The Sparkly Notebook

Mastering the ELA Standards in Middle School

Teaching & Literacy

January Goal Setting as Middle School Teachers

January goal setting as middle school teachers is a process that keeps personal needs, classroom community, and academic success at the forefront of our minds.

Does it ever feel like the students you start the year with are not the same students you see every day in January?

It’s because they aren’t. Especially if you are a middle school teacher. 

This is because puberty is a crazy, complicated process. It can happen at any time and can even last several years.

In short, your students may look like the darlings you started the year teaching, but they’re not the same. Their needs, interests, and even their level of comfort sitting in desks may have changed in the last couple months.

When we begin our January goal-setting as middle school teachers, we are keeping all these changes in mind.

Depending on how the fall has gone, we are ready to make some big, audacious goals for the rest of the year, but this time, we actually know our students. We know what they can handle, how they work through problems, what topics excite them, and what topics don’t.

We love that we get to ‘start over’ after our winter break, and truly set some goals with THESE students in mind.

When starting your January goal setting as middle school teachers, you want to spend a little time questioning your students. This could happen before the winter break ever starts

“Hey, I’m going to be setting some new professional goals for this spring during winter break, and I’d love to have your input on…”

Or you can start the process after break.

“Hey! During break I was reflecting on the year so far, and I’ve decided I want to set a few new professional goals. I’d love to know what you think of…”

No matter when you start to set your goals, you’ll want to have at least three different kinds.

  • One personal (something that has nothing to do with school)
  • One community-based (focused on the atmosphere or community of the classroom)
  • One academic (based on student success so far and where you want them to get)

Let’s dive into each, but first… a note about SMART goals.

SMART Goals

As educators, you may already be familiar with SMART goals. If you are, this is your friendly reminder to use SMART goals as you being this January goal-setting journey.

SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. You can learn more about how we set SMART goals in this blog post.

Quick History Lesson: SMART goals date back to the 1980s. The idea was first discussed by George Doran, Arthur Miller, and James Cunningham in an article about good management.

January goal setting as middle school teachers SMART Goal Template

Personal Goals

Let’s start with a personal goal.

Setting personal goals is important as they remind us that we are people with needs, interests, and wants. Setting a good goal related to one of these gives teachers some motivation outside the classroom. The accomplishment of achieving these goals will also directly affect your mood and general level of joy in the classroom.

They are the MOST important, so we’re putting the personal goal at the top of our list.

As we begin setting January goals as middle school teachers, we are going to focus on one specific personal goal. This can be something related to money, health, habits, or even a hobby or relationship. It does not in any way have to be related to school or any job.

Make this one personal, and something that will truly bring you joy if you accomplish it!

Community-Based Goals

Before focusing too heavily on academics, let’s spend some time setting a goal related to the community of the classroom.

Now, this doesn’t have to be classroom specific. If you have a goal you want to set for the lunchroom or a school club, you can follow your heart. However, we definitely want this goal to be about improving the culture of the school or your classroom.

We recommend getting your students involved in helping you come up with a topic for this community-based goal. Students have been coming in and out of your room for months, they have ideas. This is a great time to let them share those ideas.

As we stated before, when working through January goal setting as middle school teachers, we have to keep our students’ personal changes in mind. If they say they want you to have more seating options, it may not be because they want to get cozier. They may legitimately NEED taller chairs because they don’t fit in the ones you have now. If they want different rules about going to the bathroom, it may be because they are worried they won’t have the flexibility if they NEED the restroom.

Take the time to consider student suggestions. Then put some goals in place to support your classroom community or improve procedures.

Remember: Goals don’t have to last the whole semester. They may only take a week to accomplish.

Share your goals with your students. They can learn a lot from watching you set a goal and then knocking the follow-through out of the park.

Academic-Based Goal Setting

Finally, we are going to spend some time setting academic goals. These goals are standards or skills-based, and most likely student-focused. 

To set this goal, go through your class standards, review where our students are, and figure out where you want them to end up.

Use this Common Core Standard Checklist to identify the areas on which your students still need to focus. Use the information you gain from the reflection to pick a goal (or two) to start with.

7 ELA Curriculum Guide

Again, these goals may not last the whole semester, so don’t be afraid to hunker down to a specific standard.

We’ve created a whole series of focused lessons and units for each standard, so if you decide that you really want to focus on RL.7.5: Analyzing Text Structure and Form of Drama and Poems, you can use this link to find the resources to specifically work on that standard. 

