Dana Murphy shares that by asking “What matters most?” she can make decisions that allow her literacy instruction to be student-centered and authentic.
Gretchen Schroeder is surprised to find benefits of a stronger community and communication skills through a practical attendance practice in her high school classroom.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share poems to start the year that touch a variety of needs, from building community to connecting with colleagues to hosting parents for back-to-school night.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share their authentic process for expanding their beginning-of-the-year student survey to make it more open for all students.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share three ways using The Proudest Blue by Ibtihaj Muhammad empowers and strengthens readers in all grades.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills step us through an intentional process to help students understand and interpret figurative language. Using Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds as a mentor text, Tara and Kate give students the skills and confidence to find deep meaning in texts. Download an Interpreting Figurative Language chart to support your students in learning to interpret figurative language.
Julie Cox invites us to take risks in order to encourage students to try new things with their writing and reading. Julie concludes that when teachers are professional risk-takers, we are more available to students and know how to help them when they fail.
Christy Rush-Levine shares her system for streamlining passing papers and offering a place for private feedback.
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.
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.
Gretchen Schroeder uses her reluctance as a marathon runner to reflect on how to encourage more engagement in reading and writing.
Christy Rush-Levine shares her simple system for organizing her massive classroom library.
Gretchen Schroeder intentionally leads students to “jilted genres” in her classroom library.
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.
Gretchen Schroeder shares the way she adjusts her reading quizzes to assess students’ analysis and deep thinking about texts.
Gretchen Schroeder supports her high school students to think deeply about the complexities around them, beginning with themselves and pop culture, and then moving to the texts they are reading.
Katherine Sokolowski shares a book list that inspires her to teach five different kinds of conflict.
Instructional coach Staci Revere reminds us of the importance of modeling our own reading lives for students, especially the parts where we struggle as readers.
Gretchen Schroeder shares three meaningful ways to incorporate drawing into her high school English classes, and the purpose behind each strategy.
Katherine Sokolowski combines personal narratives and comics to encourage students to go deeper in their storytelling.
Katherine Sokolowski outlines the nitty-gritty on how to teach students to organize, manage, and compose email.
Gretchen Schroeder shares a summative assessment inspired by Song Exploder in which her high school students craft an argumentative essay defending a choice of a great song.
In her high school writing workshop, Julie Cox noticed that students wrote eagerly, but struggled to give and accept feedback. To increase student ownership and trust, she started Writers’ Club, and it affected transfer of learning in big ways!
Gretchen Schroeder shares her failures in preparing for antiracist literature instruction, and the principles she uses to empower meaningful conversations about race.
Gretchen Schroeder taps into the connections between characters by creating sociograms with her high school students.
Gretchen Schroeder makes the leap to digital notebooks and finds new life in a tried-and-true practice.
Christy Rush-Levine offers a close look into the needs of readers by considering engagement, enrichment, and nourishment. She offers three examples of reading conferences with students.
Christy Rush-Levine considers how to communicate to all students that their presence and their identities are valued and appreciated.
Gretchen Schroeder’s high school students build community by creating a shared text of things they love.
Gretchen Schroeder finds that picture books are the perfect tool for rhetorical analysis with her high school students.
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