Apple Blossom Teachers

Looking for some fun ways to teach informational text structures, author's purpose, nonfiction text features, and more that go beyond the usual activities and anchor charts?

Here's a quick mini-lesson and an exploration activity you can use to engage your students authentically with informational text analysis. Watch how this frame of thinking shifts the complexity for all your informational reading and writing lessons for the year.

🎉 Grab the FREE on-demand training "5 Keys to Increasing Student Engagement in Upper Elementary" here. You'll get project examples, instructional strategies, and as always, some teacher pep talks to keep your own teaching passion burning bright!

👓 Want a visual of the lesson materials mentioned in the episode? Check out this post and share your ideas in the comments!

📲 Be sure to reach out to me on Instagram @AppleBlossomTeachers if you want a copy of the slides mentioned in the episode, and don't forget to leave a review here in your podcast app if you're enjoying the show!

Let's chat about an easy way to push students' observations, analyses, and questioning to a higher level.

Using a strategy known as "Think Like A Disciplinarian," students are challenged to take on the perspective of an expert in a field or topic. Students ask questions, make observations, and draw relevant conclusions that a specific disciplinarian would note about our topic of study.

• Why is this helpful for teaching higher order thinking skills?

• Taking on a specific perspective allows students to openly ask questions and analyze a topic in a more complex way, vs just making our own observations as 5th graders

• Social pressure of being viewed as "wrong" or not knowing something everyone else knows is virtually eliminated when we shoulder the questions onto an imaginary disciplinarian.

• Inspires complex questioning that helps students reach a deeper understanding of the content

🎉 Grab the FREE on-demand training "5 Keys to Increasing Student Engagement in Upper Elementary" here. You'll get project examples, instructional strategies, and as always, some teacher pep talks to keep your own teaching passion burning bright!

Connect with me on Instagram @AppleBlossomTeachers, and don't forget to leave a review here in your podcast app if you're enjoying the show!

I'm sharing a tool, known as the Icons of Depth and Complexity, for getting our students to think deeply about the texts we read, events we discuss, and situations we encounter.

This simple tool for helping students access and apply higher-order thinking skills is a game changer for so many reasons!

🌟🌟🌟 Spelling lessons not sticking for your students? Learn how a few easy shifts to science-informed spelling can make a world of difference! Enrollment in Stronger Spelling: Small Steps for Teachers of Big Kids is now open. Visit AppleBlossomTeachers.com/spelling to learn more and join the fun!

Resources and links mentioned:

• An introduction to the icons from Kern County Office of Education
• Ian Byrd's Byrdseed intro to the icons for teachers
• Ian Byrd's Byrdseed suggestions for introducing the icons to students
• Post from Naomi O'Brien (Read Like A Rockstar Teaching)introducing Change Over Time with example prompts

These 2 strategies had my students asking if they were allowed to go back and reread! Yup, a great reading response prompt can be the difference between "I have to go back and find text evidence." and "I've gotta find evidence to prove my point!!"

Strategy 1: Add a Likert Scale to yes/no questions.

Strategy 2: Have students add themseleves to the scene or event.

🌟🌟🌟 Did you hear? I'm kicking off a mini course to help busy upper elementary teachers increase spelling success without revamping your whole word study system.

🔗 Learn more and join the waitlist at appleblossomteachers.com/spelling today!

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

• Episode 46: Novel Study No-No's and How to Fix Them
• Reel from Erin @creativeteachersclassroom showing the Likert Scale idea
• Visit @appleblossomteachers on Instagram

Today's quick win strategy is all about keeping our students moving forward, allowing them to deeply engage with complex upper elementary skills, by just giving them the key information.

Literally, just give them the key!

Fluently solving multiplication facts, figuring out how to spell a word, finding key details from a story...yes, there is a time and place for teaching our students these things. But when working on more complex aspects, don't stall student engagement by sidetracking the lesson. Or worse, don't hold students back from participation in a lesson just because they are stuck on a prerequisite skill.

You'll win with more engagement, more motivation to try the tougher concepts, and less time teaching things over and over for the "first time" as students are ready.

Cheers to 2023, and I hope this episode helps you and your students get past those post-winter-break brain farts!

To learn more about the "Stronger Spelling: Small steps for teachers of big kids" on-demand training launching this month, click here!

Over the last few weeks, we've been chatting all about how we can bridge high quality reading instruction to strengthen our students' writing. Today I want to share this throwback episode to give you some project ideas your students can actually apply all these lessons to.

I hope this juicy past episode gives you some ideas on how to motivate and engage your young writers, and provides a frame of reference as we start to get into some higher order thinking strategies over the next few weeks.

Episode 31 Links and Resources:

💻 Looking for more ways to take learning from ROTE to REAL? Grab the free video training here, plus a print-and-go planning template you can use tomorrow!

📍 The Navigator: Use this to find what you need most!

• (3:00) How I layered 4 disciplines in one skatepark project to maximize our class time
• (7:50) What are authentic audiences, and why are they helpful?
• (9:12) Engagement and motivation…are those the same?
• (12:30) Why this strategy is ideal for natural differentiation and instructional support for every learner
• (14:10) Gifted teacher pet peeve soapbox: our gifted and advanced learners need and deserve to have true opportunities to stretch their learning muscles as their peers, and more of the same work AIN'T IT!!
• (15:28) Higher order thinking skills are not often accessed in our teacher manuals, but here's how to fix it
• (21:05) Critical thinking vs. creative thinking
• (22:11) Let's jump into over a dozen actual PROJECT IDEAS FROM REAL UPPER ELEMENTARY CLASSROOMS! These are based on the 5 levels of authentic audiences in this Edutopia article.
• (37:07) My friend Mandy's epic 6th grade kindness crew that's been running for over 5 years!
• (38:40) Amy @theuniqueclassroom's 3rd grade persuasive paragraph activity for their local animal shelter
• (40:00) My friend Kayla's awesome marketing pitch project - Shark Tank style
• (41:45) Why this is also a great approach for embedded SEL lessons & life skills
• (43:50) Rachel's 5th grade March Madness letters to university teams that actually got replies!!

