6th
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Exploring Author’s Craft in Graphic Novels
Christy Rush-Levine finds her middle school students need more support and scaffolds to understand authors’ craft in graphic novels.
Self-Esteem and Literacy: Understanding Jeff
Jeff is apathetic and unengaged. To help this middle school learner, Mark Levine needs to understand his history. Mark shows the power of interviews for connecting with struggling teen learners.
Community Timeline Project
Katherine Sokolowski uses the Community Timeline Project to bring together students and older community members around history and writing. Includes a downloadable interview guide to help students record the interviewee’s life story.
Scaffolding Instruction in an Author Study
Christy Rush-Levine scaffolds her middle-school students’ understanding of craft moves by moving from short stories to novels when studying specific authors.
Magic Connections: Young Adult Literature in a Social Studies Class
Mark Levine shows how young adult literature is a potent tool to drive learning in his middle school social studies classroom.
When Learning Gets Tricky, Go Back to the Pigs
Whenever a tricky literary concept comes up, Tammy Mulligan finds herself returning to a favorite mentor text to guide students. She explains the value of shared simple stories for understanding complicated literary elements.
The Freewrite Pause
Mark Levine finds his middle school students need more time to digest learning from brief articles. Freewriting provides the perfect pause for promoting more reflection and insight.
Whole-Class Reflection in Middle School
Mark Levine explains why whole-class reflection is an essential component of his middle school workshops.
Building Reading Identities Across the Year
The start of the school year is often all about building reader identities in classrooms. And then October comes, and many of the activities that help students celebrate their reading histories and preferences are forgotten. Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share ways teachers can continue to help students define, refine, and expand their reading identities all year long.
Circle Share
Sometimes “winging it” because we don’t have plans can lead to the most profound learning. Dana Murphy dreams up a quick circle share, and what follows is magic.
Textual Lineage
Christy Rush-Levine uses book covers to help her middle-school students explore their histories (or “lineages”) as readers.
Book Club Tools
Tammy Mulligan shares the importance of giving students choice and agency with book club tools to improve engagement and the quality of the conversations.
Moving from Interactive Read Alouds to Book Clubs
Tammy Mulligan shares how teachers can move seamlessly from thoughtful conversations during whole-class read alouds to lively book clubs.
Introducing Social Studies Concepts with Picture Books
Mark Levine explains how picture books are powerful teaching tools in his middle school classroom.
Read Aloud in Middle School
Katherine Sokolowski values read aloud for her middle school students and struggles to find time for them. Her solution? A picture book a day, better known as the #bookaday activity.
Grand Conversations and Read Aloud
Are your conversations during read aloud stilted or shallow? Tammy Mulligan recommends weekly “grand conversations” to spark more thoughtful talk. She provides the tools you need to get started in your classroom.
Jane Goodall Inquiry: Introducing Expectations
Katherine Sokolowski introduces her students to routines and expectations early in the year with a unit on Jane Goodall, including many short read alouds.
Back-Channel Conversations During Read Alouds
Christy Rush-Levine considers some of the “underground” ways in which she converses about books at conferences and on social media, and decides to set up a back channel for similar conversations about read alouds in her classroom.
Interactive Read Aloud and the Whole-Class Notebook
Tammy Mulligan enhances the quality of the class read aloud and student discussions with the use of a whole-class response notebook.
A Better Status of the Class
Dana Murphy finds that adding numbers of pages to her status-of-the-class list for reading makes all the difference in assessing students’ growth and needs as readers.
Talking Through Characters
Melanie Meehan shares activities that help students talk about their characters before writing about them in a realistic fiction unit.
Summer Literacy
“What can I do to help my son and daughter stay sharp and not lose momentum during the summer?” When a parent asks this question, Mark Levine offers his Top Six Summer Slide Preventers.
Releasing the Teaching to Students
Mark Levine releases responsibility for teaching and assessment to students late in the school year, and hears echoes of learning from previous units.
A Fresh Take on Persuasive Writing
Louise Wrobleski uses video clips, children’s literature, and newspaper articles to teach middle school students new ways to craft persuasive writing.
Reading That Changes Us
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills slow down the “Article of the Week” nonfiction reading activity, making space for more reflection and thoughtful discussion.
Scaffolding Revision with a Mentor Text
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills show how to break down mentor texts into brief excerpts for step-by-step scaffolding of writers in the intermediate grades.
Detour Texts
Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan explain the concept of “detour texts”—picture books to use as mentor texts in the intermediate grades to illustrate complex literary elements. They also share three of their favorite new children’s books to use as detours.
Practical Revision Strategies
If your students are equating revision with proofreading and final cleanups, Tara Barnett and Kate Mills have some practical revision strategies you might want to try.
The Magic That Might Go Down
Christy Rush-Levine decides to slow down in her classroom and engage more fully with a student who is a wiseacre and resistant reader. What happens next can only be described as magic.
Building Habits with Short-Term Goals
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills explain why short-term writing goals can help students reset expectations for their writing on a daily basis, and how they make these goals an integral part of their writing workshops.
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