Articles
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.
Latest Content
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.
Whole-Class Conversations for Read Aloud Closure
Melanie Swider discovers that conversations after read alouds are a wonderful way for students to remember and retain the learning from shared texts.
Releasing Responsibility
When it comes to producing independent readers and writers in classrooms, it’s all about the language we use. Debbie Miller has practical suggestions for bringing out the best in children.
Surviving “That Class”
Sometimes you get a class of students that pushes every one of your buttons. Shari Frost provides a case study of one teacher’s survival strategies.
Anchor Chart Changes
Mary Lee Hahn finds midyear is the perfect time for refreshing anchor charts.
Weekly Check-In Sheets
Are you finding effort from students is flagging? Katherine Sokolowski develops check-in sheets as a way to lift student energy and reflection.
One Tool, Many Uses: Poetry Notebooks
Shari Frost explains how teachers get creative with poetry notebooks.
Blackout Poems and Paint-Chip Haiku: Two Fun Ways into Poetry with Adolescents
Jillian Heise uses the lowly paint-chip board to inspire poetry in her middle school students.
Giving Students a Notebook Tour
Melanie Meehan finds a notebooks tour is a terrific minilesson for helping students expand the ways they use notebooks.
Using a Sketchbook as a Tool to Teach Grammar
Melanie Swider describes how she develops notebook pages for minilessons and conferring.
The Secret to Productivity: Hard Work or Play?
Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris connect their own working lives to those of students, and consider the value of play.
Three Classroom Games for Literacy Learning and Laughter
Melanie Meehan suggests some favorite classroom games for building literacy skills.
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