A TRC Original, Words They Need To Know: A Book of K-3 Sight Word Activities by Sheron Brown and Sally Oppy, is intended for use by primary teachers, reading specialists, and classroom volunteers. This professional resource is easy to use, addressing the management of sight word activities and materials, as well as how to fit sight [...]

I spent some of my professional development time over the last couple of years studying how best to reach our ELL students. In our area, we have Hispanic and Russian/Ukranian populations. I don’t speak Spanish or Russian – I took German in high school against everyone’s recommendation, but I haven’t run into any students who [...]

Tangram Alphabet: Building Letters With Tangrams is a deceptively simple conceptual resource for teachers. It’s a quick read, and all the more valuable for the possibilities it offers students across the curriculum. If you’ve not used tangrams in your classroom before, they are pieces taken from a square; the pieces are called tans. The pieces fit together to [...]

It’s been a long short summer. Let’s ease into this and do some long and short vowel review. Sit back and relax. Get ready to hit “print” on your browser, because you’ll like having these ideas in your “vowels” file. Listed below, you’ll find some ideas to get you started with short and long vowel lessons. There are 26 letters in [...]

As a teacher, getting your students excited about grammar is likely to be one of the bigger challenges you will face. This is, in part, because it has developed an awful (if not undeserved) reputation over the years for being tedious and boring. But despite our preconceived notions on the subject, we all know that grammar is [...]

Recently one of our Subscribers asked about setting up a Poem of the Week writing center for her 4th and 5th graders. Poetry is an important learning center in any K-8 classroom and a Poem of the Week center is an easy and fun way to get kids excited about rhyme, meter and lyrical prose. Our reader [...]

Perhaps no other classroom activity is more effective in teaching emerging literacy students than using word sorts to emphasize students’ grasp of the meaning and relationships of words. An alternative to more traditional phonics and whole-word exercises, word sorts use cards with printed words on them, which students ‘sort’ into groups. A simple, meaningful activity for small [...]

Author Shari Nielson-Dunn discusses the importance of picture sorts in helping early and transitional readers recognize short and long vowel patterns, spelling patterns and word sounds and patterns. Includes the introduction to Dr. Nielson-Dunn’s book “Picture This Too!”.

Integrating literacy centers in today’s primary grade classroom requires planning and forethought. In this informative article, primary grade educators will find new ideas and tools on implementing literacy centers in the K-5 classroom.

Educators know the importance of early childhood literacy development. In this article, teachers will gain new insights and ideas on introducing literacy centers in the Pre-K and kindergarten classroom.