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Step Into Poetry: Building a Poetry-Conscious Classroom

Joanne Emery has curated a fabulous list of resources and ideas to build a poetry-conscious classroom community.

Weaving Words Throughout the School Year

Joanne Emery rounds up several ideas for embedding vocabulary routines in the school day. She also shares many rich vocabulary resources.

Empowering Students Through Thinking Routines

Jodie Bailey shares practical ways to nourish students’ thinking routines in her math classroom. She is inspired by Peter Liljedahl’s book Building Thinking Classrooms.

Big, Loud, and Slow: Six Strategies for Better Public Speaking

Matt Renwick worked with a speech therapist after having a stroke. Through this process, he realized powerful teaching points to help students become stronger public speakers.

When Reading Practices Drift

When Leigh Anne Eck noticed her students’ reading practices weren’t as robust as she expected, she realized she was the one who had drifted away from key instructional practices. Leigh Anne offers several ways to support students in their independent reading lives.

Kintsugi

Given an assignment to break a china bowl and rebuild it allowed Gretchen Schroeder to engage in the Japanese art of kintsugi. What surprised her were the lessons she learned about growth and innovation in her teaching practice.

Reclaiming Our Time

Vivian Chen gives four steps to adjusting a lesson from the teacher’s guide to reclaim your time and make the lesson more meaningful and engaging to students.

Increasing Engagement During Online Practice Opportunities

Mallory Messenger is intentional about monitoring and supporting cognitive engagement while students use online practice tools. Use her tips so your students are engaged too!

Color Coding: An Organizational Strategy

Leigh Anne Eck gives advice to her middle school writers for collecting research notes.

Sparking Curiosity: Developing Ownership of Learning Through “What If” Questions

Jodie Bailey encourages us to use “What if” questions in all content areas to give students the space to use their innate curiosity to engage in meaningful learning.

Plagued by Plagiarism

Plagiarism is an age-old issue, but with the emergence of AI tools, it’s plaguing our classrooms again. Vivian Chen offers three practical (and essential) approaches when working with writers.

Developing and Listening to Your Inner Voice During Minilessons

Katie Linder reminds us of the importance of listening to (or ignoring) our own inner voices when delivering whole-group instruction. Katie guides us in using our inner voices to make in-the-moment decisions that sharpen lessons.

The Art of Noticing: Have Your Students Played with Language Today?

Stella Villalba noticed her students were so busy writing quickly, they were not paying attention to crafting language. A student, Gabriela, turns to a book and asks for help to make her writing sound like the book. Stella uses this moment to slow down the class and create space to be inspired to write in beautiful ways.

Leveraging AI in Elementary Literacy

David Pittman offers practical and timesaving tips for using AI to help make instructional plans. Need a rubric or discussion questions? David shows how using AI offers a springboard in creating tools for elementary literacy instruction.

Practical Advice for Dealing with Messy Handwriting

Do struggles with handwriting matter? They do when a student can’t even decipher his own words. Katherine Sokolowski confers with fifth grader Sauvi to help him find solutions to the problem.

My Teaching Toolbox (Part 2)

Dana Murphy reminds us that having a teaching toolbox makes planning efficient and effective. In this second installment of a two-part series, Dana offers two additional approaches to delivering strong reading instruction.

Small Shifts That Make a Big Difference

Dana Murphy names two practices that made a big difference in her work as a reading specialist. You may be surprised at the simplicity and smallness that led to powerful gains in her readers.

My Teaching Toolbox (Part 1)

Every now and then we make the classic teaching mistake: assign rather than teach. Dana Murphy curated her favorite teaching tools that help her stay inspired to continually teach students. This is part one of a two-part series.

Holding Space for Counter-Narratives That Honor Communities

Stella Villalba guides us to expand the counter-narrative texts we use in our classrooms. Counter-narrative texts challenge the stereotypes often seen about a group of people, and they celebrate the joy and resilience of a community. Stella provides a list of critical questions that allow us to deeply explore texts, as well as suggestions of books to read.

From a Blank Canvas to a Community Space

Jodie Bailey approaches setting up her math classroom as a blank space with an invitation for students to engage in establishing identity, creativity, and collaboration.

Getting Ready to Read

Dana Murphy encourages us to go beyond teaching students to recognize different genres by helping them establish expectations of genres so they’ll be ready to read.

Emoji Book Talks

Jen Vincent outlines a twist on book talks—the Emoji Book Talks. This is a fast and fun way for students to share books and build their Books to Read lists.

Middle School Reading Routines

Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share ways to establish middle school reading routines. They share two downloads to help support reading routines in all classrooms.

Small-Group Conversations About Independent Reading

Jen Vincent scaffolds conversations to help students discuss their independent reading books in small groups…even when everyone is reading a different book! Download and print a copy of the guide to support students in their small-group conversations.

Developing Independent Writers

Vivian Chen tackles the difficult topic of helping students become independent as writers. She offers tips for before, during, and after writing time to uplift student agency.

Encouraging Agency

Melanie Meehan shares three tips on helping students be independent and productive writers. She also includes a hefty list of craft moves from mentor texts to use while teaching writers.

Writing Graphic Novels

Melanie Meehan shares the immersion process of writing graphic novels with middle grade students. You won’t want to miss the incredible student writing that shows the power of offering choice to young writers.

Graphic Engagement

Joanne Emery supports students as readers and writers of graphic novels. Included is a list of resource books and websites, as well as students’ favorite graphic novels.

The Language We Use and How It Strengthens Understanding

Suzy Kaback explores the importance of the way teachers use language and invite kids to use theirs. It is the key to knowing ourselves, tuning in to others, and understanding the larger world.

Overcoming Challenges in Writing Workshop with Trauma-Informed Practices

Ruth Ayres shares three mindsets to help teachers prioritize connection over correction when teaching writers.

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