Welcome to Day 5 of the 5 Days to a Better School Year Challenge!
Every day this week I’ve been asking you to reflect on something specific from last school year that annoyed/bothered you and help you take action to change it for this upcoming school year.
Classroom behaviors and routines don’t change without being intentional about it – being intentional now can make next year so much better!
If you missed the other challenges, you can check out the Day 1 Challenge, Day 2 Challenge, Day 3 Challenge, or Day 4 Challenge.
Today's Challenge
Today, we are going to reflect on an academic skill that many of your students struggled with last year that you would like to teach differently during the upcoming year.
To complete the challenge, follow the steps below. Use this Day 5 Challenge Printable Worksheet to help you write out a plan for today's challenge.
1. Think of an academic skill that your students really struggled with.
Was there a skill that seemed difficult to almost everybody? Was there a particular skill that a lot of your students bombed during testing?
For example – main idea, summarizing, rounding, theme, division, etc.
2. Next, spend some time reflecting on why your students struggled with this skill.
What sorts of mistakes did they make? What prior knowledge were they missing?
3. Now, spend a little time researching how other teachers have taught this skill.
Find some resources and activity ideas that you could use this upcoming school year.
Below, I’ve listed some links to free resource and activity ideas for teaching some difficult skills to upper elementary students.
You can also take a look at the Teaching Made Practical Members Area. Although the majority of the resources are for teachers who have paid to join the membership, I have made many resources free for any teacher to use – just look for the red *Free* next to the name of the resource. You can find some free resources for teaching main idea, character traits, text features, fractions, comparing and contrasting, point of view, and more.
For other topics, do a quick Google Search or a search on Pinterest to see how other teachers have addressed the skill that your students have struggled with. Chances are, it is difficult for a lot of students!
Also, below are some of my TPT resources that are geared towards helping struggling students understand difficult concepts.
4. Finally, come up with a plan.
Ideally, you will write down what steps you need to take to in order to try this out. (You can use this Day 5 Challenge Printable Worksheet to help.) How will you teach this skill differently next year? How will you organize the resources that you found so that you don’t forget about them?
Comments 4
I love your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you create this
website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you?
Plz answer back as I’m looking to create my own blog and
would like to find out where u got this from. appreciate
it http://catswithbamboochopsticksforhands.net
I love your blog.. very nice colors & theme.
Did you create this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it
for you? Plz answer back as I’m looking to create my own blog and would like to find
out where u got this from. appreciate it http://catswithbamboochopsticksforhands.net
My students struggled with summarizing texts. It was very low when they took their benchmarks.
The plan is to do more research on this topic and use all the resources needed. After this if some students still have problems we will address with reteaching.
Hello!
I am concerned about comprehension. Currently I am rereading Mosaic. I am really planning on being intentional about the use of questioning and questioning the author this year. I thought the importance of this will aid learners with their writing and metacognition needed to get increase their comprehension. This can start the first day using question words to learn about the new members of our class.