These engaging hands-on activities provide students with hours of fun-filled learning experiences throughout the year. The activities are in an easy-to-follow format and require little preparation time and few materials.

Take It to Your Seat Literacy Centers, Grades 4-5 has everything you need for 16 folder centers that are ideal for small group and individual practice. Center activities practice reading and writing skills. The skills practiced include the following: * using context clues * syllabication * writing stories * analogies * using the table of contents and index * using descriptive language * synonyms * antonyms * figurative language * combining sentences * editing letters * writing poetry * root words * writing directions * classifying sentence types * multiple meaning words

For K-3 teachers Seven easy-to-maintain centers help you work smarter, not harder, as you connect standards-based reading and writing instruction with student application of skills and strategies. Your literacy centers will become focused places of learning, keeping you free to teach small groups and minimize student interruption--and you control how to fit the centers into your day. Primary Literacy Centers: Supports the balanced literacy approach; Features 36 language arts mini-lessons with easy-to-use center connections; Correlates to NCTE/IRA National Language Arts Standards; Incorporates both fiction and nonfiction text; and Gives students time to practice and apply literacy-block skills and strategies that you teach and model &&/UL&&Here's everything you need to know to set up and manage centers in a balanced literacy framework for: Reading, Word Work, Read the Room, Listening, Research, Literature Response, Writing, and Poetry. Make literacy centers a vital part of your classroom!

Kindergarten is a time for playful and enriching learning activities that support children's literacy emergence while enhancing their social and cognitive development. The routines of a busy, engaged, productive kindergarten classroom are vividly brought to life in this information-packed book. Demonstrated are whole-class and small-group strategies for helping children acquire concepts about print and the alphabet, build phonological and phonemic awareness, learn to read sight words, develop their listening comprehension and writing abilities, and much more.

Teaching reading to children in a language that is not their own is a daunting task. Balancing Reading and Language Learning: A Resource for Teaching English Language Learners, K-5 provides the strategies proven to be effective in a balanced reading program, while at the same time valuing the native culture and first-language skills of the English language learner. Combining the best classroom practices and research on teaching reading and language acquisition, author Mary Cappellini integrates effective reading instruction with effective language instruction. Through the framework of a balanced reading program, she emphasizes the importance of constantly listening for and assessing children's language and reading strategies during read aloud, shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading, including literature circles. Included in this text are: How to set up an environment that will allow all English language learners to succeed Stages of English language proficiency and stages of reading development—how they compare and how to use them to assess and plan for individual children A focus on tapping into children's prior knowledge in their primary language while teaching reading in English and using Spanish/English cognates to help develop academic language A collection of in-depth lessons and mini-lessons based on children's language proficiency and reading strategy needs with ongoing assessment, teacher reflection, and with an emphasis on choosing the right books to match their reading and language level How to manage numerous guided reading groups with children of all stages of reading and language proficiency Thematic planning, with sample units for primary and upper grades, to support academic language and meet content standards Ideas for literacy evenings, school tours, and other events to involve parents with the learning community Extensive resources: numerous forms and checklists—observation sheets, planning sheets, literature response sheets, focus sheets for shared and guided reading, and more. Regardless of how many or how few ELL students a teacher has, this invaluable resource helps them meet the challenges and reap the rewards of teaching children to read as they learn the language.