How to Ignite Your Student's Imagination

How to Ignite Your Student's Imagination

I believe that one of the greatest gifts of all is the gift of imagination.  A person’s ability to imagine is limitless and definitely has no bounds!  AND, the really cool part about it is that anyone can tap into their personal imagination-station at any place and time. Almost everything that now exists in our

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Writing Toolbox: Let's get organized with Writing Maps!

Writing Toolbox: Let's get organized with Writing Maps!

Teaching kids to write can be easy if you have the right tools! Getting organized is the first step, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is with an excellent set of writing maps. Writing maps are the foundation for writing success and truly help your children start out focused and on topic. What could be better than that?


At Shurley English, we want to give you a great start to the new year. Right now, you can download our Shurley English writing maps for FREE! Below, you will find a

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Micro-comprehension: Applying Text Structure

Micro-comprehension: Applying Text Structure

As I continue my series about micro-comprehension, text structure processing is next in line. Earlier, I wrote about sentence structure processing. The process of analyzing sentence structure and text structure shares similarities. However, analyzing at the sentence level gives a close-up picture of the meaning of the sentence; whereas, analyzing text structure provides the bigger picture of an entire essay or any longer piece of writing.

Many fluent readers seem to automatically process text structure, but it is probably subconscious. Take a look at this shortlist of text structures students encounter:

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