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!

July 02, 2024

Summer Learning: How to create a family storybook

July 02, 2024/ Contributing Blogger

Summer Break is here, and our thoughts are revolving around words like vacation, relaxation, rest, getaway, and so on! Words like homework, project, and assignment instantly turn into bad-words the minute summer vacation begins, so I encourage you to avoid them at all costs! Instead, try to generate creative ways to keep your child/children actively involved in writing, reading, and processing information over the break. One way to keep all these language arts skills at the forefront in a covert way is to develop family storybooks.

Family storybooks are similar to

June 11, 2024

Summer Journaling with Appreciative Inquiry

June 11, 2024/ Contributing Blogger

Summer vacation is coming soon! So, what are your plans? Have you included any activities that will help your child keep their language arts skills sharp over the break? (Haha! I’m almost positive that most of you just knitted your brows and sarcastically muttered the words: “Ugh, NO!”) Before you stop reading this post, I’d like for you to consider doing some “AND” thinking because there is a way for students to enjoy their time off from school AND continue applying language arts skills! They might just learn to appreciate the experience while they’re at it if we add an additional AND to the list! The key is to cop a good action plan in advance!

Before I get to the suggested activity, I want to tell you about

June 06, 2024

How to Keep Language Arts Skills Sharp During the Summer

June 06, 2024/ Contributing Blogger

Slurpees, sunshine, swimming, sunbathing, relaxing, travel, camping, barbecues, bike rides, fireworks, friends, and LANGUAGE ARTS! Of course, summer vacation might include some of these foot-loose and fancy-free things, but it’s also an opportunity to keep parents engaged in their child’s learning over the summer months.

Remember, the key to success in whatever you want to do is setting goals for yourself. Encourage families to set short and long-term academic goals for the summer. (I've included a great bonus lesson on Setting Goals at the end of this post!)

Here are three great ways to keep your child's Language Arts skills sharp this summer:

November 28, 2023

Holiday Activity: The Kindness Calendar

November 28, 2023/ Contributing Blogger

Kindness is defined as the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Some of the words associated with kindness are affection, gentleness, warmth, concern, and care. The act of being kind often requires courage and strength, but a simple act of kindness can have huge effects individually and globally.

Think back to a time when someone was kind to you or when you were kind to someone else. Do you remember the feeling you felt when that person held the door open for you? Did you happen to see the other person smile or light up when you acted with kindness?

Take a look at how kindness affects a human being:

November 07, 2023

Boost Your Mood With Gratitude

November 07, 2023/ Contributing Blogger

Every year, Daylight Saving Time (DST) ends on the first Sunday in November, when clocks are moved back an hour at 2 a.m. local daylight time. When this happens, It takes our minds and bodies several weeks to adjust to the time change. On top of that, the early evening darkness can wreak havoc on our overall mood due to a reduction in the amount of sunlight we receive.

Research tells us that 4-6% of the American population will experience the effects of