Standards-Based Learning 7th Grade Standards Mini-Lessons Bundle

Once you’ve identified the SPECIFIC standard you want to focus on, you can use the resource to MEASURE student success, pick the lessons and activities that will make it ATTAINABLE and RELEVANT, and set realistic TIME-BOUND details for your goal based on the provided teacher’s guide in each standards-focused resource.

Change is going to happen in middle school. When we do our January goal-setting as middle school teachers, we are showing a willingness to embrace that change and roll with it. 

Setting personal, community-based, and academic goals in January will set you up to have a productive semester both inside and outside the classroom. Hopefully, this post has given you some great ideas to get started with each type of goal. 

Remember, be SMART with your goals, and encourage your students to do the same!

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6 Easy (Low/No-Prep) Christmas ELA Activities for Middle School

Enjoy the Ho! Ho! Ho-lidays with these 6 easy Christmas ELA activities for middle school.

Whether you are one of the teachers who absolutely loves the holidays or… well, you’re not, you know the chaos that is the holiday season in middle school ELA.

Although the holidays are fun, we all know that the holidays and school don’t always go together as smoothly as peppermint sticks in cocoa.

It seems that no matter how much you have planned, during the winter holiday months your students are fidgety and fabulous. They are wearing their candy-cane striped socks, wearing sweaters that are really just blankets with arms, and somehow slipping PSLs past the admin on the daily.

They are not, however, ready to start anything new. 

Plan to Review!

Those weeks between Thanksgiving and the winter break are like the no-man’s land of the school year. It is an awkward time when students have learned a lot of new content, and you could really capitalize on their new knowledge. However, their attention spans and focus are 100% elsewhere. 

And who can blame them?!

You made it through the rough and tumble months of September and October, two very difficult months for middle school students. Now, you are gearing up for some longer breaks, New Year’s Resolutions, and the school year equivalent of a ‘fresh start’ that will begin after we return from break.

So… as much as it kills us to say it, this is not the time to start something new, or try to engage your student with a big project. 

Save that for January. 

Instead, let’s focus on reviewing some of the skills we’ve been working on in fun, festive, new ways.

Today, we’ve got 6 Easy Christmas ELA activities for middle school that won’t fill your prep time or require you to go buy a bunch of extra supplies, so let’s get to ‘em!

Pssst….if you are interested in doing a little decorating or getting your crafting gloves on this season, you should check out this post about boosting morale as you head into the holiday season.

Christmas ELA Activities for Middle School: Digital Escape Rooms

These Christmas Digital Escape Rooms are no-prep, holiday joy with the perfect combination of work and fun. These activities align with the standards, test students on ELA skills, and challenge them to ‘break the code’.

These Christmas Digital Escape Rooms will take one class period, and we absolutely love them for the last day before the holiday break.

Each escape room includes four ELA activities that perfectly align with middle school standards, and will allow your students to practice their skills, while also solving problems and celebrating the holiday season.

#1 | Figurative Language Escape Room

Christmas Digital Escape Room

#2 | ELA Skills (Common Core Aligned)

ELA Christmas Activities for Middle School: ELA Digital Escape Room

Bonus Time: We also have a MATH Digital Escape Room for the holidays. You can gift it to a colleague or use it in your classroom. We are all about connecting with other subject areas!

Sign Up for a FREE plot structure digital escape room!

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

ELA Christmas Activities for Middle School: Prepositional Phrases

The holiday season is perfect for prepositional phrase practices. We are hanging stockings over fireplaces, gluing candy on top of gingerbread houses, and placing presents under trees. 

We can think of no better time of the year to practice our prepositional phrases, and these three prepositional phrase activities (which are also available in a bundle) are creative, artistic, and perfectly designed to give your students a chance to practice prepositional phrases in a whole new way.

Watch as your students create their own elves, design gingerbread houses, and decorate the Christmas tree. Will they put a star or an angel on top or maybe a wreath? We’ll have to wait and see.

These prepositional phrase activities are also a great way to get students to talk about their holiday traditions and what the holidays look like in their homes.

#3 | Gingerbread House Prepositional Phrases

Gingerbread Prepositional Phrase Activity

#4 | Christmas Tree Prepositional Phrases

ELA Christmas Activities for Middle School: Christmas Tree Prepositional Phrases

#5 | Elf Prepositional Phrases

Elf Prepositional Phrase Activity

ELA Christmas Activities for Middle School: Narrative Writing

This cute little narrative writing activity is all the things. It has non-fiction passages and narrative writing prompts. It even includes graphic organizers and checklists. Of course, we can’t leave out the reindeer coloring sheets!

