the Ontario curriculum kicks in, the authors are American. Their recommendations for preschoolers generally align with the age of our Year 1 kindergarten students. Much of the research and advice in the book…

Using Research and Reason in Education

This paper delves into informing how teachers can use scientifically based research to make curricular instructional decisions  The article showcases how as professionals, teachers can become more effective and powerful by developing their skills to recognize scientifically based practice. Even in scenarios when the evidence is not available, educators will be informed on how to…

Teaching Beginning Writers

In this book, the authors share background information on how writing develops, and a research base for three key elements: handwriting, spelling and composition. The following chapters provide practical classroom advice for teaching all three, including several chapters dedicated to genre-specific writing instruction: book reviews (opinion), narratives and description, and how those progress from K-2….

Explicit Vocabulary Instruction

Even as students enter kindergarten, there are huge differences in their individual vocabularies. If we are to narrow the achievement gap that students from different economic levels exhibit in the upper grades, we must provide systematic, robust explicit vocabulary instruction in the primary grades. One of the best sources of vocabulary words is the books…