Heather Fisher shares a process to help teachers learn to admire student writers and find the beauty in their work.
Ruth Ayres shares the importance of giving students choice when planning their writing projects.
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.
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.
Gretchen Schroeder offers three poetry writing activities to take the pressure off of the writing process by using another poet’s structure and/or words as a starting point. You’ll be amazed by how deep and personal the resulting poems can become. Download a PDF for students to collect lines for a cento poem.
Mallory Messenger shares a process for students to engage and solve a type of intriguing question called Fermi Questions.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share a process for empowering students to be teachers in partnerships and small-group instruction.
What do you do when students won’t write during class? Gretchen Schroeder offers a creative, practical, and effective solution.
Mallory Messenger shares the intentional moves needed to help students build independence in problem solving.
Leigh Anne Eck was named the Indiana Rural Teacher of the Year and shares the way she rethought her library through the lens of reflecting her students’ rural identity or revealing rural stereotypes. This middle-grade booklist is an excellent place for us all to begin expanding our classroom libraries.
Gretchen Schroeder addresses the negative and positive perceptions of rural people with her high school students through readings, discussions, and analytical writing. Download a guide for Critical Rural Perspective Analysis to use with your students.
Secondary instructional coach Holly Wenning shares ways to assess high school readers.
In this third installment about classroom book clubs, Leigh Anne Eck shares options for robust assessment as well as answers to some frequently asked questions.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share a practical process for using an informational mentor text to support students as readers and writers. Download a note sheet to support students in noticing text structure.
Christy Rush-Levine uses one-page reading responses as a simple culminating activity to provide closure for book clubs. However, the data they offer about readers is far from simple.
In this second installment about book clubs, Leigh Anne Eck shares procedures for book club meetings, as well as discusses the importance of standards and instruction. Download a discussion guide.
Secondary instructional coach Holly Wenning shares her own paradigm shift of teaching readers rather than teaching books, and encourages all teachers to consider the importance of putting students before books when planning literacy instruction.
In the first installment of a three-part series, Leigh Anne Eck clearly lays out how to get started with book clubs. Included is an editable planning bookmark to give students more ownership of their reading schedules.
Christy Rush-Levine offers a booklist of anthologies to diversify middle school reading instruction. In this robust list, everyone will find a new addition to use as a whole-class text.
Instructional coach Holly Wenning shares the importance of the workshop model, and especially work time, for high school students. See the transition from minilesson to work time in a 10th-grade English class.
Jodie Bailey provides a structure to give students more time to think through ideas and problems. By using this practice, students gain ownership for their learning.
Dana Murphy reminds us of the power of an anchor chart in a digital world.
Gretchen Schroeder finds ways to increase the energy students have for doing work in her classroom. Her practical tips are useful for all students.
Jodie Bailey shares a powerful practice of math debates for students to explore a problem with discussion and evidence to discover the correct solution.
Dana Murphy shares ways to nourish a sense of belonging in all students.
Christy Rush-Levine guides us to make reading recommendations based on what students enjoy most about a book they recently read. Christy used to make recommendations based on the genre or topic, but she has learned to listen to students to discover the reason they loved a recent read and use this information for recommendations.
Dana Murphy shares that by asking “What matters most?” she can make decisions that allow her literacy instruction to be student-centered and authentic.
Gretchen Schroeder is surprised to find benefits of a stronger community and communication skills through a practical attendance practice in her high school classroom.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share poems to start the year that touch a variety of needs, from building community to connecting with colleagues to hosting parents for back-to-school night.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share their authentic process for expanding their beginning-of-the-year student survey to make it more open for all students.
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