Articles
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
Not Your Granny’s Grammar: So Long, Grammar of Yore
Patty McGee positions us to consider a fresh approach to grammar instruction in this first installment of a three-part series.
Letting Go and Trusting Students
Becca Burk turned to her students when her class needed an idea for a school-wide door-decorating contest. She was reminded of the importance of trusting students and uplifting their voices.
Say Cheese: Sharing Photos to Increase Family and Student Engagement
Most teachers have, at some point, taken a picture of their class or a particular student and shared that photo with a family, but what if teachers became more intentional about taking and sending pictures? Tiffany Abbott Fuller gives practical ideas for using photos to increase family engagement.
What Just Happened? Download a Behavior Sheet
Becca Burk shares her new learning about how the brain responds to trauma and the way she uses neuroscience to help respond to challenging behaviors in her classroom. Download a practical behavior sheet to help guide your responses to tricky behaviors.
Listening In Raises Student Voices
Mandy Robek knows how to nurture inquiry and collaboration in her classroom. She shares a process for supporting whole-class projects.
Community Circle
Bitsy Parks reminds us of the importance of taking time to talk, ask questions, and share thinking in a circle format. Community circle is a practice that strengthens an inclusive community.
The Influence of the Classroom Library
Heather Fisher writes a bold article addressing the many questions educators are facing about their values and beliefs when it comes to our classroom libraries in this time of a heavy emphasis on phonics instruction and decodable books.
Rhyme and Reflect: Fostering Fluency Through Poetry
Joanne Emery recommends using poetry to help children practice their oral expression. She offers many poetry books and strategies for fluency practice.
What Is ORF Anyway?
Dana Murphy reminds us that teaching students to read faster is often a surface-level answer to a much deeper question. Reading is a complex process; if you’re wondering what to do about oral reading fluency scores, then Dana offers powerful encouragement.
Helping Kids Lead Every Day: Differentiate with Precision
Tammy Mulligan shares three ways to precisely differentiate small-group instruction. This is the third installment of a three-part series.
One Size Does Not Fit All: Flexibility in Tool Creation
Sometimes, we ask students to conform to tools that we’ve already created or have found success with when working with former groups of students. However, one size does not fit all. Melissa Quimby shows us how we can be inspired by moments of productive struggle and consider how to help a tool fit our students rather than the other way around.
How to Intensify an Intervention
What happens when students’ reading data takes a downward trend? Dana Murphy encourages us to be confident and intensify a reading intervention with three practical moves.
Helping Kids Lead Every Day: How to Deepen Small-Group Discussions
Tammy Mulligan shares the step-by-step process she uses with her fourth-grade students so that their small groups are fully managed by students and her teaching is focused on their needs as readers. This is the second installment of a three-part series.
Vertical Conversations to Create Coherence
Jodie Bailey shows how representations and models help students understand complex math concepts. By participating in vertical conversations, teachers can strengthen our own understandings of skill progressions and help students develop essential connections and deeper understandings.
Building Thinking Classrooms in Literacy
Inspired by Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, David Pittman applies instructional practices to get students thinking for themselves as readers and writers, and to be drivers, not consumers or mimickers of someone else’s way of doing things.
Got Criteria? How to Help Students Engage with Success Criteria
Heather Fisher offers four tips for engaging our youngest students with daily criteria for success.
Booklist: Books that Cultivate Kindness
It’s easy for students to forget to show kindness, especially in the gray days of winter. Joanne Emery shares a powerful picture book called Two Sandals, Four Feet by Karen Lynn Williams and Khadra Mohammed and illustrated by Doug Chayka. She includes a list of additional titles to inspire kindness in your classroom all year long. If you love discovering new books, you’ll appreciate this list!
Giving Kids Time and Space to Show Their Brilliance
Mallory Messenger suggests three instructional moves to provide time and space for students to show their brilliance. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to position students to learn.
Harnessing the Power of Words
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share three quick ways to increase vocabulary exposure in middle school. They also offer a summary of the importance of vocabulary development that inspires the urgency of vocabulary instruction.
Writing to Learn
Leigh Anne Eck shares how her middle school moved away from essay writing in all content areas and prioritized three writing strategies: sentences, summaries, and quick-writes as low-stakes writing tasks.
Whole-School Animal Research
Gigi McAllister shares an annual school-wide research project she leads in the library. You’ll be inspired by the way a focus on research can bring joy and belonging to all students in all grades.
Feedback Writers Will Use
Vivian Chen offers insights into the conditions needed to help writers value feedback. She discusses written and verbal feedback, as well as AI-generated feedback.
Shared Writing with Older Readers and Writers
Mandy Robek explored using shared writing experiences in her third-grade classroom and discovered it offered many rich literacy learning opportunities.
Now What? We Went on a Field Trip
Mandy Robek thoughtfully connects a field trip to multiple literacy experiences in her second-grade classroom. If you’re looking to leverage the field trip experience for reading and writing, you’ll love Mandy’s process.
Uplifting Independent Reading in the Living Room
Gwen Blumberg offers ways to make the library a welcoming space for readers to settle in with their choice of books. Classroom teachers can consider creating a living room, too.
Mentor Texts Elevate Readers and Writers
Bitsy Parks uses mentor texts to elevate her students as writers. Although mentor texts are included in many curriculum programs, Bitsy offers more opportunities for students to use mentor texts to strengthen their reading and writing lives.
Writing About Reading: A Search for Authenticity
In this powerful essay, Leigh Anne Eck challenged herself to read a complex text and discover the authenticity of writing about reading. She transferred her experience to create meaningful opportunities for her students as they write about their own independent reading.
Quick and Easy Reading Responses
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills offer three ways for students to write a quick and meaningful response inspired by their independent reading.
Sketchnoting in the Library
Gigi McAllister shares how she helped her students get started with sketchnoting during read aloud time. Perhaps like Gigi you aren’t a natural at this format, but you’ll be inspired by the value and ease of introducing this powerful note-taking technique.
Fostering Classroom Dialogue
Gretchen Schroeder shares her big takeaways from reading Inspiring Dialogue. Now more than ever, we need to help students express themselves and claim their voices, because the classroom is one of the last places where we can engage in dialogue about big questions with those who might not share our beliefs.
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