Latest Content
Conventions Podcast with Jen Schwanke

Jen Schwanke joins the podcast to discuss conventions.

Editing to Consolidate

Jen Schwanke outlines ways to make substantial cuts to a draft in order to have confidence in the clarity of a message.

Hidden Treasures II Podcast with Jen Schwanke

Jen Schwanke shares insights about leading a school with hope and grace during COVID.

Learning Standards: No Best Way

Jen Schwanke provides some critical questions for teachers to ask when they are interpreting a standard and bringing it to life with students.

Letting Go in the Remote Learning World

Jen Schwanke, like many of us, is scrambling to deal with issues cropping up in the new world we all face of remote instruction. She shares some of the most common problems, and how teachers might deal with them.

Trauma and Literacy

Jen Schwanke remembers her own experiences with trauma as a scared young girl, and how one kind teacher made all the difference in putting her on the path to healing. This makes her ponder the power of literacy in reaching wounded students in our midst.

Speed Reading

Adolescent learners can face daunting reading loads in high school that they need to tackle at home. Jen Schwanke has tips for how teachers and parents can work together to help teens develop strategies for dealing with a lot of complex reading quickly.

Strategies for Sustaining Student Attention

Jen Schwanke shares some strategies for sustaining student attention beyond just calling out a student’s name over and over and over again.

Forgetting and Remembering

In the end classroom management often comes down to students valuing the same things we do. Jen Schwanke has tips for how high school teachers can create a culture where there is better communication and more shared values.

Helping Students Develop Conversational Identity

Jen Schwanke writes about the challenges of helping students develop conversational identities, providing prompts to help teachers reflect on their strengths and needs in fostering talk in classrooms.

Stepping Away from the Conversation

Jennifer Schwanke explains why sometimes the best thing teachers can do to foster better conversations in their classrooms is to step away and let the talk unfold among students.

Spring Cleaning

Jennifer Schwanke shares some quick tips for spring cleaning of classrooms and literacy supplies.

Conferences with Parents of English Language Learners

Jen Schwanke and Stella Villalba share practical tips for conferring with parents of English language learners.

An All-School Writing Project: Six-Word Memoirs

If you want to bring everyone in your school together around writing, you can’t beat the simplicity and fun of six-word memoirs. Jennifer Schwanke describes how she sparked enthusiasm for the project in her school.

Conferences Between Middle School Parents and Teachers

Parents of middle school students are often bewildered at how best to deal with their child’s unresponsiveness. Jennifer Schwanke explains how teachers can construct conferences with middle school parents that foster reflection, action, and shared goals.

Avoiding Flat Tires

Jen Schwanke gets berated by a tire shop repair guy for ignoring routine maintenance needs on her bike. That gets her thinking about what needs routine maintenance in elementary classrooms.

Rethinking Spring Assessments

It's May, and teachers everywhere are preparing for final assessments of students. Jennifer Schwanke explains why it might be time to rethink or even ditch some of those plans.

Students Watching Teachers

Students are always watching us, whether we realize it or not. Jennifer Schwanke explains how we can capitalize on that interest to build independent reading and writing habits.

Questions for Rereaders

Lifelong readers often have books they love to reread, sometimes more than once. But young readers can also get into ruts. Jennifer Schwanke explores when rereading is fine for students, and when it should be challenged. She includes a series of questions for teachers to use when conferring with children who are rereading favorite books.

Why Bother? Practical Answers to Questions About Close Reading

Why bother with close reading? Jennifer Schwanke finds many teachers asking themselves if close reading is worth the time, when schedules are already overstuffed. She shares some prompts to help assess when close reading makes sense.

Better Parent-Teacher Conferences

Jennifer Schwanke explains how she stopped railing against the tradition and learned to appreciate parent-teacher conferences. She shares tips for making them better.

School-to-Home Journals

Are you considering school-to-home journals in your classroom this year? Jennifer Schwanke describes how these notebooks build community and literacy skills.

The iPad Is 7

Jennifer Schwanke reflects upon how the iPad and other touchscreen devices have changed the way children interact with all texts, even traditional storybooks.

Explaining a Workshop Model to Parents (Part 2)

ennifer Schwanke explains how jargon can trip up communication with parents, and lists which terms are worth defining. This is the final installment of her series on talking about literacy workshops with families.

