Grab Your Free School Year Calendar!

When I was teaching, I searched everywhere to find the perfect calendar for my students, but I just couldn't find one that worked. I wanted 8 1/2 x 11 monthly portrait-style pages that would fit in a 3-ring binder, and I also wanted large blocks for writing in the dates and events.

Eventually I gave up the search and decided to make my own. To create more space for writing on the weekdays, I made skinny blocks on the weekends. It turned out to be exactly what I needed! When I started my Teaching Resources website, I decided to share it with other teachers and it was a hit with them, too!

The School Year Calendar starts with July of the current year and ends with June of the following year. Each year I update the calendar with the correct dates as well as new clipart and fonts to give it a fresh look. The calendar pages are in color, but if you prefer black and white copies, just change your printer settings to the B&W mode.

Sign up here to download your free copy of my 2017-2018 School Year Calendar!

How to Track Oral Reading Fluency

Fluent readers not only sound more expressive when they read aloud, but they also comprehend the text far better than those who are not as fluent. That makes perfect sense when you consider how much energy a reader wastes when he or she has to slowly decode every word in a passage.

To help my 5th graders track their progress in reading fluency, I developed a partner activity that can also be used as an informal oral fluency assessment. It worked so well that I wanted to share it with you as a freebie. You can find Graphing Oral Fluency on my Balanced Literacy page on Teaching Resources. The packet includes student directions, the Oral Fluency Chart, and the Fluency Rate Line Graph. You're welcome to use it with your own students, but please remember that it's an informal tool for tracking fluency and it's not a research-based assessment tool.

Freebie for Graphing and Tracking Oral Fluency
When I introduced the activity to my class, I explained why reading fluency is important and modeled how a fluent reader might sound as compared to a reader who is not as fluent. Then I showed them how to time each other for one minute as they read aloud, and how to help each other calculate the average number of words they read per minute.

We also discussed the fact that being fluent doesn't mean speeding through the text with no errors; good readers also read with expression and enthusiasm, adjusting their reading rate and volume according to the meaning of the text. To help them become more aware of this aspect of fluency, I explained how to use the "Expressive Fluency" self-assessment rubric located under the Oral Fluency Chart.

Finally, I showed my students how to plot their oral fluency rate on a line graph and record their expressive fluency rate at the bottom of the page. My students completed this activity every few weeks and plotted their improvements over time.

Because my students were 5th graders, they could handle this activity as a partner assignment in a literacy center. Younger students would probably need a teacher assistant or parent volunteer to administer this assessment one-on-one.

Classroom Goal Setting and Data Tracking
The Oral Fluency Chart and the Fluency Rate Line Graph make great additions to student portfolios and "data binders." If your school is implementing a classroom goal setting program, you'll find oral fluency to be another area where students can set goals, create action plans, and track their progress. If you haven't seen the resources in my Goal Setting and Data Tracking Journal Combo, click the image below to check them out.

Remember that you can download the Graphing Oral Fluency freebie from the Balanced Literacy page on LauraCandler.com.  I hope these resources help your school year get off to a great start!

Getting Started with Whole Brain Teaching

Have you heard of Whole Brain Teaching? To keep it simple, I'll just say it's an exciting method of delivering instruction that keeps students actively engaged in the learning process. Because students are moving, talking, writing, reading, and THINKING, they are using all parts of their brains.

These lessons could easily become chaotic, but the WBT approach includes management strategies to keep instruction on track. Right away, students learn the 5 "classroom-transforming" rules shown on the right. Last summer, Chris Biffle, the founder of the Whole Brain Teaching movement, offered to write a series of guest blog articles on Corkboard Connections introducing these rules. Chris wrote about each rule individually, explaining WHY it's important and exactly HOW to teach that rule to your students. If that sounds boring, you don't know Chris! (Click here for the first article in the series.)

Newly Updated WBT Classroom Rules Posters
I love to create teacher resources, so I offered to design a set of free classroom rules posters to go along with Chris's blog series. That set featured clipart of young children, so I frequently get requests for a set that has older students. Today I created a brand new set of posters using the adorable characters from Whimsy Workshop Teaching. These children look a little older so the set should be perfect for upper elementary classrooms. Both the original set and this new one are included in the Whole Brain Teaching Rules Posters freebie in my TpT store.

Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids

If you are brand new to Whole Brain Teaching, the easiest way to get started is to read Chris's best-selling book, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids. His writing style is very entertaining and will have you laughing out loud, but there's a lot of meat in the book, too. Be sure to get a pack of sticky notes so you can mark important pages and return to them as you implement the strategies. You'll also find free information and videos on the Whole Brain Teaching website, but be forewarned - there's so much on the site that it can be a bit overwhelming on your first visit!

If you haven't heard about Whole Brain Teaching before, you might not want to start using the entire system this school year. However, if you're game for it, there are many easy-to-use strategies you can try out with your current class to get a feel for the techniques now. Then take your time reading about Whole Brain Teaching and checking out the free resources on the website so you'll be ready to go in the fall.

I wish I had learned about Whole Brain Teaching when I was still teaching because it sounds truly transformative! If you've had a tough school year, WBT might be just what you need to turn things around next year!

Disclaimer: Affiliate link included in this post. 

Order of Operations Bingo and a Freebie

Looking for my Order of Operations freebie? I've deactivated the original post that included this freebie, but these two pages are still free in a more recent post. Click over to Teaching Order of Operations: No-Fail Strategies That Work to find a step-by-step order of operations lesson and these free printables!