6th
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One Instructional Strategy Changes a Reading Community: Status of the Class
Mandy Robek reminds us of the power of a status of the class to build a reading community.
Combining Personal Narratives and Comics
Katherine Sokolowski combines personal narratives and comics to encourage students to go deeper in their storytelling.
Teaching Students How to Email
Katherine Sokolowski outlines the nitty-gritty on how to teach students to organize, manage, and compose email.
Sensible Reasons to Use Student Reading Records
Leigh Anne Eck outlines sensible reasons for students to keep reading records. She considers guidance for book selection, data for teachers, and entry points for reading conferences.
Making Connections with Sociograms
Gretchen Schroeder taps into the connections between characters by creating sociograms with her high school students.
From Seed to Blossom
Leigh Anne Eck provides a guide to developing an End-of-Year Reflection for students to consider their own growth, as well as offer advice regarding curriculum and instruction.
Importance of Talk in Writing Workshop
Julie Johnson reminds us of important mindsets to adopt to allow students the space and permission to talk while composing. When students talk as writers, they have opportunities to create new understandings, build relationships, and validate each other.
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.
Best Graphic Novel Adaptations for the Middle Grades
Shari Frost shares her favorite graphic novel adaptations for the middle grades.
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.
Online Routines to Create Energetic Reading Communities
Melissa Quimby shares online routines to strengthen the class reading community.
Troubleshooting Difficulties When Writing a Big Idea in Memoir
Kate Mills and Tara Barnett pinpoint common difficulties in sixth-grade memoir. They share teaching points and student writing samples before and after revision.
Assessing Students Online: Small and Powerful Moves
Tammy Mulligan shares small and mighty moves when assessing students online.
Honoring Student Identity
Christy Rush-Levine considers how to communicate to all students that their presence and their identities are valued and appreciated.
Read Alouds in Content Classes
Mark Levine explains the many ways read alouds can enhance and deepen learning for middle school students in content areas like social studies and science.
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.
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.
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.
Sparking Ideas for Realistic Fiction
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills explain how they use examples from YA authors of how to mine everyday life for powerful ideas. They then help students move from ideas to blurbs as they start their realistic fiction drafts.
Building Interest Through Artifacts
Mark Levine has many students who haven’t traveled much more than 100 miles from home. He makes history come to life for them by bringing artifacts into his middle school classroom.
Historical Fiction Background Folders
Tara Smith finds that students in book clubs reading historical fiction are often confused because they lack background knowledge. Her solution is to create background folders that include key documents to support the history in the texts.
Balancing Conferences and Small Groups
Balancing small groups and conferences is essential for transferring learning from lessons and units, and it’s one of the trickiest tasks for teachers. Dana Murphy explains how she works toward balance in her classroom, weighing everything from the timeline of the unit to the intensity of the minilesson.
Navigating the Interpretation Process
Tammy Mulligan shares how she introduces students to the process of interpreting literature at different grade and developmental levels.
Student Ownership of Literary Analysis
Christy Rush-Levine shares the strategies she uses to help her middle school students take ownership of their literary analysis essays.
Studying Craft and Punctuation in Sentences from Read Alouds
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share the power of teaching writer’s craft in bite-sized chunks, through careful study of mentor sentences in read alouds.
Keeping Parent Communication Open in Middle School
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills find that they have to change the way they think about connecting with families once students reach middle school.
Making Learning Stick: Learning Progressions and Student-Created Exemplars
Tammy Mulligan explains the process of having students analyze and create models of good writing and analysis for assessing themselves and peers.
Creating a Safe Space in Middle School
Christy Rush-Levine ponders what it means to create a safe space for all of her middle school students, and then makes some changes.
Poetry and Pastiche
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills introduce their middle school students to pastiche, a technique of mimicking the craft of favorite poems and poets.
Writing Partners
Partner work is an essential component of many literacy workshops. Dana Murphy explains how she is intentional in building thoughtful routines and expectations for partner work in her fifth-grade classroom.
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