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Here is where you’ll find all the latest print features from our contributors. If you’d like to browse specifically by grade level, topic, or contributor, you can use the links in the right sidebar.
Latest Content
Building Community and Culture with a Restorative Approach
Rather than focus on managing student behavior, Leigh Anne Eck considers restorative practices. In this article she shares about proactive circles with a literacy twist.
Navigating Complex Conversations with Young Children
Sometimes, in a world that feels divisive and intense, it is hard to sit before a rug full of children and teach the next phoneme sound or math strategy. Becca Burk shares practical strategies for navigating tricky conversations with young children. From books to read, conversation stems, and how to return to academic learning, Becca leads us all in knowing how to steady the room, and then teach.
Tips for Navigating a Scripted Literacy Program
Mandy Robek offers encouragement and tips for teachers who are navigating a highly structured literacy curriculum.
The Chain
Gretchen Schroeder addresses the doomsday messages about students’ reading abilities and then lets us peek into her high school classroom of active readers.
What Type of Mistake Was It?
How can we help students reflect on their mistakes so that they can be honest with themselves about the type of error they made? Mallory Messenger offers suggestions for how to position students to reflect on their mistakes during problem solving.
From Meet-Cutes to Happily-Ever-Afters: A Romance Genre Study
Gretchen Schroeder decided to capitalize on her high school students’ interest in romance novels and designed a genre study. Romance novels may not seem like the most obvious choice for academic rigor, but they offered a shared language to talk about love, power, identity, and relationships—conversations that matter both on and off the page.
Short Story Anthologies
Melissa Quimby makes a case for short story anthologies and invites you to explore some of her favorite collections.
Just Ask Them: Including Students in the Feedback Process
Hypothesizing what our students might be thinking eats into our time to act upon what they’re actually thinking. Heather Fisher suggests, “Let’s just ask the students.” Heather outlines a process for gathering responses from students of all ages and compiling the data to make it useful in determining next steps.
Protecting Choice and Inquiry with Outdoor Learning Walks
As curriculum shifts in our buildings to feeling more structured, Kate Mills and Tara Barnett reflect on how to protect student choice and opportunities for inquiry. They share a simple and practical way to create opportunity for both choice and inquiry through outdoor learning.
Leveling Up The Locker Problem
Finding a task as rich as The Locker Problem is a bit like finding the perfect read aloud. Jodie Bailey guides us to recognize different ways to turn a seemingly mundane problem into a rich task.
Those Pictures You Make: Personalized Tools to Help Students
Becca Burk shares how to personalize tools for students to build independence in their academics and emotional regulation.
Fostering Independence with Tools
Melissa Quimby tackles the question of how to foster more independence in her students. She considers the way tools can help scaffold independence. Melissa offers an in-depth conversation that examines what tool to create, how to introduce it, and where to store it.
The Right Moment for “I Can” Statements
Mandy Robek reflects on the post-assessments in a new curriculum, and the way students were making simple mistakes that lowered their scores. Mandy experimented with using “I can” statements as part of students’ self-reflection and was impressed by the influence this simple shift had on the post-assessments.
Lessons from a Bird-Watcher: How to Make Space for Students’ Passions
Students are entering our classroom with passions. Tara Barnett and Kate Mills consider how to tap students’ excitement and create space for them to share their interests as part of the learning community.
Recognizing the Need for Change
Hannah Tills reflects on the importance of career changes in education and how they are not always about working to a higher leadership position. Hannah offers a guiding light for anyone who is wondering if a different position may be calling—even if it means returning to a past role.
More Than a Self-Portrait
Many elementary teachers begin the school year with the creation of self-portraits. Mandy Robek carries the work from the initial creation throughout the entire school year to strengthen her learning community.
The Locker Problem: Choosing Tasks and Posing Questions That Elicit Core Mathematical Ideas
Mallory Messenger encourages us to broaden our thoughts about math tasks: It’s not about using that one task; it’s about choosing a task that will conjure up the mathematical ideas and thinking we want our students grappling with. Mallory shows how to be purposeful in the questions and tasks we ask students to complete, and offers an array of thinking stems to adjust to the wide range of needs in a classroom.
Background Knowledge: More than Just Facts
Although background knowledge may feel like an “old concept,” Leigh Anne Eck offers fresh and important considerations to lift students’ ability to comprehend complex texts.
Why High School Students Need Cardboard Castles and Poetry Caves
Gretchen Schroeder makes a case for offering creative opportunities for high school students to play with language. She names three components to ensure a creative, playful experience is successful: student choice, ownership, and inspiring invitations.
Rethinking Resources: Pausing to Reflect on Old Favorites
Gigi McAlister shares a vulnerable story of realizing a read aloud text she used for many years was racist. She urges us to pause and examine the material we are using with students through different lenses to ensure that we are providing positive learning experiences for all students.
Shining the Light on Truthful Histories
Melissa Quimby advocates for us to become educators who shine light on truthful histories. To do so, we must carefully collect and examine the resources we are using with students.
An Alternative to Spelling Tests
Bitsy Parks offers a valuable and useful alternative to spelling tests to increase conventional spelling among her first graders.
Making the Case for Reading
Gretchen Schroeder makes a case for independent reading to administrators, families, and her high school students. Gretchen offers notebook entries, scholarly articles, and whole-class activities to help everyone know the benefits of consistent, daily independent reading.
Latest and Greatest Ways to Show Independent Reading Is Valued
Even as the pressure to add more whole-class reads and articles with focused reading lessons closes in around us with pressure from administrators and school boards, Tara Barnett and Kate Mills are committed to finding ways to get books into students’ hands and show how much they value reading. Here are some of their best tips for keeping the choice in reading—as well as the love of reading—alive.
Purposeful Ways to Incorporate Interactive Writing at the Start of the Year
One of the instructional methods we love the most in primary classrooms is interactive writing. It allows us to target the needs of our learners as individuals and reinforce the phonics rules we’ve been studying whole-class, builds community by co-creating something together, and gives us a chance to use our learning in real, authentic, and purposeful ways. Tara Barnett and Kate Mills offer simple ways you can use interactive writing to co-create your classroom space with your students.
Talking Back: A Strategy for Annotation
Tiffany Abbott Fuller gives us everything we need to use an active reading strategy. By the time you finish reading this article, you’ll be prepared to teach this strategy, equipped with sentence stems for students, specific ideas for instruction, and an anchor chart for visual reference.
Hidden Lessons: Are We in Control of Who We Become? (Part 4)
In this final installment of the “Hidden Lessons” series, Gretchen Schroeder turns to perhaps the most complicated question of all: To what extent are we in control of who we become? It’s a question that touches on issues of identity, personal responsibility, outside influence, and human nature, all of which are especially relevant during adolescence. Gretchen includes another booklist to support this conversation.
Authentic Audiences for Writing in School
Our student writers deserve to have authentic audiences. Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share two opportunities for authentic peer audiences for finished writing pieces in school. Finding space and time for student writing to be seen and heard by their peers in meaningful ways is essential.
Writing in the Wild: Bringing Back Authenticity
Vivian Chen offers big and small ways to make writing instruction more authentic and engaging for your students.
Hidden Lessons: Why Do Relationships Matter? (Part 3)
By the time they reach high school, many students have learned how to survive change, but not always how to make sense of it. They’ve lost friendships, switched schools, experienced family transitions, or even dealt with grief. While they may not always talk openly about these experiences, they often find reflections of them in the books they read. Gretchen Schroeder continues her series about using literature to help students learn important social and relationship skills. She includes student work and a booklist.
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