June 06, 2019

Creating a Writing Inspiration Station

June 06, 2019/ Contributing Blogger

There’s nothing like the dreaded feeling of sitting at your desk with a blank sheet of writing paper staring back at you. You see some of your classmates busily jotting down ideas; you see them creating their prewriting map; or you see some classmates looking upward with a pleasant grin, lost in their imagination. Not you though; your white paper just taunts you with thoughts like these: “So, what are you going to write about this time?” or “There’s nothing to write about; you’re all out of ideas!”

May 30, 2019

Grammar Time: What part of speech is the word THERE?

May 30, 2019/ Contributing Blogger

The word there is a commonly used word that can be difficult to classify because of its various roles in a sentence. There can be used as an adverb, pronoun, adjective, and sometimes as an interjection. But in grammatical constructions like there is or there are, there is considered an expletive. This tiny word can create a lot of confusion because the context can be so varied.

Study the following guide to help you understand how to label and classify the various roles of the word there.

May 02, 2019

Grammar Reinforcement: Creating Confidence Cards

May 02, 2019/ Contributing Blogger

I love teaching! I love the challenge of finding ways to teach children how academic content connects to their real life. My love of teaching has carried over into the world of life coaching, and in this capacity, I can help teens feel good about who they are.

Let’s be real. Life can be tough for many children these days, and many of them could benefit from a little more positivity in their lives. For this reason, I found a way to connect my

April 30, 2019

Grammar & Writing Toolbox: Don't let contractions confuse you!

April 30, 2019/ Contributing Blogger

A contraction is a word or phrase that’s been formed by combining two words and adding an apostrophe to replace the letter or letters that have been left out. Since the root word “contract” means to squeeze together, the concept of forming a contraction makes logical sense to most kids.

When two words are combined to form a contraction, the first word

April 11, 2019

ELA Success: Patience is key!

April 11, 2019/ Contributing Blogger

Most of my blog content comes from questions I’ve answered at one time or another from teachers and administrators who use Shurley English. I often hear the urgency in their voices, and they seem to be looking for a quick fix to the problems their students are experiencing. Sure, we all want quick results, but usually, by the time you manage to find just the right curriculum or just the right supplement to your teaching, the students have moved on. Then, you get a new batch of students with similar but unique struggles, and you’re back at it again, trying to find what works and what works fast.

Even though we, as a society, rely on instant gratification, immediate feedback, and quick results, the outcome of an exemplary education won’t happen that way. Honestly, we all know there are NO quick fixes that produce the quality results we’re seeking, not in life or in curriculum.

March 28, 2019

Help Your Students Improve Their Revision Skills

March 28, 2019/ Contributing Blogger

How many times have you asked your students to revise their work, only to have all of the papers returned to the hand-in basket within a few minutes with little to no changes at all? The problem is that many students lack the necessary grammar skills required to revise.

Simply writing a comment on a student’s paper to suggest a revision isn’t enough.

March 26, 2019

The Playbook of Literary Success: Grammar

March 26, 2019/ Contributing Blogger

Let’s get back into the language arts huddle to go over some key plays that will help your students win the game! If you missed Part I of the Playbook of Literacy Success, you might want to go back to the starting line to capture the necessity of a strong vocabulary. As for today, we’re going to focus on Part II: Grammar. We’ll begin with some calisthenics we call Shurley English Jingles, and then we’ll move right into our version of the wishbone formation! We call this feature the Question and Answer Flow.

March 14, 2019

ELA Success: If it works, don't fix it!

March 14, 2019/ Contributing Blogger

I think you will agree that by and large, if something works, you don’t need to fix it. I suppose it is human nature, or maybe just my nature, but I never seem to be able to leave well enough alone. It seems like if you’re a teacher, you simply must change, revise, correct, improve, or add to—it’s in our DNA! Thank goodness for Shurley English because it is the kind of curriculum that works. It works for a lot of reasons, but right now, I want to talk about how the teaching scripts work for instructors to make teaching the curriculum easy.

March 07, 2019

Activity Time: Say goodbye to mental burnout

March 07, 2019/ Contributing Blogger

In some of my previous posts, I have touched upon the importance of keeping kids moving in the classroom. Physical movement wakes up their brains, gets their blood flowing, and it’s just plain fun. While many of us typically seek comfort and routine in our daily lives, students in a classroom don’t always need that kind of comfort. Yes, routines can help people stay focused and build self-discipline, but too much routine can also turn us into rigid creatures of habit. In my experience, students are more focused when classroom routines are followed, but there are also great benefits when they step away from the daily grind and get moving. This is the ideal way to help them avoid mental burnout.

February 19, 2019

Sentence Pattern Study: Pattern 5

February 19, 2019/ Contributing Blogger

Welcome back to the fourth entry in my series about sentence patterns. Remember, if you recognize the pattern of a sentence’s core parts, the grammar of the sentence (or its word arrangement) will make more sense. So far, you know about Pattern 1, Pattern 2, Pattern 3, and Pattern 4.

To get ready for Pattern 5, let’s first look at the