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
What “Should” Kindergarten Writing Look Like at This Point in the Year?
Melanie Meehan shares insights to emphasize the importance of responding to emergent writers and understanding the progression of young writers.
Choice and Whole-Class Texts Podcast
Cathy Mere and Ruth Ayres discuss reflective practice on the podcast.
What Do You Meme: Logical Fallacies
Gretchen Schroeder teaches her high school students how to notice and combat logical fallacies, a much needed skill due to the fact that most of her students use memes as their primary news source.
Honoring Student Choice in a Teacher-Chosen Text
Tara Barnett offers practical and engaging choices to students when reading a teacher-selected whole-class text. Download the reading choices survey and a sample pacing calendar to offer your students more choice during a whole-class read.
What Criteria Should We Use When Selecting Whole-Class Texts?
Christy Rush-Levine reminds us that text selection affects students. By shaping a unit of study to contain texts of varying formats and representing a wide variety of characters, students are empowered to develop their own ideas even while reading a whole-class text. Download a diverse text list to deepen a discussion of how family shapes identity.
Tips for Selecting Inclusive Texts
Hannah Tills and Josie Stewart challenge themselves to select more inclusive texts so all students feel as though they belong. They offer six suggestions to help us examine our bookshelves, thinking, and curriculum.
Using Digital Photos to Enhance Learning
Stella Villalba uses photos in the classroom as a powerful tool for critical thinking and reflection. Photos allow students to process complex learning as it happens.
Presence Required
Christy Rush-Levine reminds us that it requires presence to sit alongside young readers and writers. In two examples, we find resilience for meeting students at their points of need and then teaching them as readers and writers.
Welcoming Spaces Podcast
Cathy Mere and Ruth Ayres discuss reflective practice on the podcast.
Keeping Unity
When students feel safe, they are positioned to learn. Julie Cox shares ways to create a learning environment that brings unity to her high school classroom.
What Is Communication? A Mini-Inquiry Project and Booklist
Bitsy Parks leads her first-grade class in a study about communication to strengthen their socially distanced and muffled-by-masks community. Included is a booklist.
Reflective Practice Podcast
Cathy Mere and Ruth Ayres discuss reflective practice on the podcast.
Grow and Innovate with Reflection
Julie Cox makes a case for reflection as an essential tool for growth and innovations. She shares simple and powerful steps that will allow all educators to continue to deepen their instructional practices.
The Reluctant Marathoner: Reflecting on Student Engagement
Gretchen Schroeder uses her reluctance as a marathon runner to reflect on how to encourage more engagement in reading and writing.
The Choice Literacy Book Club Discusses Octopus Stew
The Choice Literacy Book Club discusses Octopus Stew by Eric Velasquez.
Classroom Libraries Podcast
Melanie Meehan and Ruth Ayres discuss classroom libraries.
Leading Students Toward Underused Sections of the Classroom Library
Gretchen Schroeder intentionally leads students to “jilted genres” in her classroom library.
The Seasons of Classroom Libraries
Melissa Quimby shifts her classroom library throughout the year so that as her students grow as readers, her library will continue to nourish them.
Encouragement for Readers and Writers Podcast
Cathy mere and Ruth Ayres discuss building connections beyond the classroom.
Formative Assessment From Share Sessions
Ruth Ayres outlines different kinds of share sessions and different formats for the share, including some that take advantage of technology.
Write Like Nancy
Inspired by a stranger on a walk, Jen Court clarifies the importance of sharing our writing lives with others. She identifies three important qualities of a writing community.
The Answer Is Always “Yes”
Julie Johnson shows how saying yes empowers students to do the work of writers: make decisions, experiment, build relationships, and be confident as a writer.
Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out (or, how to give students the resources, space, and time for self-directed literacy learning)
Matt Renwick challenges educators that if we believe that social and emotional learning is just as important as academics, then we ought to use resources, space, and time to support self-directed learning.
The Choice Literacy Book Club Discusses Enduring Freedom
The Choice Literacy Book Club discusses Enduring Freedom by Jawad Arash and Trent Reedy.
Expanding Book Choices for Secondary Readers
Ruth Ayres challenges us to be more open to the books that live in our secondary classroom libraries. She contends that committing to supporting choice in independent reading means rethinking some of the restrictions we put on adolescent readers.
A Case for Graphic Novels as “Real” Reading
Christy Rush-Levine makes a case for the robust nature of reading graphic novels. Included are two downloads: a classroom library permission slip and an initial reader’s notebook entry form.
Building Connections Beyond the Classroom Walls Podcast
Cathy mere and Ruth Ayres discuss building connections beyond the classroom.
Creating a Community of Care: Beyond the Classroom Walls
Stella Villalba outlines three ways to cultivate a community for students beyond the classroom walls. There is comfort for teachers and students in knowing that a larger community is rooting for them.
The Classroom Library: Building Bridges
Cathy Mere presses to help children take the first steps in growing a sustainable reading life that carries beyond the classroom walls. She offers ways to build bridges to the school and public libraries as an essential step.
Fueling Creativity Podcast
Heather Fisher and Ruth Ayres discuss fueling creativity.
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