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Monday, March 10, 2014

Tricks of the Trade Blog Hop


Welcome to the Tricks of the Trade Blog Hop! 16 bloggers are participating and the prizes are one $50 TPT gift cards and two $15 TPT gift cards, which can be entered when you get to the last blog!

Key words! I believe they are the "key" to the main idea. Some of my students aren't sure what key words are. Which clearly makes it that much more difficult to determine the main idea. So how do I tackle this? First, we start with sentences. I give each student a highlighter and we discuss only highlighting KEY words, not getting "highlighter happy" and highlighting everything. 

I start by going over what a key word is. I tell students that they are the important words that give you information. I ask them if "the" and "a" are key words. We practice a few before I let them try it on their own. We then look at sentences and circle key words, which helps them determine the main idea later on. Working our way up from single sentences, this skill helps them when we get to longer, grade level passages.   

While working on this skill, it's easy to address other skills like comprehension, articulation of certain sounds, etc. Very often, I find that students aren't sure WHAT is actually important, so I think this is an important skill to work on that will build the foundation of other skills. 






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