773 articles since 2009
The Pennington Publishing Blog
Grade-level 4-adult standards and assessment-based ELA and reading instruction. Free Diagnostic Reading and ELA Assessments
Articles · page 69
How to Teach Prefixes, Roots, and Suffixes
Prefixes, roots, and suffixes: These word parts that are, indeed, the keys to academic vocabulary—the types of words that students especially need to succeed in school.…
How to Write a Summary
Learning how to write a summary is a valuable skill. Learning how to teach what is and what is not a summary may be even more…
How to Teach Helping Verbs
English teachers learn early in their careers that strong nouns and “show-me” verbs are the keys to good writing. Of these two keys, verbs give developing…
How to Teach Main Idea
Finding the main idea is a basic reading comprehension strategy. However, basic does not mean easy. Main idea questions are found on every normed and every…
Reading Readiness
The following big picture advice on getting students ready to read applies equally to teachers of four-year-olds, fourteen-year-olds, and forty-year-olds. Of course, there are differences that…
How and When to Teach Adverbs
Adverbs are tricky. Knowing the definition of this basic part of speech only gets us so far. Yes, we do need to know what we are…
How to Teach Verbs
We know that students have learned these parts of speech ad nauseum, but why can’t they remember them? Have their teachers been negligent or unskilled? Or…
How and When to Teach Adjectives
Why do teachers have to re-teach adjectives every year? Is it the past teacher’s fault? Or is it simply the way we learn grammar? Following is…