12th
Latest Content
Honoring Student Identity (Download a Survey)
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.
Interpreting Figurative Language
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.
Take a Chance
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.
Quick Take: Using Mailboxes for Private Feedback
Christy Rush-Levine shares her system for streamlining passing papers and offering a place for private feedback.
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.
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.
Quick Take: Simple Classroom Library Organization
Christy Rush-Levine shares her simple system for organizing her massive classroom library.
Leading Students Toward Underused Sections of the Classroom Library
Gretchen Schroeder intentionally leads students to “jilted genres” in her classroom library.
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.
Reading Quiz
Gretchen Schroeder shares the way she adjusts her reading quizzes to assess students’ analysis and deep thinking about texts.
Learning to Notice and Analyze Complexities
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.
Picture Books to Teach Conflict
Katherine Sokolowski shares a book list that inspires her to teach five different kinds of conflict.
Quick Take: Share Your Reading Struggles
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.
Teaching Students How to Email
Katherine Sokolowski outlines the nitty-gritty on how to teach students to organize, manage, and compose email.
Crafting Argumentative Essays
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.
Writers’ Club
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!
Finding the Purpose in Antiracist Literature Instruction
Gretchen Schroeder shares her failures in preparing for antiracist literature instruction, and the principles she uses to empower meaningful conversations about race.
Making Connections with Sociograms
Gretchen Schroeder taps into the connections between characters by creating sociograms with her high school students.
Online Writing Notebooks
Gretchen Schroeder makes the leap to digital notebooks and finds new life in a tried-and-true practice.
What Do Readers Need?
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.
A Student Book of Awesome
Gretchen Schroeder’s high school students build community by creating a shared text of things they love.
Using Picture Books for Rhetorical Analysis
Gretchen Schroeder finds that picture books are the perfect tool for rhetorical analysis with her high school students.
Fostering Cultural Awareness Through Book Clubs
Gretchen Schroeder’s students are almost all white and live in a rural community. She finds book clubs are a wonderful tool for expanding cultural awareness.
Flipping Literature Discussions
Gretchen Schroeder realizes her experiences from decades ago as a student are clouding her perspective on “flipped” literature discussions. Once she gets over her biases, she finds that online discussion of literature is a powerful equalizer for student voices.
Picture Books for Persona Poems
Gretchen Schroeder uses picture books to help her high school students understand and write persona poems.
Dealing with Lists in Style
Polysyndeton, asyndeton—if you are a writer and a word nerd, you will love Gretchen Schroeder’s suggestions for helping your students create lists with style in their writing.
Appointment Clocks
Gretchen Schroeder uses “appointment clocks” to ensure her students meet with a variety of peers for partner work.
Speed Reading
Adolescent learners can face daunting reading loads in high school that they need to tackle at home. Jen Schwanke has tips for how teachers and parents can work together to help teens develop strategies for dealing with a lot of complex reading quickly.
Forgetting and Remembering
In the end classroom management often comes down to students valuing the same things we do. Jen Schwanke has tips for how high school teachers can create a culture where there is better communication and more shared values.
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