Getting Kids to Read

It’s summertime! School is out of session and our children love to sleep in and play outside. It is hot and our children enjoy waterplay and staying up late. But what can we do to avoid the summer slide? As a teacher, I send home 12 donated books for each child to use for summer reading. I instruct them to read each day throughout the summer and write in a journal their reflections about what they read and learned from each book. Then I tell them to bring their journals into class in the fall and share with their teachers their wonderful reading adventures. I also warn my younger readers that if they do not practice reading each day, they may forget how to read at the start of a new school year. They agree that they must practice and are proud when they have completed extended reading homework assignments.

Ten Summer Reading Activities

Below are ten motivating strategies to inspire kids to read each day this summer:

Make it fun. My grandkids asked me to bring some of their favorite books to the swimming pool so they could read to me while eating their snack after a swim lesson. They are excited to show me how well they read.
Be engaged. Although I did not attend back-to-school night, the grandkids made sure I sat with them as they read their stories to me. One granddaughter described how she is in a published book. Another wrote about having a funny grumpy grandpa and nice grandma who helps her.
Incorporate art. Each grandchild keeps a journal at my home. A favorite activity is having a sibling, cousin, or me draw a picture in their journal. Then they draw their version of the illustration and write a story about the picture. Favorite themes have been bloody horror and scary stories. Other themes include how to stories and fantasy adventures.
Take the kids to the library and relax while reading together various books. Our library sells children’s books for $1. I encourage them to purchase books that they would love to keep.
Research your family history by checking out relevant books about the country that your family immigrated from. Study the history of the communities you and your relatives have lived in throughout generations.
Encourage your child to write a graphic novel. They love to create talking bubbles with illustrations. They can also develop a book of their favorite characters with a new adventure or storyline.
Explore having your child submit a creative writing story to the Highlights Magazine for kids.
After completing an art project, have your child research and write a story about how they created their project and what they can do in the future to expand their skills. For example, our granddaughter loves to watch YouTube videos about how to draw specific animals. Then she researches specific books about the animal to understand their behaviors and their habitat
Help your child plan for a summer camp or family vacation by having them research places to visit and the history of specific activities. For example, a granddaughter will be traveling to New York, New York this summer. After reading and researching various activities, she is excited to visit the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Central Park, and a Broadway play. She will also collect postcards and memorabilia to add to her scrapbook with a story about her travels.
Research the rules about a sport. My grandson is passionate about sailing and spends hours reading and researching all the safety regulations of sailing in the bay. He also must master how to safely prepare for and navigate a sailboat in various weather conditions.

Much success as you and your children incorporate reading into relevant daily life summertime activities.

Ten Strategies to Ensure Student Success

Our staff met these past few weeks to reflect on the many successes that we have achieved with our students this school year.

Student Engagement in Learning and Their School Communities

Here are our top ten strategies for student success:

Our high school students are fully engaged once again in their daily school activities after distance learning. They use their talents, skills, and voice to produce creative projects through media art classes that include film and photography projects.
The leadership team creates monthly social activities that include group movie nights, lunch time rallies, a twin day, a pajama day, and a pie in the face of an administrator day. The all-time favorite was when the students dyed the hair of an administrator.
The students’ ongoing academic growth is impressive at the 8^th and 12^th grade levels because these students lost 18 months of face-to-face learning without social interactions with their teachers and peers.
All students are achieving significant milestone growth at each reporting period.
Our afterschool study hall provides students with academic teacher support by using supplemental materials for acceleration.
The student clubs are supported by teachers and support our English learners in their language development. Favorite student clubs include the chess club, film, volleyball, an adventure club with science and nature activities, and a cooking club that focuses on cooking culturally diverse recipes.
The teachers collaboratively support each other at the many academic activities to foster cooperation and team work.
We have a larger pool of students in our senior class who are eligible to attend four-year universities and colleges.
Teachers and parents can now attend student sporting events since the COVID restrictions have been lifted for attendance.
Our major event for the year was a “trunk or treat event” in October. Nearly 25 cars were decorated by the students with open trunks full of candy for students and their families. The high school media arts class decorated cars along with the advisory groups. The community attendees voted on the best decorated car. Community agencies provided community services. A community vendor provided reduced cost foods as a donation for the event. And staff members performed in a folklorico dance group. This celebration of our school community truly showcased the vibrance of our students and their many achievements.

