Packing Your Instructional Toolkit (for free)

Every teacher has an instructional toolkit or what some might call a bag of tricks. A little grab bag to pull from when a teachable moment comes to light. Mine was a file cabinet and a series of chaotically organized binders.

Teaching is HARD!

Teaching takes a LOT of time…personal time!

Teaching takes energy!

Lots of Energy!

That's why this one is all about packing your instructional toolkit one resource at a time.

Let's get straight to tips, tricks, & strategies to pump up your literacy instruction, refresh what you are already doing and bring to light the inspiration you might need to keep moving forward in building strong readers and writers.

So let’s jump right into adding a few tools to your instructional toolkit from the Literacy Treasures FREE Toolkit. Let's get to it!

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Crafting Literacy Instruction That Will Actively Engage Your Readers and Writers

Authentic active engagement is about creating multiple opportunities for readers to interact with a text with the teacher, with partners and by themselves.

Authentic active engagement is about finding a variety of opportunities for readers to engage in conversations and discussions about a text.

Authentic active engagement is about finding opportunities for readers to engage in reflective thinking about a text.

Authentic active engagement is about finding opportunities for readers to try out a reading strategy or skill with guidance.

Authentic active engagement has its place within the reading minilesson as well as during independent reading.

What does authentic engagement look like within a reading or writing lesson? Grab this freebie for suggested active engagement strategies to use within every lesson.

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Readers' Notebook Tab Dividers

A reader’s notebook IS a reader’s toolkit. Something a reader uses to record new learning, jot notes about their thinking and get guidance from while independent reading.

The Readers’ Notebook Tab Dividers: Section labels that are ready to print and go for creating Readers Notebooks.

Within this print and go resource, you can decide which sections you want your readers to have and get those organized into your readers notebooks. Grab it here!

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Evaluating Student Reading Artifacts for Growth Possibilities

This little cheat sheet has guiding questions to use while you are reviewing student reading artifacts for growth and possibilities for improvement.

When you are looking through student work or informal assessment tools it’s important to know what you are looking for.

This little tool provides guiding questions for informally assessing stop and jots about reading, longer written responses, running records, conferring notes, engagement inventories, interest surveys and how readers engage in conversations about books.

I know it sounds simple, just guiding questions, but it was always helpful to have these little thought provokers jotted down in my lesson plan notebook. This little cheat sheet was my answer! Grab this cheat sheet here!

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Exit Tickets: A Cheat Sheet for Analyzing and Assessing Student Exit Slips

With this you will find, 3 actionable steps for reviewing exit slips and determining the next steps for your instruction.

• Step one: Divide the exit tickets into 3 groups that represent 3 different levels of understanding.

• Step Two: ask yourself a couple guiding questions about those exit ticket groups.

• Step Three: Determine your next Instructional actions. This step provides tips and ideas to follow regarding your current instruction based on which level of understanding the majority of your students fall under for that specific concept or skill.

This little cheat sheet is a gold mine and time saver for informally assessing the little nuggets of gold your readers and writers are giving you at the end of a lesson. (or your mathematicians, historians or scientists…just sayin') Grab this cheat sheet here!

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WOW! Pack that toolkit up today!

Until next time…