One thing that makes this particular activity unique is the use of two different passages. One includes Santa, and one does not. These two different versions give you the ability to choose the best path for the needs of your specific students.

Holiday Activity #6 | Reindeer Narrative Writing

ELA Christmas Activities for Middle School: Narrative Writing

The holiday season is tough, and middle school minds are merry and bright and nowhere in sight.

But… that doesn’t mean that you can’t spread some Christmas cheer while also getting in some needed ELA skill review.

Keep these 6 EASY (low/no-prep) Christmas ELA activities for middle school students in mind as you begin planning for the holiday season!

Enjoy the season, Friends!

Happy Holidays!

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MASTERING the standards with your students

Need help ensuring your students are mastering the standards? Check out this new product line from The Sparkly Notebook!

In case you don’t know, I am extremely standards focused!

Ha! That surely isn’t a surprise by now.

I love the standards and feel they are amazing guides to ensure we provide the quality education our students need and deserve. 

With that being said, it can be quite difficult to design our curriculum in a way that covers ALL of the standards. For a complete list of the standards for your state, click HERE!

For example, RI2 for seventh-grade states, “Determine two or more central ideas in a text and analyze their development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.” Sounds relatively easy in theory, but when we break it down, there can be some gray area.

What exactly does it mean to analyze the development of the central idea?

And although an objective summary sounds easy enough, it is requiring students to do a couple of things first. Students must filter out the subjective information from the text and then shorten the information into a concise format…both of which can be quite difficult for our youth.

So, how do we as teachers ensure that our students are mastering the standards?

To ensure your students are mastering the standards, we need to do the following three things:

  • First, we need to deconstruct the standards to ensure we know exactly what we are teaching! Use one of The Sparkly Notebook’s standard checklists to help you out!
  • Second, we need to map out our curriculum guide to make sure our assessment plan for the academic year will cover each standard. This should be a process you complete with the other core teachers in your particular subject area.
  • Third, we need to design lessons that fully cover the standards, providing an opportunity for students to MASTER each standard. This is the fun part, and yet, it can be daunting at times.

But, guess what!?!

At The Sparkly Notebook, we came up with a new product line to help ya’ll out!

First of all…

Grab FREE Middle School ELA Standard Breakdowns Below!

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Second, we created one product for EVERY standard!

Say what?!?

Check them all out here, but I’ll explain how it works!

Let’s use the same standard from earlier in the blog.

Central Idea and Objective Summary standard-based learning

RI.7.2

“Determine two or more central ideas in a text and analyze their development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.”

First, we broke down the standard for you into three objectives:

  1. I can determine two or more central ideas in a text
  2. I can analyze the development of two or more central ideas over the course of a text.
  3. I can produce an objective summary of the text.

Then, we wrote a passage, created a question set, and created an activity for each objective in the standard. Basically, we did all the hard, time-consuming work and laid it out on a platter for you!

Check out the RI.7.2 standard product here!

Once you dive into the standard products, you can even add supplementary material to your lesson as well. My favorite one for the RI.7.2 standards is this TikTok Digital Passage set. My students are obsessed with TikTok and many have enjoyed this supplementary lesson!

If you have any questions…

about breaking down the standards or using standards in general to build your curriculum, I would love for you to reach out! Feel free to also visit this blog for more information!

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Three questions for your end of year reflection

Reflect on these three questions for end-of-year reflection and refine your teaching methods to better support your students in standard mastery.

Have you ever gotten to the end of a school year and thought…

“Dang! I CRUSHED this year!”

I don’t think I have EVER felt that way. It kind of comes with the profession, don’t you think? 

We are constantly attending professional development meetings, learning how to make our teaching better. We have some of our worst class periods tattooed into our brains and unfortunately probably dwell on those days more than we should.

I know when I get to the end of the year, I typically think…

”Well, I did my best…but I could DEFINITELY do better next year.”

Is this you, also?

Are you hard on yourself year in and year out?

Well, you are not alone! 

As much as it is a curse, it is also what makes us teachers so great. We don’t settle for mediocrity. We don’t settle with doing the same thing each year (and with best practices in education always changing, how can we?)

So, at the end of the year, what questions should we reflect upon in order to make necessary changes for the next year?

Did I cover all the standards for my subject area?

As you know, education builds on itself from one year to the next. Students may learn about adjectives this year in order to learn about adjectival clauses next year. Thus, it is important to make sure that all grade-level standards are covered.

