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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.

See Your Students

Shari Frost shares ways teachers can show that they “see” and appreciate each student every single day.

Bring In the School Year Like a Grandma

Julie Johnson reflects on how to help students know they belong and are valued in a classroom community.

Lead with Art, and Literacy Will Naturally Follow

Stella Villalba widens our perspective by sharing the link between art and literacy with suggested picture books to help build the bridge.

A Complete Circle: Identity, Growth, and Community

Bitsy Parks offers key end-of-the year activities that allow students to reflect and notice their identities, growth, and community as readers and writers.

Words of Wisdom and Passing the Torch

Melanie Quinn shares a fun activity to help current students share advice for next year’s class.

COVID Silver Linings: Positive Changes in Teaching Practices

Dana Murphy outlines the teaching practices that she learned from remote teaching and plans to carry with her upon returning to a physical classroom.

Adjusting to COVID: A Minimalist Classroom

Mandy Robek adjusts her mindset of preparing her classroom according to COVID guidelines and discovers an open heart and mind as she prepares a “minimalist classroom.”

Best Graphic Novel Adaptations for the Middle Grades

Shari Frost shares her favorite graphic novel adaptations for the middle grades.

Class Books Build Readers, Writers, and Community

Bitsy Parks shares the ways in which class books help students work as readers and writers, as well as build a community.

Teaching Summary

Christy Rush-Levine faces the challenge of helping her students see summary writing not as drudgery, but as a way to build more sophisticated thinking around texts.

One Text. One Conversation. Many Possibilities.

Matt Renwick explores ways in which whole-class conversations around one text can build a strong community as understanding is co-constructed.

Online Routines to Create Energetic Reading Communities

Melissa Quimby shares online routines to strengthen the class reading community.

Belonging in a School Community

Suzy Kaback thinks deeply about the concept of belonging as an essential part of building a school community.

Honoring Student Identity

Christy Rush-Levine considers how to communicate to all students that their presence and their identities are valued and appreciated.

A Student Book of Awesome

Gretchen Schroeder’s high school students build community by creating a shared text of things they love.

Building Writer Relationships with Author Studies

Matt Renwick shares creative ways teachers in his school celebrate authors.

Engaging Students with Humor

Mark Levine finds humor is the “secret sauce” in engaging middle school students and including introverts in the classroom community.

Digital Interactive Read Alouds

Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share everything from useful prompts to the best tech tools for moving interactive read alouds to digital platforms during remote instruction.

Issues Overload

Shari Frost finds that the issues students may be dealing with in some children’s books can be overwhelming. She shares some of her favorite books for grappling with one troubling topic at a time.

Choice in Literacy Workshops

What makes choice authentic in literacy workshops? Christy Rush-Levine grapples with this tough question that leads to changes in her instruction.

Using Photographs in Remote Learning Communities

Bitsy Parks shares how she and her first-grade students used photography to bridge the distance between home and school this spring, learning lessons she is using this fall in remote learning contexts.

Three Things Digital Tools Have Taught Me About Feedback

Christy Rush-Levine discovers that a move to digital feedback reveals many important truths about her middle school students, including insights about the effect of grades on how learners view response to their work.

Sustaining (Not Just Building) Community Online
“What comes after we start?” Sara Kajder answers this tough question from a first-year teacher about what it takes to sustain a remote learning community.
Fact or Fiction?

Suzy Kaback works with students to create a “fact or fiction” class book to explore the boundaries between truth and fantasy.

Routines for Building Gratitude

Bitsy Parks finds even the dreariest days in her first-grade classroom are infinitely more enjoyable because she’s built in routines for expressing gratitude.

Management and Middle School Workshops

Christy Rush-Levine lowers the tension level in her class over management issues by moving from irritation to curiosity, using her “inner chimpanzee” voice.

Call Me by My Name

Suzy Kaback reminds us that the language we use to talk about challenging students shapes our perceptions of them. That’s why she has moved to calling students “small teachers.”

Everyday Celebrations and Traditions

Bitsy Parks shares how she builds a learning community with displays and traditions that celebrate families.

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