Latest Content
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

More Literacy Keepsakes to Carry Home at the End of the School Year

Choice Literacy readers share more of their favorite end-of-year gifts for students to make and take home.

Beginning with the End in Mind: Planning Ahead for Closing Activities

Choice Literacy readers share their favorite end-of-year activities that circle back to events from the start of the school year.

Pencil Plans

The care and use of the lowly pencil in classrooms says a lot about what we value and our relationships with students.

Read Alouds for the First Day of School

Choice Literacy readers share their favorite read alouds for the start of the year.

Seedfolks: Connecting Community and Literature

There's so much to do during the first weeks of school, but it's important not to skip the most important thing – building a sense of community with your students.

Linking Reading, Writing, and Getting to Know You Activities During the First Week of Middle School

Want to get your middle school students’ attention on the first day of school? Read a book about how to ruin it for them.

Persuasive Pamphlets

Erin Ocon and her middle-school students observe some political activists passing out pamphlets outside the building for a few moments. Voila – the pamphlet project is born.  Pamphlets are the perfect genre for teaching persuasion and summary, two key skills highlighted in the Common Core.

Pamphlets on Books (Part 2 of the Persuasive Pamphlets Series)

Erin Ocon finds pamphlets are a terrific format for teaching her middle-school students persuasive writing and summary skills.  In this essay she explains how to use pamphlets for book recommendations.  This is the second installment in a two-part series.

Characters I Know Too Well

Books with themes of sexual abuse may be the most difficult for many of us to grapple with, if only because the issue horrifies us. Yet for some abused teens, a book may be the needed catalyst for breaking their silence about what's going on outside school.  Andie Cunningham shares an annotated booklist on this tough topic.

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.

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