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Jen Strange

Nashville, TN

Mama. College grad. Literacy Tutor. Phonics Enthusiast. Piano teacher. Voracious reader. Scrapbooker. Writer. Dork. It's all good.

Interests: classical music, npr, emily dickinson, jane austen, child development, scrapbooking, photoshop, anne lamott, the office, princess bride, rent, powerpuff girls, Monty Python, phonics

Recent Activity

Today is exciting for me (because I'm very nerdy.) Today someone left the 1,000th feedback for items in my store! I've been selling educational products at Teachers Pay Teachers since Feb. 2012. It's taken five and a half years and 85 items in my store to get to 1,000 reviews!... Continue reading

Posted Sep 13, 2017 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Loki the Rescue Cat

Hey folks! We got a kitten this summer and I wrote a story about him. I'll put it up in my TpT store soon, but for now here's the preview :D Download Jen Strange_Loki the Rescue Cat Sample Continue reading

Posted Sep 5, 2017 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Mutilingual Stories!

Hey there all my friends! So I have been working really hard on a cool new concept: bilingual stories available in multiple languages, all in one download. There are 10 stories, and right now I have them available in the following 5 languages: Farsi, French, German, Spanish, and Tagalog. As... Continue reading

Posted Nov 18, 2015 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Blank Board Games for Fall / Winter Holidays

School just started for many of us in the United States (first week of August for those of us in mid-Tennessee!), and that means that fall is just around the corner! (And pumpkin-flavored everything!) A lot of Teachers Pay Teachers creators make specific lesson content and add a fall or... Continue reading

Posted Aug 25, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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17 Confusing Consonant Spelling Tips

I've decided that it's not *really* a matter of conceit when I absolutely love a product I just finished, because what I love about it is the graphics - and we all know they were designed by Kate Hadfield of Kate Hadfield Designs, so I'm off the hook there. A... Continue reading

Posted Jul 31, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Helping a friend's daughter understand digraphs

Since my Facebook friends all know that I'm obsessed with how to help children learn to read without stress and confusion, they often send me messages, asking for advice with their budding readers. One of my out-of-state friends has a daughter named Lillith, who was in the beginning stages of... Continue reading

Posted Jul 27, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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More About Digraphs

Yesterday I posted about a new product I made, which focuses on spelling with digraphs. I thought I'd share some things I learned while developing the product! Digraphs are the hardest part about learning to read and write the English language. We expect sounds and letters to have a one-to-one... Continue reading

Posted Jul 22, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Spelling with Digraphs

I just finished probably the most complicated teaching resource that I've ever attempted. It took MONTHS to finish this thing, print it, test it, make adjustments, figure out how to write an "about" file . . . wow, guys. (But when you go to use it? It's totally self-explanatory.) The... Continue reading

Posted Jul 20, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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These are NOT Sight Words

This morning on Facebook, I saw this picture, with the comment: 1st grade sight words are no joke! Listen, everyone. This is a big deal. We CANNOT go around telling 6 and 7 year olds to MEMORIZE BY SIGHT words like consequently and spectacular. For two reasons: 1. These words... Continue reading

Posted May 7, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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On being a poor speller . . .

Who's up for more Edward Dolch quotes? (from Problems in reading, 1948.) Somehow they are poor spellers without knowing why . . . they have given up. All their efforts have proved vain, and they think they just cannot learn to spell. These are the students who need our special... Continue reading

Posted May 6, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Education is More Than Standards: How Death Lit Changed My Life

Last Friday my husband's father passed away quite suddenly. We rushed into Nashville at midnight to be with his mother, thankful that we live only a half hour away. It was a somber drive as we rushed in the rain toward a destination we didn't actually want to arrive at... Continue reading

Posted Apr 3, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Rhyming Game in Action

Last Friday I spent the morning doing an observation in a 1st grade classroom in Nashville, and in the afternoon I was a visiting reading specialist at my best friend's Montessori enrichment program. I had a good time reading with the students, and then testing out some of my Teachers... Continue reading

Posted Mar 15, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Kinds of chapter books for kids

Once your child starts reading independently, you might be unsure where to start with choosing books - especially where chapter books are concerned. Well I was at Barnes & Noble the other day (oh, how I love that place . . . ) and they make it pretty easy to... Continue reading

Posted Mar 15, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Sink or Swim? How about swim.

