Latest Content
Ralph Fletcher on Mentor Texts (PODCAST)

If you’re spending some time sifting through new books and thinking about teaching with them, you’ll enjoy this podcast with Ralph Fletcher.

Cris Tovani on Reading Workshops with High School Students (PODCAST)

Cris Tovani chats about the challenges and joys of a workshop model for teaching reading in high schools.

Donalyn Miller on Modeling Literate Lives (PODCAST)

Donalyn Miller, author of the acclaimed bestseller The Book Whisperer, chats with Franki Sibberson about the importance of teachers modeling their literate lives for students.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Gretchen Schroeder finds the classic dinner party assignment is a fun way for her high school students to explore kindred spirits in literature late in the school year.

The Power of Charts in the Classroom

Melanie Swider shares suggestions for making anchor charts more purposeful.

Note Taking for Research

Katherine Sokolowski helps her fifth graders build notetaking skills for research.

Student-Created Text Sets

Jillian Heise’s middle school students design text sets late in the school year. It’s a great activity for discovering how they have grown as readers, as well as a gift to next year’s class.

Choices for Paragraphs

Melanie Meehan finds third grade is a good age for helping students develop paragraphing skills.

Closing Out the Year with “Where I’m From”

Jillian Heise shares a marvelous poetry writing activity for students who are transitioning from elementary to middle school, or middle to high school.

Closing the Year and Making Space to Remember

Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris explain how ending the year is all about making space for memories, and provide some texts to help in the process.

Video for Last Days of School

Melanie Meehan encourages teachers to build a video collection of students at work to use with next year’s class.

Best Part of Me

Jennifer Schwanke shares a favorite activity for building community and self-esteem.

A Spring Villanelle

Shirl McPhillips highlights the pleasures and challenges of using a strict poetic form.

Favorite Wordless Picture Books for Teaching Inference

Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris present some of their favorite children’s books for teaching inference.

Working Hard and Reading Carefully: On Theme and Rereading

Jennifer Allen uses commercials to promote the importance of rereading to students while teaching theme.

Redefining Just-Right Books

Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris share advice for rethinking how teachers and students define “just-right” texts.

Supporting Readers with Nonfiction Text

Cathy Mere finds that criteria for “just-rightness” varies with genre.

Using Picture Books to Foster Resilience

Gigi McAllister uses picture books to strengthen her fourth-grade classroom community.

Celebrating “The Voice” of Writers

Melanie Meehan presents a fun activity for late in the school year that uses the format of The Voice television series.

Using Padlet with Students

Katherine Sokolowski finds Padlet is a great tool for compiling learning and building community.

Space to Draft

Ruth Ayres argues against lockstep approaches to the writing process.

Group Composing

Gretchen Schroeder finds group composing is a fun way to build community, writing skills, and understanding of how arguments work with her high school students.

Tutoring Carl: Sketching to Draft

Max Brand challenges himself to let a student take more of the lead during a writing tutoring session.

Setting Goals with Students

Melanie Meehan shares anchor charts and strategies for goal-setting.

Student Learning Targets

Christy Rush-Levine finds she has to rethink learning targets for her middle school students if she wants students to pursue complex and lifelong reading goals.

Rethinking Reading Goals

Maria Caplin develops a system for helping students move beyond simple goals like noting the number of pages read.

How to Speak “Friend”

Melissa Kolb shares some of her favorite mentor texts for helping preschoolers understand friendship.

Book Blurbs in the Middle School Classroom

Jillian Heise uses the quirky genre of book blurbs in her middle school classroom to model summaries and glean information about students’ comprehension, reading interests, and writing skills.

Researching Like Writers: From Read-Aloud to Notebooks

Katie Doherty finds read alouds are a valuable tool for developing middle school writers.

Intervening with Read Aloud

Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris are using read alouds as an intervention strategy with struggling learners.

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