Ms. Gyer

Just came across a bunch of notes several of you wrote me a few years ago. Brought tears to my eyes and reminded me of the impact teachers have on students. Still love you all and hope you're doing well! Drop me line and let me know what you're up to.

Hope y'all are enjoying your summer as much as I am. You probably aren't! :-P ;-)

Reading and practicing literacy over the summer is like off-season training: you got to stay in shape and keep practicing, so you can keep up your stamina. Here are some fun ideas--

1. Visit your local library. You know, that place where you get videos for free and vote on Election Day? These places also have stacks and stacks of paper contraptions known as books. Go there at the right time, and you might even catch a special event like a children’s storytime or guest author lecture.
2. Create a book with your family. You can go to a handicraft store and purchase a scrapbook. Family time spent talking together and sharing memories is language development time well spent.
3. Take a hike. Grab your iPod and download an audiobook to listen to as you enjoy the outdoors.
4. Go to a museum or art gallery. “Stuff” yourself with brochures, docent guides, the works!
5. Play a board game together. Besides all of the social skills your family will gather by spending face time with one another, you all will also increase your critical thinking skills, those necessary for reading more complicated texts.
6. Cook dinner together. Recipes are a great way to practice following a set of steps in prescribed order. The added payoff with cooking together, of course, is you get to eat your wares.
8. Go to church. One of the best ways to improve your reading fluency is by singing hymns together.
9. Subscribe to your local newspaper. Want to know how to prevent newspapers from going out of business? Patronize them! Relax with your family by giggling over the comics, examining sports stats, and completing crossword puzzles together.
10. Travel. Go on a trip, bring your camera, and take a lot of pictures. Recounting your favorite places while organizing photo albums makes for great language practice (and it lends itself to plenty of reading and writing activities).
10. Utilize iStation, a free online interactive reading program designed to teach reading across the curriculum!

Resource:
Brassell, Danny. "May 2013 | Doi:10.1598/e-ssentials.8003 | © 2013 International Reading Association –SSENTIALS IRA Motivating Readers, Inspiring Teachers: Creating Readers for Life." (n.d.): n. pag. International Reading Association. Web.

Hey students of mine! I have missed hanging out with you for the last two days! Tomorrow, when you are taking STAAR, I want you to employ all the strategies that we have learned this year (rereading, using text evidence, connecting to the text, predicting, taking notes, inferring, text structure, etc.) to do your best. When you come across an unfamiliar word, use the context clues and/or the dictionary. You all have improved so much this year, and I believe you're going to knock it out of the water. I love you all A LOT!

Use your compound and complex sentences tomorrow! What type of sentence is an AAAWWUBBIS sentence? (That's right: a complex sentence. Use your sentence pattern (Homer, Marge.), and don't forget your commas!

Thanks for curling my hair today, Robin. I've gotten lots of compliments!

Fun in CiCi's arcade