🔗 Links and resources from this episode:

• Free sample pages from Wendy Conklin's Strategies for Developing Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Grades 3-5
• The Write Thing: Kwame Alexander engages students in Writing Workshop, and you can too!
• Open House Reel 2022 - interdisciplinary project ideas (plus a 5th grade throwback in my highlights)
• Caption cards: an easy way to add in regular informational writing
• Padilla Periodical Student-created newsletter
• Shark News upper grade news crew
• Getting started with a school news crew on Edutopia
• We Are Teachers & USPS Pen Pal Project
• @Kellys_Classroom "SEAKers" Program
• @theuniqueclassroom Animal Shelter persuasive paragraphs
• Reedsy list of children's writing contests
• Get on the waitlist for the FREE virtual training on how to take your upper elementary lessons from rote to "REAL" - leave with 5 "purposeful project" planning templates and the tools you need to increase student engagement, boost motivation, and create lasting learning!
• Read my Edutopia article about the 5 authentic audiences that will motivate your upper grade writers.

Loved this episode? It would make my day to read your review, and can help more teachers discover the podcast!

We've talked about using physical texts such as novels, picture books, and poems as mentor text for writing and reading standards. But what if instead of just learning from the author's writing, we actually learn directly from the author themselves?

Today I'm sharing all about why and how you can use author chats (live experiences or prerecorded) to study authors crafts moves for upper elementary writing lessons.

• How can we regularly bring author's voices and advice into our upper elementary classrooms?
• How can we ensure these types of experiences apply to lessons on writing, going beyond just a fun experience?

Resources and Links:

• Mentor texts for paired narrative and expository REEL
• Instagram Guides (featuring picture book recommendations)
• Novel Study No-no's and How to Avoid Them - Episode 46
• Using a Reading Lesson Plan for Writing - Episode 48
• How to Use one Mentor Text for Narrative Writing and Reading Skills - Episode 49
• Storyvoice
• Flipgrid Live
• Scholastic Book Clubs - Sign up and get their newsletter with author chat invites throughout the school year *FYI: This is a referral link, and you and I will both earn bonus book points for referred sign ups.
• RL Stine Video
• Lauren Tarshis video
• Standards At-a-glance Freebie
• Apple Blossom Teachers on Instagram

Today's focus will be literary mentor texts - using one text with paired reading and writing standards to maximize our class time, increase student engagement with the content, and create learning that lasts.

One picture book can tackle authors craft moves, author's voice, tone of the story, point of view, sentence structures, and research for writing, to analyzing literary elements, word choice, narrative text features, tone of the story, and more for reading.

• Mentor text for narrative writing in this episode:
  • fiction novels,
  • poetry,
  • fictional narrative picture books,
  • narrative nonfiction picture books,
  • wordless picture books
• For a similar episode about informational mentor texts, head to episode 29

Resources and Links

5 Keys to Increasing Student Engagement in Upper Elementary FREE video training

Informational Mentor Texts for Nonfiction Writing - Episode 29

Novel Study No-no's and How to Avoid Them - Episode 46

Using a Reading Lesson Plan for Writing - Episode 48

Placing Text at the Center of the Standards-Aligned ELA Classroom

*By Meredith Liben and Susan Pimentel on Achieve the Core

The Science of Reading Comprehension Instruction

*By Nell K. Duke, Alessandra E. Ward, P. David Pearson

*The Reading Teacher Journal, V.74 Issue 6

Apple Blossom Teachers on Instagram

One strategy to really deepen complexity and understanding beyond memorization, to a place where students are truly applying that skill, is to be very intentional with pairing reading and writing. Today, we're chatting all about using your weekly reading lesson plan to truly guide your writing plans.

Why is this a huge help for BOTH reading and writing understandings? How does this increase student engagement? How the heck do I fit this in with my given pacing plan?!?

This episode zones in on one example, specifically narrative point of view, to give you an idea of how you can pair reading and writing standards to get major bang for your buck!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Episode 47 Reading Conferences
• FREE 5 Keys to increasing Student Engagement video training

If you've tried some of the strategies I've shared and found success, I would so appreciate if you'd leave a review here on the podcast. This helps other teachers just like you discover the show, and that is my biggest dream...to have classrooms full of excited, engaged upper graders everywhere!! Thank you so much for your support.

It boils down to this: Students can't love reading without knowing HOW to read.

The good news is, teaching students how to read and creating a class community full of students who love to read can definitely happen simultaneously. And in upper grades, it absolutely needs to.

Reading conferences are a great strategy for reading instruction in upper elementary, really helping you meet your students where they are and nudge their reading abilities forward.

Listen in for what reading conferences ca look like, why they're such an impactful strategy for reading lessons, and how to actually fit them in with your boxed curriculum.

Resources and links mentioned:

• The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo
• The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 by Jennifer Serravallo
• A Teacher's Guide to Reading Conferences by Jennifer Serravallo
• Jen Bengel's reading conferences protocol as shared on Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers Podcast, Episode 169
• Apple Blossom Teachers Instagram Guides featuring Jen Jones, Naomi O'brien, Heidi Martin, and more

Looking for more? Visit appleblossomteachers.com/real for a FREE video training: 5 Keys to Increasing Engagement in Upper Elementary