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Category: homework

A Teacher’s Guide to Fluency

For a long time, fluency was the forgotten component of reading instruction.  I know it never came up in my college courses!  But in the last 10 years or so, the view has shifted.  Fluency has come to be recognized as a vital skill in developing proficient readers. For the

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Getting the Most Out of Fluency Homework

Timed, repeated readings with feedback are one of the best ways to improve students’ reading fluency. Read more about repeated readings here! How you manage repeated readings depends on what works best in your class. Some teachers have parent helpers or aides work with the students. Some teachers do timed

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Beginning Fluency: Leveled Passages

When it comes to fluency practice, students need something to read.  But what?  Really, any text that students can read independently works for practice: rereading familiar books Reader’s Theater scripts student newspapers (Scholastic News, Weekly Reader, etc.) joke books short poems But if you’re looking for more targeted practice, leveled

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Beginning Fluency: Segmenting & Blending (SBF)

I remember when they handed me my list of kids who hadn’t passed their DIBELS Nonsense Word Fluency.  It seemed like it must be a cruel joke!  Nonsense words?  Really????? Over time I’ve come to love and hate Nonsense Word Fluency.  I love it because that first year with DIBELS

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Beginning Fluency: Letter Sound Fluency (LSF)

Once students know letter names, they’re poised to master letter sounds.  Yay!  We have a set of homework pages to help your little learners take this next step. Like our Letter Name Fluency (LNF), the first place to start with Letter Sound Fluency (LSF) is assessment.  For this test, the

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1st Grade Common Core Homework (100 days)

If you want to know more about our philosophy on homework and see why this packet is only 100 pages, read this post about our 2nd grade homework. It’s done! It’s done! It’s done! It’s done! It’s done! It’s done! It’s done! It’s done! There were some dark moments there. 

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1st Grade Common Core Homework Add-On Pack

The title of this product is a little confusing. We started with the end! We don’t have the first 100 pages of the 1st grade homework finished yet. But we thought it would be helpful to make the planned add-on pack first so it can be used for the end

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2nd Grade Common Core Homework Add-On Pack

You asked and we delivered!  So many teachers have been asking for more homework pages that we had to say yes.  What we have is a 40-page extension pack to our original 100 days of homework. That homework is designed to cover the entire year so we designed the add-on

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2nd Grade Fluency Homework

Note: This product recently underwent a massive transformation! Read about our new and improved fluency homework in this post. Click here to download a free sampler of the newly redesigned fluency homework. Do you DIBELS? Doesn’t that sound like it should be something fabulous?  Or scandalous!   Not so much when

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Tic-Tac-Toe Spelling Homework (freebie)

A couple weeks ago I posted about the homework I do with my 2nd graders.  One thing that I send home each week is spelling practice.  The page is set up with a space for the students to write down their 10 spelling words for the week and then there's

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2nd Grade Homework

Soooo homework.  Yeah.  Isn’t that a tricky subject?  After a dozen years of teaching here is my philosophy on homework. The general rule is 10 minutes of homework for every grade level.  That would be 20 minutes for 2nd grade.  I don’t include reading at home when I’m talking about

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Homework Folders (a.k.a. GOLD Folders)

Heidi and I started using these homework folders several years ago. We certainly didn’t invent the idea, although I believe we’ve made it our own and came up with our own acronym. It’s been revamped many times since we started but meet the G.O.L.D. homework folder, as Heidi is using

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