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April 18, 2025: Differentiation

This week’s newsletter is about differentiating with precision.

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.

April 11, 2025: Conversation in Small Groups

This week’s newsletter is about lifting the level of small group conversations.

April 4, 2025: Helping Students Take Charge of Their Learning

This week’s newsletter is about helping students take charge of their own learning.

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.

March 21, 2025: Give Space and Time for Learning

This week’s newsletter is about giving space and time for learning.

March 14, 2025: Let’s Learn!

This week’s newsletter is about literacy in all subjects.

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!

Welcome, Everyone!

When Gigi McAllister says the library is a place for everyone, she means everyone! As a child Gigi did not like reading, so she is passionate about creating a space in the library where everyone feels like they belong.

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.

March 6, 2025: Writing Process Tips

This week’s newsletter is about the writing process.

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.

Quick Take: Everyone Owns the Learning

Tammy Mulligan wants the kids to own the learning in the classroom. Here is one way she helps reinforce the message that everyone has something to offer the learning community.

Quick Take: A Classroom of Belonging

Tammy Mulligan shares the first steps to help students develop a sense of belonging in the classroom.

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.

February 28, 2025: Finding Possibilities with Mentors

This week’s newsletter is about mentor texts.

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.

February 21, 2025: Let Hope Stick

This week’s newsletter is about letting hope stick.

February 14, 2025: Spark Reading Response

This week’s newsletter is about sparking reading response.

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.

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