The easiest way to review your curriculum is to use a checklist. Document your required standards and go through each standard on the list, identifying the units you used to teach each standard. Take this process a step further and look at average grades for each unit. How many students mastered the standard? How many students were proficient? How many students fell below the proficiency mark?

You may even need to ask yourself…

Do I even know if they mastered the standards taught in that unit? Did my assessments truly assess the standards or were my lessons more fluffy than they needed to be?

☝️I know these questions can be tough because we may come to conclusions that are unsettling…but these unsettling conclusions are often the start of true reflection and TRUE change.

Check out The Sparkly Notebook’s checklists which walk you through the standards for different grade levels and subjects. If you teach more than one subject area or more than one grade level, grab the K-12 Standards Breakdown Checklist Bundle. 

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Were my students able to learn using their preferred learning style?

This is a tough one. The beginning of the school year starts and you are handed 23 to 123 students 🙂 who are all at different levels and all have different learning styles. We, teachers, try to incorporate diverse teaching methods throughout the year, but maybe we missed the mark with certain lessons. So, how do we improve? Is it even possible to improve in this area?

It may not be possible to master, but it is definitely possible to improve. 

Start by sharing a survey with your students. Ask them questions like:

  • Did you enjoy your English class this year? Why or why not?
  • How do you learn best and did you feel like the lessons were taught in a way that you could master the content?
  • In your opinion, what could be improved in the day-to-day in my classroom?

These types of questions may not work for younger students in the elementary classroom because they probably won’t truly know how to provide the answers you are looking for. However, parents may have some helpful insight and so you could always send the survey home to them. This option may be WAY scarier because you are opening a door for parental critique, but if we are truly going to make change, don’t we want to know what could be improved even if it hurts our egos a bit?

*You ALWAYS reserve the right to accept and decline any of the suggestions you receive. Some responses may not be helpful at all…BUT even one or two responses that trigger change will make this entire process completely worth it!

Some of my lessons didn’t go well, how can I come up with new ideas for next year?

This question requires some research. It is so easy to fall into a dull lesson due to a lack of time and energy during the school year. 

But right now, you are at closing in on the final weeks of the year. You probably have a couple of PD days here soon to finalize your grade books and tidy up the classroom and do whatever else it is you need to do before summer break. Maybe take some time during those days to research some new ideas for lessons while the year is still fresh in your mind. Spend a day this summer getting together with other teachers in your subject area to brainstorm standards-aligned units that are fun and engaging. Check out the blogs written by other teachers to learn how they teach the areas that you struggle with the most.

Essentially, the goal is to look at those standards that you know you didn’t cover well and figure out how to teach them better next year.

If you want something simple, The Sparkly Notebook has a new product line that does this very thing. These ELA standards-based products include one product for EACH standard so that you can truly dive into the standards that require more support. Our focus with each product is to use fun and engaging lessons to teach mastery of each standard and help you feel more confident as a teacher that you are covering each standard well.

Check out the product line here! 

For more information about this product line and why we created it, check out this previous blog post.

To put it simply…

There is no such thing as a perfect classroom. There is always room for tweaks and change…and by truly reflecting on essential questions like the three stated above, you will have the map that will help you make necessary changes to improve your teaching from year to year!

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Writing Tips for Test Prep

For test prep, cover these three writing areas to ensure your students feel confident heading into spring assessments.

I always looked forward to the second semester of the academic teaching year.

Why is that, you ask?

Well, besides the fact that I could celebrate making it through half the school year in one piece, I also enjoyed shifting from informational and argumentative writing into my creative writing curriculum.

I always taught non-fiction writing units in the fall since the students seemed more motivated early in the year and then jumped into creative writing around January/February time as motivation started to diminish in the classroom. (Typically my students enjoy creative writing WAY MORE than other types.)

It made sense to me and for the most part, it worked swell! However, as we crept closer to test time in the spring, I always felt less prepared with my students. We would spend a unit reviewing thesis and claims, as well as other non-fiction terms since it often seemed that test questions revolved around non-fiction passages more than fictional ones. Check out this post which talks about using paired passages for test prep so that your students get used to the types of articles they will see on tests.

I’ve never regretted how I planned my curriculum, but I think it is always fair to say that some writing and non-fiction review was necessary before spring.

Here are the three areas I reviewed…

1. Informational Writing Terms and Analysis

Can your students truly understand informational texts? Do they understand the structure? Are they able to pull evidence from the text to support their answers?

All of these questions are areas I reviewed prior to test time. I used fun informational texts so that students didn’t always feel the grind of the review, but rather enjoyed the topics being discussed.

