The Primary Comprehension Toolkit, More Common Core, Twitter-pated

Hint:  If you have entered this website through the www.bestpractices4teaching.com freebie website and you would like to pin these items, re-enter the site with this link!

I have so much information jampacked into this post that it isn't even funny!  Get ready to pin, follow THE BEST of education on Twitter, and download a freebie!

The Primary Comprehension Toolkit by Harvey and Goudvis

As always, I am on the lookout for GREAT materials that assist with best practices.  The title and picture above show one of the greatest I have ever seen!  It comes with at least 6 different books (to help you differentiate) and gives step by step lessons on teaching all of those comprehension strategies we know and love like inferencing and drawing conclusions, fact/opinion, etc.  When my literacy coach brought it in for me to look at, I literally broke one of the Ten Commandments and started coveting this whole kit.  No joke.  I wanted to keep it.  It is the type of resource that you can open up and literally teach one of the best lessons of your life without much prep time at all.  Of course, the lesson would be even better with that prep time!!!  It is on the pricey side, but if you have money left in your school account (and I know that most of us don't at this time of the year) it would be a great investment.  Of course, if you are in a district like mine where anything bought with that money has to stay at that school or in that same classroom, it might be better to invest in the kit with personal money so that when you are ready to leave your school, you can pick up that kit and run with it!!  The best part of it all is that it is written with the Common Core Exemplar Texts in mind.  (If you aren't sure what these are, follow me on Pinterest--I have most of the 2nd grade exemplars in a board and I am working through the other grade levels.  At this point, the titles are in future posts and I am working to link them to Amazon so that it can be a one stop shopping trip if you want, or you can refer back to my board and purchase a few at a time.  

Also, if you are a first grade teacher, I have a board for my favorite Cinderella books.  Since that is one of the units you will be teaching under the Common Core, you might want to follow that board and start clicking on the links to Amazon.  My guess is that the closer we get to the school year, the more apt bookstores will be to run out of these very books that we will be needing at the beginning of the school year.

On Friday's I receive a newsletter from the 2 Sisters and read up on Cafe and Daily 5.  This past week's was especially good because they shared the twitter addresses of some of the best educators of today.  So, I figured since not everyone receives that newsletter, that I would reprint the list that they shared.  Here are some 'big names' in education that you can follow on Twitter in order to learn more or GET  NOTICED!!!

@GailandJoan (The Two Sisters, Gail and Joan)

@SKrashen (Stephen Krashen)

@umphrey (Michael L. Umphrey)

@Web20Classroom (Steven W. Anderson)

@LarryFerlazzo (Larry Ferlazzo)

@Ruth_Ayres (Ruth Ayres)

@KellyGToGo (Kelly Gallagher)

@Cybraryman1 (Jerry Blumengarten)

@DonalynBooks (Donalyn Miller)

@FrankiSibberson (Franki Sibberson)

@CathyMere (Cathy Mere)

@ColoReader (Patrick Allen)

@PeterMDeWitt (Peter DeWitt)

@MaryLeeHahn (Mary Lee Hahn)

@ProfessorNana (Teri Lesesne)

@PublicEd4Kids (Cathy Mere)

@Bluskyz (Katie Keier)

Now....on to the good stuff.  The FREEBIE!!!  This week we are furiously working on the characteristics of non-fiction books as we get closer and closer to testing.  So, I thought it would be fun to have my students do a non-fiction scavenger hunt this week to make sure that they see each characteristic with their own eyes up close!  So, I am going to give them a huge bucket of non-fiction books and hang up my non-fiction posters that I downloaded for FREE from Primary Punch and let them search until they get done. And, of course, luckily, my new Oriental Trading order came in so I have lots of prizes to use as rewards!  You can click here to download my non-fiction scavenger hunt!

Enjoy all of this information!!