Welcome to the Houghton Mifflin support site.
I am a teacher turned technical writer. I loved teaching but had to make this career change to provide better for my family and their future. Instead of just throwing away all of my old work, I have decided to create a site where I can post it for other teachers to use. Things will be added as I make them appropriate for the public (some of my old worksheets were pretty ugly). Below are descriptions of the different things on this website and how I used them or how they can be used.
SummariesSummaries are intended to be done together as a class. I never assigned them as homework. However, unless they absolutely can't, all answers should come from the students. In my classes, we read the story together as a class and paused every few pages to fill out the summary sections relevant to what we had just read.
SpellingI wanted students to learn the meanings of the spelling words as well as the spelling pattern. Houghton Mifflin obviously does this as well since of the three spelling pages for each story, the second page is always about word meanings. Thus, I always would go over the meanings of all the spelling words at the beginning of the story in class. I would tell them the meanings of the words one by one together as a class, and then the students would have to find the definitions on their worksheets. Of course, since I mostly taught upper grades, this method would be significantly different for lower grades.
VocabularyVocabulary was my favorite part of the practice book. I taught it through in-class review, PowerPoint slides and worksheets. Besides the actual story, vocabulary was the skill we spent the most time on in class. Thus, most stores have worksheets as well as a PowerPoint presentation. For those who cannot use PowerPoint in the classroom, I have created a linked site with online slide shows (www.slidingpicture.weebly.com) for students to review. The pictures in the online slideshows are the same pictures and in the same order as the PowerPoint presentations.
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BookletsSome of the stories have boooklets. I started making the booklets in my last year as a teacher. They were something that I would give to the students at the beginning of each story with all the skills that we would go over for that story. Some things I would go over with the students in class and some I would assign for homework. I liked the booklets mainly because I could tailor them to what students needed and could include more information about the theme or other activities.
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