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Above the Fold: Creating Individual Professional Development Plans (E-GUIDE)
Educators need their own books of important stuff. We can't learn everything. We can't take every course, read every book, attend every conference. We must have priorities. We must be...
We Are All Shamu: What Literacy Leaders Can Learn from Exotic Animal Trainers
In the education crowd I run with, training is a dirty word. We're literacy educators, and "training" brings to mind all the crazy operant conditioning programs from the 70s and...
Poetry Friday! Poetry Books That Are Fun to Read Aloud
Early in my career, I taught at a school that had doughnuts and coffee for teachers each Friday in the teachers' lounge. It was a great way to start our...
Under, Over and Beyond Words: Strategies for Observing Talk in Classrooms
In the book Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning, Peter Johnston writes about the importance of the ways teachers talk with students. He notes, "Teachers have very different...
Inviting Students to Organize Books and Materials
Are you always looking for something in your classroom? Maybe it's that special pair of scissors, your attendance/grade book, or the long overdue library copy of Cynthia Rylant's The Journey: Stories...
Charting the Course: A Yearlong Professional Development Plan for New Teachers (SCHEDULE)
My first task in thinking through how to work with new teachers was to design a professional development plan for the entire year. Only then could I be sure the...
The Other Buddy: How Partnership Programs Help Older Readers
"Hey! Watch where you're going!" shouted a well-groomed, confident-looking boy. "Sorry," muttered his assailant. The third graders were entering the classroom to read with their first-grade reading buddies. The "assailant"...
Idealism Fades to Reality: Thinking Back to My Days as a New Teacher
I still remember picking up the phone in my kitchen and hearing the words, "We would like to offer you a third grade position." Fifteen years have passed, yet the...
Layered Support: Meeting the Needs of Beginning Teachers
The new teachers who reported feeling the most supported described their schools as having what we called "integrated professional cultures." There, new teachers could expect frequent and meaningful interaction among...
Digging Deep: The Power of Rereading
It is the first day of school; the classroom crackles with whisper voices as a new group of fifth graders investigate my classroom library. I stand back, giving my students...
Let’s Get Some Attitude
"All our attitudes come out in language," says English maven Robert MacNeil. Not just thoughts. Not just ideas. Not just imaginings. Attitudes. Maybe that's part of what's missing in those...
Power Tools
One of the benefits of living in the South is the warm weather most of the year. Two of the downfalls, though, are the humidity and mold. Usually, opening the...
Coaching Moment: Reorganizing a Classroom Library
It may sound like such a minor coaching experience, and yet it was so powerful. I was asked by a second-grade teacher to help reorganize her classroom library, so it...
Tracking Young Children’s Writing and Development
It's important to us to be aware of each child's writing growth as they progress through the year. Knowing what a child is attempting, experimenting with, and mastering helps us...
Common Core Conversations: Increasing Argumentative Writing
"Let's argue more often!" Does this exclamation bring up some feelings for you? Are they positive? Maybe . . . if you won debates in high school. Perhaps the word...
The Difference Between Conferring and “Touching Base”
Sometimes when I talk with teachers about creating "the luscious feeling of endless time," they look at me like I've lost my mind. They tell me they love the idea,...
“I Am the Book”: Helping Emergent Bilingual Learners Connect with Books
Too often in school, emergent bilingual students have trouble connecting with the book. This fall, I planned to change that. I wanted to help my English language learners read with...
Whole Class Interviews: Building Community in Writing Workshop (TEMPLATE)
As I begin to set up my classroom, I can't help but think back to Jonathan's comment on our last day of school a few years ago in June. We...
Word Study is More Than Spelling
When I was teaching kindergarten years ago, Chelsea ran into the classroom after a trip to the restroom. She was very excited as she yelled, "I found a word! I...
Important Book, Important Notes: Guiding Young Students Through Notetaking
For about six weeks last winter, my daughter Lindsay was doing research on dogs during her self-directed learning time in kindergarten. She checked out a pile of Eyewitness books about...
A Strategy Lesson for “Drive-Thru” Readers
Early in the year, like many teachers across the country, I work diligently to teach and reteach my students how to choose a just-right book. We review the parts of...
