Article Content Type: Article
Results
Navigating Curricular Change
My son pounded the couch with both of his fists, and I looked up from where I was reading while he was doing his homework. “I can’t do this!” he...
Professional Development Guide: A Template for Building a Year-Long PD Plan
A new school year brings with it excitement about all the possibilities ahead. I’ve always enjoyed those end-of-summer-almost-back-to-school meetings with principals. Everyone arrives feeling rested and with fun summer stories...
Using Me Boxes to Promote Identity, Academics, and Play
The importance of including more play has been on Kate’s mind in her first-grade classroom for the past few years. It's a newer concept to her. It just wasn’t a...
Play Is Powerful: Sharing Student Learning with Families
Sitting on the sidelines at a soccer practice, I overheard some parents discussing their children’s new teachers. One of them was the mother of a child in my class. My...
Administering a Pre-Assessment
We’ve launched the school year, and teachers are busy getting to know students both as people and as writers. The other day, I had a conversation with a new second-grade...
Writing as an Act of Resistance and a Source of Strength
I want to record what others erase when I speak. —Gloria Anzaldúa Writing has always played a significant role in my life. Since I was a little girl, I’ve kept...
When Harsh Words Are Said: Ways to Move Forward
When an experienced coach was hired for a maternity leave position, I (Kate) began to experience what I can only describe as impostor syndrome. I became hyper-aware in every PLC...
Launching a Classroom Library
I learned the hard way you simply cannot just hand over the keys to your classroom library and let 23 kids take it for a spin. Disaster will shortly ensue....
Field Experience: Supporting Independent Reading, Choice and Stamina
Helping students learn to choose books and develop stamina are important to developing independent readers. This field experience offers opportunities to see minilessons, small group instruction, team meetings and a...
Using 9/11 Research to Build Community and Writing Process
It seems unreal to me that the students who sit in front of me have no personal knowledge of the events that transpired on September 11, 2001. To them, it’s...
Building Community Access to Texts Through a Lending Library
Stories affirm our experiences. They challenge our comfort zone. They give us space to hibernate and pull us out of our isolation when we need to be reminded we aren’t...
Field Experience: Book Talks to Empower Independent Reading
Helping students find books they want to read is the heart of powerful independent reading. This field experience chronicles the way book talks put books in adolescents' hands that have...
Trusting the Letting-Go Moments
Last year we started school with lots of joy and inquiry. My students arrived and were greeted with monarch eggs and milkweed on the windowsill. Sticky notes were available to...
The Sharpening Stone
I watched a lovely video recently that was designed to describe the approach of a nonprofit called One Village Partners (OVP) and the work they do with people in different...
Strategic Seating
In my seventh- and eighth-grade literacy-based history classes, I am a firm believer in daily collaboration. I want my students to learn content and practice various standard-based skills on their...
Teacher Booklist
Over the past 23 years, I have amassed quite a collection of books full of educational research, ways to help students read, strategies for developing writers, and inspiration for writing...
Books That Sustain the Linguistic Lives of Multilingual Learners
Being immersed in the world of picture books is one of my favorite ways to stay current with what students are reading, the topics authors are choosing to write about,...
Middle-Grade Mental Health Booklist
Talking about mental health is not always easy. As we continue to distance ourselves from the pandemic, we need to be aware of the effects it has had on the...
Taking Wing: Cultivating Poetic Scientists Through Cross-Curricular Inquiry
In the modern primary classroom, the literacy block is being extended to all content areas (math, social studies, and science). Increasingly, there is more room for integrated learning. Recently, I...
Talking Through Characters
Our sixth graders are getting ready to write realistic fiction stories, and one of the important parts of the process is getting to know their characters. In the past, I...
Moving from Whole-Class Texts to Independent Reading: Characterization
In an effort to make more space for independent reading, over the years I have reduced the number of whole-class novels that I read with my classes to two, maybe...
