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The Triple Threat: Building a Community, Discussion Skills, and Writing Stamina

Katie Doherty knows how to pick the right text to move from whole-class conversations to writing.

The Truth About Building a Writing Community in Middle School

Building a sense of community is complicated in middle school classrooms. Katie Baydo-Reed considers her eighth graders, and is surprised at what endures most with these young teens.

Twitter Me This: Using Cell Phones to Build Literacy Skills and a Reading Community

Lisa Koch found herself a bit irritated as her high school students would discreetly send text messages as she tried to teach them literary terms.  Her solution?  Tweet tweet!  You can read here about her successful summer experiment of tweeting literary terms and staying in touch with students over summer reading assignments.

Related Videos
“I Am the One Who . . .” Building Writing Skills and Community in Middle Schools

In this 12-minute video, Katie Doherty leads her sixth-grade students as they try the prompt “I am the one who . . .” during writing workshop. This is an excellent activity for building classroom community.

Finding Words: Linking Community and Classrooms

Principal Karen Szymusiak and 3rd Grade Teacher/Literacy Coach Pam Hahlen do a quick word search activity using dictionaries donated to the classroom by a local service club.

Inferring Read Aloud Part I

Katie Doherty demonstrates how she uses picture books to teach inferring strategies to her sixth graders in this video series. Part I is a presentation of the book to students.

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