Check out this informational writing product that analyzes TikTok. Students LOVE talking about TikTok and often don’t get to while learning in the classroom, so this resource is a great way to practice informational analysis without it feeling too heavy for the students!

Analyzing informational writing with TikTok for test prep.

2. Argumentative Writing Terms and Analysis

No matter how many times I covered the author’s purpose, claim, and reasoning in my classes, a good review was always necessary heading into test time.

If I am being honest, I find it odd that students struggle with these terms so much considering they argue with us teachers more than ever! Ha! 

So, sometimes, I would come up with silly arguments to analyze. I would take the stereotypical story of a student who wanted more time to redo his homework because he claims his dog ate his original homework. The students and I would talk about this hypothetical boy’s purpose, claim, and reasoning so that students could analyze this simple argument prior to analyzing more complex articles.

If you are looking for something in the middle with regards to complexity, check out this analyzing argumentative writing product which covers the benefits of dogs in the workplace. This product includes a graphic organizer activity, an evidence-based question set, and extension opportunities. Check it out here!

Analyzing argumentative writing for test prep.

3. General Writing Standards and Tips

Additionally, reviewing general writing concepts like tone, formal writing style, and citing sources is always a good idea before test day. Students need to have a general understanding of format and conventions which always seems to be a struggle for them. 

We practice writing conventions and formatting every year, and yet, students need the practice more than ever. We are battling a world of technological platforms where students don’t need to write in full sentences or even spell correctly. Think texting and social media posts…

I always told my students that they needed to understand the time and place to write well and when those times came, they would need to be able to “switch on” proper grammar and spelling easily. Thus, we practiced “flipping the switch” often with bell ringer paragraphs and other mini-writing lessons.

However, to ensure your students have mastered the writing standards for their grade level, check out these writing standard products which specifically cover each writing standard. 

They are great for reinforcements and can provide you the confidence that you as the teacher covered each writing standard as well as possible in your own classroom. 

Writing standards for test prep

For more test prep tips, check out this post which covers the three ways you can prep your students for the test itself. It covers ideas like teaching your students to scan material as well as teaching a code system. Check it out here!

Good luck!

No matter what, your students are moving forward. They may not catch every lesson you are hoping to teach, but they are learning day in and day out because of wonderful teachers like you! Keep it up!

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Teach to Full ELA Standard Mastery

Teaching ELA is hard. There, I said it. The standards are complex and incredibly broad, and they do not lend themselves to knowing exactly what is needed to teach ELA to FULL standard mastery. There is a lot of digging, researching, and analyzing to do in order to confidently teach ELA to full standard mastery.

My Poor First-Year Students

I often make the joke that I need to apologize to my first year (ok, first few years) students for the lack of understanding I had when I began teaching. Seriously, I was truly in the clouds and loved what I was doing but lacked intention in any of my planning. Data. What’s that have to do with anything? Tests. Those are given for a test grade. Standards. Those are for guidance and not meant to be exact. *Insert Facepalm* I’m sorry, students!

Teach to FULL ELA Standard Mastery

Fast-forward to future me who knows better. It really didn’t take me long to realize fluffy, cutesy lessons could not be the core of my classroom. Don’t get me wrong, that does not mean my lessons became boring and mundane. It simply means I am more intentional in planning. I used to see a cute idea and find ways to embed the standards, whereas, now I know to start with the standards. I have a few steps that I take when starting with the standards. It really is not a complex process, but it is so very important.

Knowing how to start with the standards seems like a “duh” concept, but I don’t think it is. I think college teaches you to start with the standards, but it doesn’t teach you what that truly looks like. What does starting with the standards entail? How do you learn to be more intentional in your teaching? I will show you what works for me! 😊

Achieving ELA Standard Mastery

When starting with the standards, there are a few important steps one must take:

  1. Deconstruct the Standard: Break down the standard to get the learning targets 
    1. Look at the nouns – What are the concepts being taught? 
    2. Identify the verbs – What do students need to be able to do with those concepts? 
    3. Can you break the concepts down into learning targets?
    4. What prerequisites do you need to cover each learning target?

