Recent posts from Sharon Callen
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Monitoring Children's Beginning Reading Development
Encouraging Reading Behaviours In order to support and encourage children's reading development we need to know where children are in their development and whether they are making progress as readers. The best sources of such information are the reading behaviours which children display and the range of books which they...
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Reading Calendars
Over the years I have tried many ways for my Year 3-6 students to keep a record of their reading, but the most empowering and engaging format I have developed is the Reading Calendar. The Reading Calendar is a simple calendar template on which readers can keep a record of...
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Letter Explorations that Transfer to Reading and Writing
Involving children in letter explorations helps them learn about the alphabetic system. Such explorations should occur alongside the regular reading and writing activities of the classroom. Letter explorations assist children in: understanding the concept of letters learning letter names of the twenty-six letters in alphabetical order identifying upper and lowercase...
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7 Powerful Ways to Use Personal Word Walls Years 3-7
There's an amazing tool that enables your Yrs 3-7 students learn how to spell the words they most frequently use in their writing and understand how words work. It's cheap, it's simple, and it enables personalised investigation and learning. What's the tool? A Personal Word Wall. Here are 7 powerful...
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What are Quick Writes?
Quick Writes are my most favourite writing tool, writing strategy and writing buzz! And I haven’t yet had a student across Years 3-6, across the world, who hasn’t agreed with me. For me Quick Writes are simply one of the most important tools I can add to my writers’ tool...