Much success as your school’s staff creates spring and summer activities to celebrate your school’s families and their children’s many achievements this past school year.

Writing Standards with Fun Activities (Part 4)

Each year I am challenged in how I can adequately increase the writing competencies of my students in project-based learning activities. When I partnered with another teacher, we created a checklist of what we had to complete by the end of the school year to meet all writing competencies. These activities included:

Writing teachers must understand the rules for grade level writing standards.
The teachers must consider various activities that will fully engage and inspire diverse learners.
Writing activities must be fun while meeting a wide range of reading and writing abilities within a class. This ensures differentiated instruction that is equitable and successful for all students.
Writing teachers must research and collect resources that will support an engaging writing activity in the classroom.

What I Must Teach

I also reviewed and summarized the California writing standards for my second-grade class that included:

Write opinion pieces with an introduction and reasons for supporting an opinion.
Write an informational/expository text with an introduction, supporting facts, and a concluding statement.
Write narratives about a sequence of events with details, thoughts, and feelings in an organized order of explanations.
Produce writing that is organized according to task and purpose.
Learn to revise and edit with support from the teacher and peers.
Learn to use digital tools to publish writing products in collaboration with peers.

What Students Have Learned

When reviewing this list, my class has already created an informational text on learning more about rattlesnakes and how antivenom can neutralize a venomous rattlesnake bite. Next, my class completed a reflective narrative about how they researched and created the snake story with our writing teacher, Mrs. Burke. Most students were impressed with how Mrs. Burke shared her story about being a rattlesnake survivor after being bitten and medicated with antivenom from a horse. Many expressed relief that they would not die from a rattlesnake bite and that there are medications that will save them from a bite. Finally, students wrote an opinion story about how they plan to protect themselves from rattlesnake bites when working in their garden or hiking with their family. Most do not want to ever encounter a rattlesnake. Many also feel confident they now know how to protect themselves from a bite.

What We Must Still Learn

As I initiate second semester writing assignments, students will now focus on more collaborative writing and editing assignments while working on their Chromebooks. Their activities will include writing a fantasy story in the winter months and completing a career path research writing project in the spring time.

Much success as you engage your students with differentiated collaborative writing projects.

Playful Writing Strategies for Kids (Part 3)

When working with challenged writers, I find that an art project can generate writing recipes for success. During the weeks before the winter holiday break, I created a series of writing assignments to energize challenged writers. Activities included:

Interview a parent and write the directions for a favorite family holiday dish. Make the recipe and bring a sample to share with your classmates.
Research your family heritage and write and illustrate a story about how families in your native country celebrate a winter holiday.
Cut out an evergreen tree and decorate with geometric shapes. Write an act of kindness that you will do during the holidays for your parents on the tree and give the tree to them as a winter holiday card.
Trace a mitten shape of your hand on construction paper. Cut it out. Write and illustrate a career goal on the palm of the mitten shape.
Research what you must learn to pursue your career goal and write a story about this career. Some students will write about a career experience that has been shared with them. Others may want to redesign a product they use and describe how they might improve the product as a software developer, clothes designer, or inventor.

How To Motivate Challenged Students

In addition to creative writing, I encourage students to read small excerpts of nonfiction articles and answer comprehension questions in paragraph form. Many students like to write regularly in a journal, create fantasy stories, or write poetry. Some prefer to use a marking pen instead of an erasable pencil or pen.

When students see the results of their efforts, they become more confident in their literacy skills. A few may need assistance with customized writing prompts. For example, when asked to research and write about conservation efforts in their community, some students could write a paragraph and then struggled on what to write next. I would encourage them to create a list of activities that they could complete at home that would support a community’s conservation efforts. These reluctant writers were amazed at how easy it was to fill a full page of writing when making a list.

Next, I taught them how to make a summary statement or statements to complete their writing efforts. Students learned that they could fill a page with practical activities and suggestions. Then they gained confidence to start outlining a story with questions to answer in individual paragraphs.

