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Death in Books: Finding Our Way After Loss
Books can help children deal with the toughest challenges in life. In a new booklist, Andie Cunningham shares her top picks for stories about characters grappling with the death of a loved one.
Understanding the Middle East Through Children’s Literature (BOOKLIST)
Sheiks, harems, and terrorists — the stereotypes of the middle east from popular culture may not be realistic, but they sure are pervasive. Ruth Shagoury and Andie Cunningham find authentic alternative views to present to children in their new booklist.
The Truth About Building a Writing Community in Middle School
Building a sense of community is complicated in middle school classrooms. Katie Baydo-Reed considers her eighth graders, and is surprised at what endures most with these young teens.
Student-Selected Vocabulary in Middle School
Katie Doherty shares many ways to make vocabulary learning fun in middle school, beginning with students working together to select words to study each week.
Curating the Classroom and School Library
As classroom budgets get tighter, teachers rely more and more on school libraries for books. Erin Ocon describes how she has changed the way she matches books and readers in her middle school classroom, depending more on school library resources and helping her middle school students navigate them.
Eyes on the Fries: Just-Right Books and Reading Peer Pressure in Middle School
Gretchen Taylor addresses the issue of "peer-pressured reading" in middle school reading workshops, with a practical example of how she helped her students move beyond the fad book of the moment to more thoughtful previewing and independent reading choices.
Book Matchmaker: Fairy Tales for Older Readers
Renew older students' interest in fantasy and fairy tales with these suggestions of recent titles from Franki Sibberson.
Value-Added: Moving Assessments from “Inflicted” to “Student-Owned”
Gretchen Taylor looks closely at the superficial reading responses of one student, and then uses a mid-year assessment to challenge all of her middle school readers to think, talk, and write more deeply about their reading.
Creating Anchor Charts with Multiple Classes
It’s a dilemma many middle school teachers face. How do you construct anchor charts with multiple groups of students, when only one chart will be hung in the room? Katherine Sokolowski explains how she ensures all classes have input and a “clean slate” in constructing charts.
The Apple Doesn’t Fall from the Tree: Nurturing Critical Thinking and Choice with Middle School Writers
Katie Baydo-Reed has to try, try, and try again to get high quality writing and thinking from her eighth graders, but the effort builds independence and reflection.
Opening Doors to Parents in Middle School
Gretchen Taylor finds middle school parents enjoy hearing about their child’s day — it’s just a matter of getting creative in dealing with the large number of families.
Helping Middle School Readers Set Goals
In the final installment of a two-part series, Gretchen Taylor explains how to help middle school readers set goals.
Field Experience: Social-Emotional Learning in Workshop
Compassion and understanding are as important to workshop instruction as strategies and routines. Ruth Ayres compiled a field experience to highlight the way understanding the social-emotional needs of students (and ourselves) allows for safe learning environments.
Field Experience: Picture Books and Older Students
The value of picture books with older students is often questioned. Ruth Ayres assembled this field experience to allow insight into the depth and power of picture books for older students.
Running and Middle School Reading Goals
Gretchen Taylor helps her middle school students analyze their needs as readers and set benchmarks for growth.
Worldwide Cinderellas
Erin Ocon discovers that worldwide Cinderella stories are a wonderful tool for building community and cultural awareness in her seventh-grade classroom and with English language learners. Erin describes how she uses a range of Cinderella picture books with students, and provides an extensive booklist for expanding your library.
Quick Take: Using Timers in Middle School Writing Workshops
In this video quick take, Katie Doherty explains why she finds a timer helpful in her middle school writing workshop.
Getting Started with Sentence Observations
Karen Terlecky details the assessments and preparation that goes into the design of her sentence observation program.
From “I Don’t Get It” to “Never Mind — That’s Amazing!”: Scaffolding Schema for Comprehending Poetry
Katie Doherty finds poetry is a powerful tool for helping her middle school students understand the value of schema while reading.
The Affect of Tech on Splrs
Heather Rader considers the cultural divide between teachers and students who are “screenagers” when it comes to texting. If u r getting LOLed out in ur classroom u might want 2 read this.
Book Matchmaker: 5th Grade English Language Learners
Robin Heist is an elementary teacher looking for books for her older English language learners who are reading below grade-level expectations.
Why Read? – A Question to End the School Year
“Why read?” This is the question asked every spring in Erin Ocon’s middle school classroom, and in the process of answering it, she and her students rediscover a lot of what they’ve learned together throughout the year.
Lifting the Quality of Student Reading Letters with Quotes
Katie Doherty demonstrates for her middle school students how quotes can lift the quality of writing, using student and literary examples in this 11-minute video.
Learning to Write Engaging Nonfiction: A Middle School Partner Writing Study
Ann Marie Corgill takes a big risk and pairs her middle-school students randomly for a nonfiction writing project, and finds the risk pays off.
Top 10 Technology Tools for Teachers
If you're overwhelmed with the slew of new technology tools coming out all the time (and who isn't?), you might appreciate Scott Sibberson's Top 10 Tech Tools for Teachers. You are probably using some of the tools daily, and may discover a few new ones too.
No More Excuses: Reading Workshops in Nontraditional Middle and High School Settings
Think you don’t have enough time for reader’s workshop in your classroom? Worried that you don’t have enough books to go around? Feel like you just don’t have the space for it? What if you had students, but no classroom, no books, and no set class times? Ellie Gilbert faced down all these challenges in her nontraditional high school reading workshop.
Literacy Rights and Responsibilities
Something bad was happening in Katie Doherty’s middle school classroom—it was time to rebuild the class community with a reality check.
Read Alouds for the Last Days of School
Choice Literacy readers share some of their favorite read alouds for the last days of school.
Literacy Keepsakes to Carry Home at the End of the School Year
Choice Literacy readers share their favorite gifts for students to make and take home at the end of the year.
Writing and Publishing Book Reviews with Middle School Students
What teenager doesn't enjoy critiquing everything in the world? Erin Ocon puts that judgmental passion to good use in her classroom with a book review assignment.
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