Inside the ELA Classroom

I hope everyone is enjoying the final weeks of a peaceful and rewarding summer filled with time to refresh, restore, and relax. The start of a school year is always a special time, with new students, new initiatives and exciting ideas.

Thank you to all who served diligently on the Curriculum Resource Development teams as we worked with this new school year in mind. Remember: Raz Plus and Vocabulary A-Z are Learning A-Z products available to all elementary students. Renaissance STAR has an updated platform which is available to grades 1– 9. STAR reading measures students' understanding of multiple reading skills across a variety of domains. Your commitment to ensuring the success of our students is awe-inspiring.

Updated Curriculum Pacing Guides and resources are available through the Curriculum Website. Check out the site! Return often for updates.

Direct links to the Learning Resources (Shared folders) and grade level pacing guides can be accessed by following the directions below. To access all information, it is important to use your Coweta County email address.

Research has shown that teachers struggle with motivating students to engage in more independent reading (especially for reading at home). Students either exclaim to not like reading or prefer their favorite video game. Find a few strategies below to motivate students to read more.

The website Bookopolis provides students a method to receive and provide recommendations from their peers. This site captures thousands of student-written book reviews.

Epic! Books allows students ages 12 and younger access to more than 10,000 digital books. The program is free to elementary teachers and librarians.

This online reading log motivates students to read more with extrinsic rewards. Students earn Wisdom Coins for logging reading, answering open-ended and reading comprehension questions. The coins are used to "buy" accessories for their Owlvatar.

Achieve the Core provides a collection of fluency resources that help build and assess student fluency. Each fluency packet includes at least 40 passages.

Achieve the Core, Classroom Resources

Google Classrooms are available for teachers to share resources, best practices, and ideas. Digital resources for all grade levels have been uploaded to the K-1, 2-3, 4-5, Middle Grades, and High School ELA Google Classrooms.

The guidance outlines some ideas for fostering conversations around “juicy sentences.” The juicy sentence is a strategy developed by Dr. Lily Wong Fillmore, specifically to address the needs of ELLs and accessing complex text, and it is a tool that is useful for helping all students learn to deconstruct and reconstruct sentences, and to understand how different language features contribute to meaning. The guidance includes:

• Information on the value of juicy sentence work for supporting access to complex text for all students
• A checklist of considerations for selecting a sentence for juicy sentence work
• An annotated exemplar sentence
• A model process

More information about Dr. Lily Wong Fillmore’s work can be found in this article.

Please review your Professional Learning Schedule. Dates and meeting locations may changed based on pertinent information.

Contact Dr. Paula Baker, ELA/Literacy Content Specialist with any questions, comments, or concerns.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

~Nelson Mandela

Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.

~Anatole France

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.

~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Email: paula.baker@cowetaschools.net
Website: http://curriculum.cowetaschools.org/
Phone: 770-254-2810
Twitter: @PBakerEducates