Welcome to the Shurley English Blog! For the past thirty-five years, our mission at Shurley Instructional Materials has been simple. We do all we can to help teachers and students experience grammar and writing success. With that goal in mind, we wanted to create a space where our team of educators could share tips, tricks, and techniques to ignite learning. It’s all about educators helping educators on the Shurley English Blog. We invite you to join the conversation!
Are you looking for an idea to motivate your students to grow an “attitude of gratitude” during this season of Thanksgiving? Why not assist them in creating their own personalized letter of thanksgiving written to someone special in their lives? Not only will you create a Thanksgiving to remember, but you will ensure that your students know about the lost art of letter writing. That’s a win-win! Here’s the plan:
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Today, I’ve decided to write to you, the adult reader, about a topic that most of us take for granted: Reading. I’ve chosen this topic because improving reading skills is not just a concern for students only! We all need to practice. The truth is that your reading ability may be more important to you after you have completed your formal education.
Here’s the thing. Reading isn’t just for pleasure. In fact, reading all kinds of written material and processing the information quickly is part of our daily lives at work, at home, and everywhere in between. The scary part is that you don’t always have much time, yet it’s important to interpret many of these written messages with accuracy. So, what can you do about it? I’d like to give you just a couple of tips. First, you can start by
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If you’ve ever found yourself in the middle of a tumultuous situation like a rip-roaring, indoor recess due to inclement weather, or a rigorous test preparation right before a holiday, you know how it feels when you need a break! …You need it, and you need it NOW!
Now is when you have to dig a little bit deeper into your teacher toolbox and pull out that shiny tool that you know will give you the extra boost needed to get you over the hump. In my mind, I imagine it might be
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In previous blogs, we’ve discussed the benefits of taking some time to slow down, relax, meditate, and focus on being more of a human-being rather than a human-doing. For teachers and students alike, that all seems easy to do during the summer months, but how do you avoid getting sucked into the busyness of being that human that is always “doing” during the school year? …“PLAYTIME” might just be the answer for both you and your students.
I recently read an interesting article in a local health magazine that focused on why children need unstructured fun in their lives. Trust me, I don’t need to be convinced that playtime-fun is beneficial to human development, but I wanted to read what the experts had to say. Play was described as
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Last time, I showed you how to help students own the alphabet as more than just the ABCs. Each symbol or letter is a picture of sound. Our job is to teach kids how to attach the sound or sounds that each symbol represents.
We’ll start at the very beginning with the letter A a . As you can see, I printed both the capitalized version and the lower case versions. I do that because children need to see and use both forms. I start with A a, not because it is the first letter of our alphabet, but because it represents the first three vowel sounds I teach. I repeat…it has THREE sounds that should be taught right out of the starting gate: a, a, a. Click the play button below to hear the correct
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The ideal scenario for the first couple months of a new school year would be a classroom running smoothly. You want to be comfortable with your daily schedule and know that you can meet the needs of all of your diverse students.
Realistically, some of you may already feel like the expectations and duties increase even more as the fall progresses. Before you become consumed with the busyness of the new school year, always remember this: “YOU are a TEACHER!” You are the one that works to mold the future. You make an incredible impression and impact in the lives of all the students who enter your classroom.
This year is a brand new one, and if you’re ready to level-up your teaching, you should consider this question: “What kind of teacher do you want to be this year?”
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If you follow the Shurley English blog, you already know that our main goal is to give students the knowledge, skills, and practice they need to become competent, confident communicators. Our plan of action consists of applying the following equation during language arts instruction:
(Knowledge + Skills) x Practice = Competence and Confidence.
An important addition to the equation is consistency. As students learn the umpteen language arts skills necessary to use language with competence and confidence, it’s important for teachers to use consistent terminology and some consistent processes with fidelity. Why?
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Lately, I have been pondering my linguistic journey. Over the years, it has been a journey of self-discovery. A journey that led me to use a fascinating method to teach systematic phonics and phonemic awareness.
If you could have visited my first and second grade combined classroom about 20 years ago, you would have noticed that I displayed traditional alphabet cards above my chalkboard. I didn’t really use it as a reference tool. It was more of a standard classroom decoration than a tool for learning. That is, until I gained some knowledge about teaching letters NOT as letters of the alphabet, but as pictures of sound. I didn’t realize the power the alphabet has when it is considered as a code made of symbols that allows learners to attach sounds to them.
The fact remains, we have an alphabetic language. In other words, letters provide us a way to encode sounds of speech into symbols…the letters of the alphabet. But for years, that information was lost on many a teacher. When I realized how the code system works, it rocked my linguistic world!
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The rules for writing numbers in a sentence or paragraph haven’t changed over the years, but for some reason, I still feel the need to double-check them. I’m not sure why numbers are such a stumbling block, but any time I need to communicate a quantity, dollar amount, percentage, measurement, or date, I wind up questioning how to write it correctly. I can never remember if I’m supposed to write the numbers in words, or if I’m supposed to write them in figures?
If you have the same questions, here’s a quick guide to help you know when numbers should be written as words:
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For my birthday, I received a beautiful interior sliding barn door as a gift. I envisioned that this hefty, rustic door was going to be a unique addition that would bring more style to my home. With a few extra hands, how hard could this DIY project be if we just followed the instructions? Right?
Well, it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be!
Have you ever experienced a situation when you didn’t need to read the directions for a simple recipe or to assemble a new toy? I’d venture to say that sometimes that works out, but not every time. Even when you’ve read the instructions, they sometimes aren’t clear enough to get the final product you’d hoped for. If that’s the case, you may end up with holes in your wall and a barn door that is now taking up space leaning against the wall. (Ugh!) When it comes to reading the directions every time, I’m just as guilty as the next person—I don’t always do it.
In the classroom, many students bypass the instructions and head straight to number one on the assignment. Shurley English students are not immune to this; it happens all the time. As a teacher, it’s frustrating and heartbreaking to see the defeat in a child’s eyes when they realize they haven’t followed the directions and must start the assignment over.
Read MoreShurley English is the best English Language Arts curriculum available to public schools, private schools, and home educators.Shurley English is a rigorous curriculum that brings back student-teacher interaction, promotes higher-order thinking skills, and provides students with a successful base from which they can achieve mastery, retention, and enthusiasm for English.
Our mission is to inspire and empower ALL students to become competent, confident communicators by providing superior educational solutions and innovative teacher training tools. This will enable all students to positively impact their school, community, and future work environments.
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