      *** Learn more about deconstructing standards at my blog post that is fully dedicated to the deconstructing standards process
  2. Vertical Alignment: Compare your grade level standard to the grade below and above yours
    1. Which concepts are taught the previous year that you can review and not teach in-depth? What are students doing with those concepts in the previous grade?
    2. Which concepts will the teacher cover in the next grade level that you can teach at surface level? What are students doing with those concepts in the next grade?
    3. Which concepts are you teaching this year that are new to your grade level? These are the concepts you will need to teach in-depth.
  3. Match the Rigor: Determine the rigor of the standards and plan to meet that rigor
    1. What are the students having to do with each learning target? What level of thinking do they have to use to master that standard?
    2. Do your lessons allow students to practice at the right level of rigor?
    3. Are your assessments truly assessing students on the right level of rigor?
  4. Plan with Intention: Use your breakdown of the standard to write lessons and assessments
    1. Does your lesson plan teach each learning target for the standard?
    2. Do you have a plan for assessing student mastery for each learning target?
    3. Are you “covering” the standards or teaching to full ELA standard mastery?

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Intentional Lesson Planning

After you’ve broken down a standard, you will then want to make sure your lesson plans reflect all components of the standard. You want activities to teach and to assess each learning target. This is how you will truly teach to the full ELA standard mastery. If you would like to read more about the curriculum development process, I have a blog post that will take you through the next steps of planning your instruction.

As you are planning, if you want some ELA activities that already align directly to the ELA Common Core Standards, I have a product line that may be just what you need. With my passion for creating products that thoroughly align to the standards, match the rigor, and cover all the elements of a standard, these products have been created in a way that breaks down the standard into learning targets then has activities that aligns to each learning target. They also include a summative assessment that covers all the parts of the standard together. You can access the 7th grade standards-by-standard product line here.

If you are going through this “Breaking Down the ELA Standards” process and have any questions, please feel free to email me. I am always up for helping get this process going because I know there is much value in it. 

Happy ELA Standard Diving!

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Teach to Full ELA Standard Mastery

7th Grade ELA Products that align to the standards

5 Ways to Foster a Growth Mindset in Our Students

We live in a time where the pressure to be perfect is high, and our students feel that on a daily basis. As they get on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, or other social media platforms, the comparison game is intense. Sometimes these self-doubts and self-esteem pressures can also make their way into the classroom. For this reason, it’s a part of our job to foster a growth mindset in our students.

This year, we have had several students feeling overwhelmed and afraid of failure seek to quit our gifted program at our school, and that crushes me. We’ve got to teach these students to persevere and to have a GROWTH MINDSET. Being able to look at challenges being faced and work to grow through them is a talent that we have to train. It doesn’t come naturally to face our stress and fears. It is something we have to work to overcome, and we have to show our students there is value in persevering when times get tough.

I think it is so important for us to help students realize that perfection in everything is not an expectation anyone should ever set for themselves. We need to help our students gain a growth mindset and understand that failure is truly a part of trying. 

5 Ways to Foster a Growth Mindset in Our Students:

  1. Model It – Practice having a growth mindset yourself and set an example for the students. By allowing yourself to make a mistake and own it in front of the students, it will help them see that it does happen and that it is ok. When you don’t know something, it’s ok for the students to see this and to watch you work to figure it out. This in itself is a powerful way to show students what it looks like to work through wanting to be negative and down on yourself but pulling through it a growth mindset. Conferencing with students and helping them work through their own work can also present a good opportunity to model the growth mindset.
  2. Consistently Use Growth Mindset Terminology – When providing feedback to students, try to practice using growth mindset terminology and encourage them to give feedback to each other using it as well. It may be helpful to put up some Growth Mindset posters, so you and students can refer to them when responding to one another. This will help you know the best ways to respond to encourage a growth mindset. Check out my Growth Mindset Posters here.
  3. Practice with Students Using Activities – Plan to incorporate some activities that help students practice with the Growth Mindset. You can find some activities online, or you can check out my Growth Mindset Activity BUNDLE here if interested. It’s a series of activities that you can do with students over a week or month to help them with their own growth mindset. 
  4. Share Your Own Experiences – Talk to students about your mistakes and failures and how you overcame them. Just be real with them and don’t set the expectation of perfection. Some of my best moments of connecting with students was talking to them about my own past failures and how I grew from them. Let them see you as human.
  5. Encourage Students to Try New Things and Provide Opportunities – One of the saddest things about students struggling with the growth mindset is their hesitancy in trying new things because of a fear of failure or not being good enough. Try to encourage them to challenge themselves and try something new. If possible, create opportunities in your classroom for the students to try new things and expand their interests. 

As we move forward in a world where the expectations are high, let’s work together to make it a priority to help our students gain a growth mindset, so they can be prepared to take on the challenges life can throw our way.

Creating a growth mindset in our students should be something we enjoy getting to do. It is truly an opportunity for us to make a LASTING impact on our students.

Happy Growing Your Students’ Mindsets!