I was just re-reading through some of my old blog entries, and I found this from a few years ago: [I was playing a game with a tutoring student.] When we landed on a space, if we read the word, we could have the M&M (if she wasn't sure how... Continue reading

Posted Mar 15, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Do you use Rimes to teach spelling and reading?

I just finished up a Rimes set that I've been working on for two weeks. The materials are all designed to be printed as photos, for cheaper and easier material assembly. I ended up writing about pros and cons to using onsets and rimes when teaching reading and spelling, so... Continue reading

Posted Mar 15, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Some teaching quotes to make you think

The teacher of the education class I'm taking this semester has a fascinating perspective on how we interact with children. Last week she said: Education shouldn't be something we DO to children. That really struck a chord with me - how often do we look at kids and think ok... Continue reading

Posted Mar 14, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Why does "teacher created" matter?

One of my hometown friends, who is now a speech teacher, posted this image to Facebook with the caption "Anyone else see the problem here?!?" The teachers in the crowd expressed a collective facepalm, but one of her friends replied "I feel so stupid...What's the problem?" For the non-phonics nerds... Continue reading

Posted Mar 13, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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ah, interesting point on pricing. Yeah, I can see how someone would just dismiss looking into a product because of a high price point - unless the product description states that its a bundle. My best selling item is my Reading Practice Sentences bundle - its 3 $5 products bundled for $12. (The fact that they seamlessly work together helps too LOL.)

Commented Mar 13, 2014 on Some Thoughts About Ad Spots at TpT at Reading with Jen Strange

Correct with Kindness

So for Valentine's Day, I made a digital scrapbook page to post to my mother-in-law's Facebook wall, because she always sends us cards in the mail - for every holiday! She is just lovely. I worked hard to make a really pretty design, and was quite proud of it! The... Continue reading

Posted Feb 18, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Inflectional Endings

Another thing we worked on yesterday was inflectional endings. I adore my Wednesday student - he's very energetic like my son, loves baseball, and always has something very interesting to tell me. But he has this habit of skipping over inflectional endings! (What's an inflectional ending? When we add letters... Continue reading

Posted Feb 6, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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I love marker boards

And I especially love working one on one with struggling readers, and being able to take the time after reading a new book to talk about a word that tripped him up. (How many words do students struggle with every day, but just have to ignore them to rush forward?)... Continue reading

Posted Feb 5, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Reading Practice Sentences: PART TWO

I've talked about my original Reading Practice Sentences before - they're an easy, step by step way for kids to practice sight words and reading sentences. The jump between reading sentences and reading books is a hard one. Some kids make the transition pretty easily, and some really struggle. With... Continue reading

Posted Jan 31, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Flash Freebie 2

Hiding another freebie in an old post! The current freebie is going up May 6th, 2014 - I'll leave it up for 2 weeks. This freebie is a sample of my Rhyming Riddles Set, perfect to use to work on rhyming practice, as well as teaching about schema. The clues... Continue reading

Posted Jan 29, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Plurals and Possessives

The wife of a high school friend knows me through Facebook as someone who likes spelling and grammar just a little too much. She sent me a message asking me to explain when to add an apostrophe and when it goes before or after the letter S, because she was... Continue reading

Posted Jan 29, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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Kids and Poetry

Those of us who love poetry can get a little over-anxious to expose kids to it - and we can make it go right over their heads by introducing the WRONG poetry. I found another great quote from Edward Dolch: The truth is, we are far too anxious to bring... Continue reading

Posted Jan 28, 2014 at Reading with Jen Strange

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