Spiral Warmups

Tag: Knowledge Base

120 Minute Literacy Block Schedule
The sample 120 minute literacy block schedule below is designed to help teachers, literacy coaches, and school leaders plan for effective literacy block time management. The two literacy block schedules below are for Grades 2-3 and Grades 4-5. If you’d like to see a full set of literacy block schedules, you can learn about them…
July 24, 2022
Spiral Reading Program That’s Easy To Use
A spiral reading program that’s easy to use will make preparation simpler for teachers, engage student attention, and sequence literacy learning in a spiral curriculum. An effective spiral reading program is a research-proven reading intervention program for your lowest-performing students as well as for students who come to you ready to learn more and learn…
July 5, 2022
Why is Word Study Important
Why is word study important? What are the components of word study? What does high-quality word study instruction look like in elementary and middle school levels? These are important questions, because everything – absolutely everything – we do in schools requires comprehension of words. PE instruction, math problems, and even art class all require comprehension…
August 27, 2021
Reading Strategy Warm-Ups
We just released new comprehension strategies warm-ups! They’re focused on 5 of the nine reading comprehension strategies: Author’s Craft Making Connections Summarizing Asking Questions Making Predictions They’re available to all Awesome members, and you can find them in your member dashboard or by clicking here. The reading strategy warm-ups provide two task card projectables per…
February 3, 2020
Free Word Study Upgrades
The free word study warm-ups are getting major upgrades!Before next school year, the free word study warm-ups will all be completely new based on your feedback.The Original Word Study Warm-UpsWhen we first released the free word study warm-ups, we really weren’t certain how they would be received. Now, thousands of classrooms later and with amazing…
July 25, 2019
Decoding Fluency 1 (Updates!)
The new decoding fluency warm-ups are newly revised and available to all of our free Word Study Members and our Awesome Members! These are 20 days of spiral review focused on building fluency with the most essential decoding skills for late 2nd-grade and 3rd-grade. They also are tailored for reteaching or intervention in grades 3-6.…
July 16, 2019
4 New Weeks of Decoding Fluency
We just released four more weeks of free research-based word study warm-ups! These warm-ups are available to all of our Spiral WarmUps members including the free word study membership. The new warm-ups are based on feedback from two years of testing and trails. They feature a newly designed navigation menu that brings all of the…
June 25, 2019
Best Main Idea (Animated Reading Comprehension)
When we say animated reading comprehension, we’re not talking about cartoons or watching YouTube. We are talking about an animated text that: drives fluency, builds schema, sets a purpose for reading, and scaffolds reading comprehension. The activity Best Main Idea is an example of animated reading comprehension, and in this post, you’ll find a few tips…
February 7, 2019
The Only 9 Reading Comprehension Strategies Your Students Will Ever Need!
9 Reading Comprehension StrategiesThese are the only 9 reading comprehension strategies you’ll ever need to teach. It’s true. All reading comprehension comes from these reading comprehension strategies. Three of the reading comprehension strategies require thinking beyond the text, and six of the strategies involve thinking with the text. In this post you’ll discover:The 9 Reading Comprehension StrategiesWhy…
January 5, 2019
New Inferring Main Idea Warm-Ups!
We just revised spiral review 21-25: Inferring Main Ideas! The Inferring Main Idea Spiral Reviews 21-25 focus on biographies with multiple-choice and open-ended main idea questions. Students will read about Mrs. Baird’s bread business and American hero Hector P. Garcia. There are five days of warm-ups with two task card projectables each day. Multiple Choice The first card each…
December 12, 2018
Double Consonant Activities
We just released a new week of double consonant activities in the form of an interactive, no-prep video warm-up. The activities are called Word Builder. But this post isn’t just about those great word study activities, it’s about Double Consonant Activities that can help you in any classroom – with or without our free Spiral…
December 2, 2018
Guided Reading, Plus Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping
Guided reading is a powerful and well-researched approach to boosting reading comprehension, reading skills, and reading levels. Phoneme-Grapheme mapping is a lesser-known activity but is equally powerful to help students in their reading skills. What happens when reading teachers combine these two? When combined, these two instructional methods can create amazing reading gains! This is…
October 8, 2018
Literacy Block Schedules
Literacy block schedules are critical, and as a reading teacher, you know that better than anyone! With all the strands of literacy and reading skills that must be addressed, even a good literacy block schedule struggles to fit it all in! That’s why we’re sharing these literacy block schedules with you to use in your…
August 10, 2018
Fluency Pilot Continues
Please take a moment to complete the three question survey below. Loading… During the month of April, we had our initial pilots of the new reading fluency warm-ups – there were so many kinks to work out! However, we used student and teacher feedback to tune up the fluency warm-ups, and now we’re ready for…
May 1, 2018
Scaffolding Students During Open-Ended Questions
This is the second post for scaffolding students during open-ended questions. And you can read part 1 here: 3 Ways to Use Open-Ended Questions. You know very well that scaffolding is not about giving students answers. But what is it? How can it be done in ways that promote thinking and comprehension? Scaffolding is coaching…
February 27, 2018
Trouble-Shooting Video Problems
At some point, you might find problems with video streaming. Video playback problems are often due to internet bandwidth, filters, firewalls, or browsers. While there may be bandwidth issues, usually, the problem lies in the filtering and firewalls from school districts. Here are a few quick fixes that work on most systems: Restart the computer…
February 15, 2018
Open-Ended Questions: 3 Ways to Get Results
Open-Ended Questions: 3 Ways to Get Results is part 1 in a three-part series on Open-Ended Questions. You can read part 2 here: Scaffolding Students in Open-Ended Questions. In the reading comprehension warm-ups, you’ll find a variety of tasks, and one of the most beneficial tasks for learning is open-ended questions. In this post, I’ll…
February 8, 2018
[FAQ 4] Where Should I Start?
With so many warm-ups and skills, it’s easy to feel like a maze or a bowl of spaghetti. Let’s unjumble the pasta, and talk about where to start with your Word Study and Reading Comprehension Warm-Ups. Wherever you choose to start, remember that consistency is more important than where you start (I recommend this research…
January 20, 2018
[FAQ 3] What Comprehension Skills Are There?
Comprehension skills must be directly taught, understood, and mastered with fluency and automaticity. And that’s what the reading comprehension warm-ups help you achieve. What reading skills do the reading comprehension warm-ups focus on? Will there be more skills? These are two great questions we get all the time, so let’s answer them! What Comprehension Skills?…
January 16, 2018
[FAQ 2] Are They Test-Formatted?
This is the second most frequently asked question, and rightfully so. Reading comprehension tests often drive the nature of instruction, but as more tests are turning to assessing reading strategy, the test is actually starting to looking different than instruction. The question still stands, are they test-formatted? Yes. No. Read on to see which are and aren’t.Multiple-Choice…
January 12, 2018