Explaining a Workshop Model to Parents

Jennifer Schwanke explains why parent-teacher conferences can be bewildering for families, and offers advice for better ways to explain a literacy workshop model to them.

Read-Aloud Gone Awry

Jennifer Schwanke shares her experience of having read-aloud go awry in a middle school classroom.

Parent in a Foreign Land

Jennifer Schwanke shares some of the unique struggles parents of English language learners have in making their children's needs known, and how we can help them.

Student-Led Conferences from Many Perspectives

Jennifer Schwanke and Franki Sibberson share four perspectives on student-led conferences — teacher, principal, student, and parent.

Poetry Through Song

Jennifer Schwanke finds song lyrics are one way for students to see the power of poems.

An Unconventional Scavenger Hunt: Finding Errors

Jennifer Schwanke finds that a scavenger hunt for errors to add to a bulletin board is a great way to build editing skills and a writing community all year long in her seventh-grade classroom.

Replicating or Deepening?

Jennifer Schwanke finds teachers can get territorial about texts, “claiming” them for their grade level. She explores when it is appropriate to repeat the use of a text in subsequent grades.

Old-Fashioned Resources

Jennifer Schwanke cleans out a school storage area, and with advice from teachers discovers new purposes for old items she was about to discard.

Understanding Josh: The Audio Reader

Jennifer Schwanke tells the story of Josh, a special-needs student who is almost impossible to reach, until one committed teacher unlocks the key to what makes him tick as a learner.

New and Improved Nonfiction

Jennifer Schwanke remembers the days when mimeographed nonfiction pieces were rare and not welcome additions to elementary classrooms, and reflects on how much has changed.

The Beauty of Imitation

Jennifer Schwanke explains how concerns about plagiarism can get in the way of recognizing the value of mimicking the styles of other writers to find our own.

Holding a Dictionary

Jennifer Schwanke finds dictionaries (the real, not virtual, variety) are still a potent tool for teaching new vocabulary to children.

Core Memories and Gotcha Moments

Jennifer Schwanke explains why pop quizzes can be damaging to students by using a pop culture reference.

Doodlebug

What makes a teacher memorable? Recognizing a child's passions from the very first day of school. Jennifer Schwanke recounts how her second-grade teacher did just that.

Bring Back Read Aloud

Jennifer Schwanke interviews older students and discovers their most beloved memories of elementary school involve read alouds.

Best Part of Me

Jennifer Schwanke shares a favorite activity for building community and self-esteem.

What Kenny Taught Me

Jennifer Schwanke has a student who just won’t sit still and behave appropriately in her middle school classroom. She finally gives up. That’s where the learning begins.

Phrasal Verbs and English Language Learners

Jennifer Schwanke writes about the need for teachers to understand how phrasal verbs work and why it is essential to teach them explicitly to English language learners.

Making Classics Relevant for Middle School Students

Jennifer Schwanke helps middle school students make connections between classics and their current reading.

Literacy in the Music Room: A Sequence of Lessons

Jennifer Schwanke describes the work of a music teacher who integrates literacy learning into her curriculum.

Family Literacy Night

Family Literacy Nights have become popular in many schools. Principal Jennifer Schwanke describes the format for a successful event, including a sample program and tips.

Two Teachers and One Kindergartner

Principal Jennifer Schwanke looks at the challenging issue of retention and the power of teamwork.

Evaluating the Literacy Classroom

Jennifer Schwanke remembers the awkward and stressful experience of being evaluated as a young teacher. In her work now as a principal, she’s developed her own criteria for evaluating teachers.

Reading as Reward

Principal Jennifer Schwanke finds herself on a mad dash to buy a baked potato for a struggling reader, and this is the moment that crystallizes for her everything that is wrong with most reading rewards (especially those involving food).

Book Memories

Jennifer Schwanke finds connections between her childhood, teaching, and school leadership in this heartwarming essay.

Student-Led Conferences from Many Perspectives

Jennifer Schwanke and Franki Sibberson share four perspectives on student-led conferences — teacher, principal, student, and parent.

Avoiding Implementation Through Lamination

Jennifer Schwanke questions the routines of how wall displays are used in classrooms.

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