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Letting Students Take Ownership with Reading Conferences

“When will I ever use this in the real world?!?”

This is a question heard on repeat in the world of education, and I’m pretty sure every teacher has heard it at one point or another. There are times when it is hard to answer this question, but one time that the answer is ALWAYS a given is when it comes to literacy. 

While students may not know the importance of literacy, we do as educators, and I think it is important that we teach students that their ability to read and write is vital for their futures. One way to help students become better readers and writers is to include them in their own literacy goals and growth. By letting students take ownership of their own reading with the use of reading conferences, you are empowering them to care about their own literacy.

A great way to do this is by having conferences with students on where they are in their reading, set goals for where they want to be, and come up with an action plan together for getting there. You can do this by using a Reading Level Tracker. By using a tracker, students can track their own growth and reflect on it as they go, then you can use this tracker and reflection as a tool for conferencing with the students individually. 

When conferencing with students, it does not have to be anything intense or too time-consuming. It can be more of a check-in system for student accountability with their own goals. 

When using trackers with my students, I like to have them where students can color in where they are because I like students to be able to visually see their growth pattern. This is helpful because they want to see that line or bar go above where their previous one is. I’ve even seen it where students are so eager to grow that they want to redo their universal screener. This probess takes the responsibility off the teacher by letting students take ownership with reading conferences. The teacher gets to be the facilitator while the student does the reflecting and goal setting.

Letting Students Take Ownership through Reading Conferences

In the past, we’ve used the HMH Reading Inventory to gain a Lexile score and that’s what students have tracked; however, all data points can be tracked no matter what universal screener or assessment data you decide to use. 

When planning these reading conferences, remember to stay positive and act super excited about these with your students. They will see this and share your enthusiasm (even if they don’t admit it). Take advantage of these conferences as a time to grow together with the students and to connect with them.

As always, if you have questions or want more information about how I use trackers for conferencing with students, feel free to email me (thesparklynotebook@gmailcom). I love being able to help! 

Happy Conferencing!

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PS – If you want to watch one of mine in action, click HERE!

PSS – If you are interested in my Reading Growth Charts, you can find them HERE.

PSSS – To read more about setting up your conferences, check out THIS BLOG POST!

Letting Students Take Ownership through Reading Conferences

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Reading Strategies that Work

As you start the year, I think it is important to equip students with reading strategies that will help them develop as better readers. It is important to go ahead and start teaching them these strategies so they can practice them all year long. 

I am pretty sure the most popular go-to reading strategies are round-robin and popcorn reading, and, y’all, these are not highly effective strategies. When I was growing up and the teacher was doing round-robin reading, I was constantly counting the people in front of me to see which paragraph I would be reading. During all the other paragraphs, I was completely checked out. Surely I’m not alone here, right? I cannot be the only one who ONLY read my own paragraph and was not paying any attention to the others being read. Round-robin reading and popcorn reading are not really effective reading strategies to use when trying to grow your readers. I’m not saying you can’t ever use them; however, know that you’re not using the strongest strategies to help your students grow as readers when you do.  

My Top Suggested Research-Based Reading Strategies:

PALS is a partner-based strategy that takes approximately 35 minutes. It is easy to incorporate and can be done with almost any text (article, novel, textbook, etc…) in any subject. During PALS, students really get to focus on the processes of reading comprehension. As a grown adult, I felt the benefits of PALS when I tried it for the first time at a conference. I had never realized that I did not retain a word of what I was reading aloud until trying this strategy out for the first time. It was humbling for me, and I know the students benefit from it just as I did. The partners in PALS are pre-determined using Lexile scores with the higher score being Partner A. While one partner is reading aloud, the other is coaching him or her by helping with any mistakes and by asking questions when the step calls for it. PALS pairs are supposed to read from the same text, so only one copy is necessary. There are four very specific steps in the PALS process, and for the best results, these steps cannot be changed in any way, so no tweaking.

Check out my PALS Resource HERE – It includes everything needed to implement PALS successfully

Reciprocal Teaching is a group strategy that allows for a little more independence than PALS does and can be done with almost any text (article, novel, textbook, etc…) in any subject. After using PALS with all of my students (including my gifted learners), I will then introduce Reciprocal Teaching to add in something new. For this strategy, you will want to chunk the text and have the groups of four are predetermined using lexiles, just as they were in PALS. Each student in the group takes on a different role for each chunk of the text. The steps are easy to follow and after a few practice runs, the students will master each part. The different roles represent the subconscious steps a good reader takes when digging into a text.

