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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.
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Books on a Budget
There are scores of new children’s books that continually tempt teachers. But how do you stock your classroom library with a limited budget? Shari Frost shares proven strategies.
Managing Independent Projects
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills continue their series on independent projects with nuts and bolts advice on management.
Literacy and Global Competence
“China is going to kill us all!” This quote from a student causes Matt Renwick to stop and consider how schools can use literacy to promote global understanding.
A Year of Learning About Student Refugees
Did you know the average length of stay in a refugee camp is 17 years? That’s only one of the many astonishing facts Stella Villalba learned as she worked to learn more about the needs of the refugees in her school district.
A Variety of Share Sessions
Ruth Ayres catalogs her favorite types of share sessions (from old favorites to creative innovations) in writing workshops.
A Community Reads “Wonder”
Katherine Sokolowski had a dream — her whole community reading and celebrating the same book. She explains how she helped coordinate, organize, and purchase hundreds of books for a community-wide reading of Wonder.
The Writing Workout
Suzy Kaback meets with a group of teachers to talk through struggles in the writing workshops. Using a fitness analogy, they come up with strategies to try immediately in their classrooms.
Backward Chaining
How do you help students who are far behind their classmates in tackling writing projects, and have had years of learned helplessness in approaching complex tasks? Melanie Meehan takes on the challenge with a backward-chaining model.
Why We Like Independent Writing Projects
One way to get all students excited about writing workshop is through independent projects. Tara Barnett and Kate Mills explain why they devote many Fridays to independent projects. This is the first installment in a three-part series.
Eating Poetry
April is a month-long “thanksgiving” for those of us who love poetry. Shirl McPhillips shares her favorite resources for sharing that love with students.
Spoken Word Poetry
Gretchen Schroeder uses online videos as resources to teach her high school students to appreciate spoken-word poetry and write their own.
Forest Bathing
Shirl McPhillips explains how "forest bathing" is a wonderful entry point for writing, especially in early spring.
Inspiring Students to Revise
Melanie Meehan uses revision strips to move young writers beyond "I'm done!" and into expanding and editing their writing.
Choose Your Own Grammar Adventure
Gretchen Schroeder shares a quick exercise she’s developed for her high school students to hone grammar and editing skills using online video resources and individual Chromebooks.
How to Write a Sentence
Bitsy Parks realizes charts will help her first graders craft sentences. She shares how her sentence writing charts have changed over time.
Questioning Within Read Alouds
Melanie Meehan looks at the issue of engagement through the lens of student questions during read alouds, and shares a strategy to provoke more thoughtful student participation.
Leveraging Read Aloud
Christy Rush-Levine finds that administrators are questioning the value of read alouds, especially with older students. She shares how she uses the picture book Love in her middle school classroom to launch challenging discussions about timely themes.
End-of-Year Read Alouds
Bitsy Parks explains how the ending weeks of read alouds in her first-grade classroom are designed to celebrate learning and shared experiences from the entire year.
Building Stronger Wordsmiths
Maria Caplin is integrating vocabulary work into content areas.
Meaningful Data
Ruth Ayres explains how data can make students and teachers feel empowered or deflated—so much depends on what you are looking for and how you present it.
Asking Students to Grade Themselves
Asking students to assess and grade their own work cements learning and deepens understanding for many students, but only if it is done in a thoughtful, collaborative way. Melanie Meehan takes you step-by-step through the process in a fifth-grade classroom.
Leveraging Reading Assessment Benchmarks
Benchmark assessments can be incredibly time-consuming for teachers to complete. Tara Barnett and Kate Mills describe how they leverage the time spent by using the assessments in strategy conferences with students.
An Editing Strategy for Run-On Sentences
Is your problem writers whose sentences never seem to end? Tara Barnett and Kate Mills have a strategy for grappling with run-on sentences.
Bulletin Board of Independence
Melanie Meehan uses independence bulletin boards to provide students with options when working on their own during units of study.
Writing Workshop Bingo
Carly Ulmer develops a bingo board to use with her middle school students to give them more choice and foster independence while crafting writing in specific genres.
Students Watching Teachers
Students are always watching us, whether we realize it or not. Jennifer Schwanke explains how we can capitalize on that interest to build independent reading and writing habits.
One Text, Many Lessons
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share how one book can serve as an anchor for lessons on everything from writer’s craft to test-taking skills.
Keeping Minilessons Short
Melanie Meehan gives three quick management tips for tackling the challenge many teachers face — keeping minilessons short.
Revising Thinking Through Multiple Readings
We’ve all had that student — the one who blurts out a misreading of a text, only to have classmates agree with the analysis. Christy Rush-Levine explains how she uses “first-, second-, and third-draft readings” to help her middle school students develop stronger comprehension skills.
Questions for Rereaders
Lifelong readers often have books they love to reread, sometimes more than once. But young readers can also get into ruts. Jennifer Schwanke explores when rereading is fine for students, and when it should be challenged. She includes a series of questions for teachers to use when conferring with children who are rereading favorite books.
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