Sample Writing Prompt Outline

Students are always amazed when I demonstrate how they are already capable writers like professional writers. I assure them that all writers must organize their thoughts and outline a story with content ideas. For example, when writing this post, I wanted to accomplish the following:

Provide a description with examples on how I might motivate a reluctant writer.
List specific successful creative activities that I have used in the classroom that work for challenged writers.
Give an example of what always works for overwhelmed writers when all else fails.
Review my checklist of writing outcomes for a specific blog to ensure that I have sufficiently covered a topic for the reader.

Through this process, I have learned that my second attempt at writing is typically adequate for a blog. When writing a book, the project is far more intensive and extensive as I am trying to meet the needs of a wide variety of critique partners and readers. I typically have to rewrite a book manuscript three times before it is adequate to submit to publishers. Once the publisher receives my draft, I am typically asked to write several added sections to answer specific questions or expand my explanations or examples.

It is truly a gift to inspire students to communicate their thoughts in writing. As they expand their writing competencies, my ability to pivot and adjust my teaching strategies to meet the needs of diverse students can SOAR as explained in the Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners resource book. Danielle Gentry is featured in the April 25^th blog as she explains how she meets second grade common core standard requirements in an ongoing series of writing assignments.

Parent’s Guide to School Communication from an Educator

I have found that often times parents of all backgrounds and educational levels have difficulty in understanding how they should communicate with schools regarding their children. So, I have put together some quick guidelines that I think will improve the school – parent partnership. To be clear, I believe that in the IDEAL circumstances it is the responsibility of the school to take the lead on this. That said, I think this can be beneficial for everyone involved.

Establish Communication Protocols and Expectations

As a parent it is important to understand that your child’s teacher likely has between 20 and 150 other students that they are working with every day. That said, it is fair to expect that you receive communication from the school if and when they notice any change in behavior, mood, or performance. As a parent, I believe that this is a fair expectation to share with your child’s educators and also a responsibility to share the same communication under the same parameters with the school as a courtesy if you noticing something at home.

Understand Desired Outcomes

Almost every school measures student academic success in different ways. As a parent you should have a clear understanding of what your child has been learning and will be learning in the future and how success will be measured.

Grades

Grades mean much to parents. Probably way too much. A teacher should be able to explain how they grade to you and the meaning that it carries. Assuming grades are truly a reflection of learning, artifacts should be available to show parents their student’s performance compared to the expected standard that you can clearly explain.

Where Does My Kid Fit?

Most parents want to know where their student is in comparison to their peers so national benchmarking data is generally appreciated and answers many questions. If your student struggles in these comparisons, it is not too much to expect a plan as to what the school is going to do to help your student. This is also a time to not NECESSARILY be satisfied if your student is performing well. If they are performing well compared to others, then the questions should be about ensuring they are still being challenged.

Set Goals

The goal of communicating is to create a shared commitment to a student’s success. In order to get to this end, a teacher must have invested time and energy into creating the desired outcomes for that student in the future (hopefully WITH the student) ahead of time. This act demonstrates MUTUAL responsibility for the student’s growth and gives the parent something to actively monitor.

Character Counts

Everyone wants to know who their student is when they are not around. If your student receives discipline in class or in school already may have an idea. For the 85% of students that do exactly what they should on a daily basis, it is more than appropriate to want this information from someone who may spend more time with your child on many days that you do.

Aim for a Partnership

It should never be lost that the point of communication with a teacher is for it to be meaningful and to help create better support for the student. Part of this engagement is for all parties (parent, teacher, and student) to understand how they can serve as a better partner in their child’s education. This may seem too formal, but I like to encourage parents and teachers to consider three I WILL statements to establish norms and expectations for the year. This is a commitment from the teacher, student, and parent as to what ‘I WILL’ do to improve the educational experience of the student throughout the next months of the child’s schooling experience.

Navigating the school environment is difficult for nearly every parent. My hope is that these tips on what you can and should expect in terms of communication and a partnership with your child’s educators will help provide some help while on this journey.