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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.

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.

Anchor Charts: A Tool for Every Classroom

Leigh Anne Eck reflects on the importance of anchor charts and the way they help students be more independent.

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.

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.

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.

It’s Time to Admire: Sharing in the Beauty of Students’ Writing

Heather Fisher shares a process to help teachers learn to admire student writers and find the beauty in their work.

QuickTake: Choice in Making Plans for Writing

Ruth Ayres shares the importance of giving students choice when planning their writing projects.

Writing from the Heart

Kate Mills and Tara Barnett pour their hearts into teaching writers, but when Tara loses her family dog, she is reminded that writing is the thing that helps us understand what’s most important.

Centering Students’ Brilliance (Booklist)

Stella Villalba is passionate about centering the beauty, brilliance, and genius of all students in our classrooms. She shares an inclusive booklist to inspire and support other educators in doing the same.

Student-Generated Questions to Promote Problem Solving and Modeling with Mathematics

Mallory Messenger shares a process for students to engage and solve a type of intriguing question called Fermi Questions.

Three Ways Student Writers Taught Me How to Use Writing Partnerships

Patty McGee pays attention to how students work as writers to find the teaching points for how to learn to work as writing partners.

Teaching Students to Be Teachers

Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share a process for empowering students to be teachers in partnerships and small-group instruction.

Level Two Unlocked: Using the Language of Video Games to Engage Students in the Assessment Experience

Heather Fisher considers the research behind gamified experiences and applies it to a lengthy first-grade phonics assessment. Heather challenges us to gamify assessments to maintain the integrity of the assessment while increasing student engagement.

Moving Beyond Asking Questions

Dana Murphy comes to a lesson about asking questions in a curriculum resource and realizes it is not what her students need. She has designed a lesson to make asking questions more meaningful and useful for her students.

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