Check out my Reciprocal Teaching Resource Here – It includes everything needed to implement Reciprocal Teaching successfully

  • Read Aloud

There was a time when I would have argued that this was not a strong reading strategy because the students are not the ones actively reading; however, I have grown to see the value in the modeling of read-alouds. When a teacher is reading aloud and students are actively engaged, they are able to see good reading and there is power in modeling. It also allows students to enjoy a text without struggling through it themselves.

Reading conferences are an opportunity for you to connect with the students, hold students accountable for their own reading growth, find out where students are, and help them set goals. During these, you meet with students to talk about their reading levels, set goals on where they want to be, and then discuss how they can work to meet their goals. It is a powerful tool to have in your corner. When you involve students in setting their own goals and action steps, they are much more eager to meet these goals. 

Check out my Reading Growth Conference Charts Here

Check out my DIGITAL Reading Growth Conference Charts Here

There are many more powerful reading strategies that you can find to use with your students, but remember that you don’t need a wide array of options – you just need a few in your back pocket that work well. By starting the year off with a plan on which strategies you will use, you can go ahead and start using them and training the students on them from the start.

Happy Teaching Reading!

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Understanding the Value of Lexiles in the Classroom (Literacy)

“How am I going to use this in life?” Has this question frequented your classroom? There are concepts that I teach that I often question the value in (I mean, who really cares what a verbal is?), but one thing I will NEVER question or doubt putting all my effort into teaching and helping students with is reading and literacy. No matter what profession you choose or what life has in store for you, the need to be able to read and write is imperative. Period.

This is where the value in using lexile scores as a platform for discussions in your school can be found. Lexiles should be a common term that appears in faculty meetings, professional development, and in curriculum planning days. It should not be a “BUZZ” word but a part of the common lingo in your school.

What are Lexiles?

A lexile is a measurement tool used to identify where students are in their reading ability and to level books by their difficulty. A Lexile measure can be interpreted as the level of book that a student can read with 75% comprehension. It is a useful tool for teachers, parents, and students to help gauge where students are reading, where they should be, monitor their progress, and decide on a plan to help them move forward.

Students normally receive a lexile score from a reading assessment and the state’s standardized test. We use the Reading Inventory (formerly Scholastic Reading Inventory) to test our students three times a year to get beginning, middle, and end of the year data. Lexiles start at BR (Beginning Reader) and go up to 1700L. These scores break down into where students should be in each grade level. The chart below breaks down the grade level proficiency bands according to Scholastic and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Why are Lexiles so Important?

Everything in life it literacy based, and if our students are not learning to read and write, they are being set up for failure. It has to be an “all-hands-on-deck” process, where teachers work together with parents and the students themselves to make sure they are getting the literacy skills needed to be successful in the future. See the chart below to see how lexiles are important beyond the classroom and further into life and adulthood.

How to Use the Data

Lexiles can be incredibly useful in the classroom in all subject areas. If you use leveled articles through websites such as NewsELA, Smithsonian Tween Tribune, or Readworks, knowing the students lexiles helps in assigning different articles to students that are more on their ability level. It can also help you know what books are good for checkout in the library. Click here to access a tool for choosing the right books based on lexile level.

While I think it is important to level the articles for students to be able to read them confidently, I also think it is important to challenge students with higher-level articles. When students take standardized tests, they are not going to have “leveled” texts, and in life, they are not going to have “leveled” texts. They need to be able to make their way through reading at lexiles higher than their own level. To help with this, I highly recommend the use of PALS Reading Strategy and Reciprocal Teaching. Lexiles are used for the grouping of these strategies. You can check out my blog post HERE for further information on these two strategies.

Lexiles create the perfect platform for student ownership!

By allowing students to track their own data, set goals, and design action plans to meet their goals, you are embedding a life skill in them. The buy-in shown through allowing them to take this ownership will blow you away. They will look forward to the next lexile test and be reading and taking advantage of the opportunities to better their score. Even your non-readers will take more initiative in their reading and desires to achieve more.

The use of data tracking and goal setting helps create a sense of competitiveness in the students with THEMSELVES! I always urge the students to beat their last score. I make it clear that this is not a competition with peers, but with ourselves to better ourselves. I use conferencing with students to help them in their goal setting and action steps. You can check out my blog post on Lexile Conferencing HERE. You can also check out my Conference CHARTS or BROCHURES here, if interested.

***Check out this FREE PRESENTATION on understanding the SAM Platform and knowing which Reading Inventory Reports to pull for different purposes!!!***

HAPPY LEXILE-LEARNING!

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