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Rethinking Resources: Pausing to Reflect on Old Favorites
It was World Read Aloud Day—one of my favorite days of the year—in my fourth-grade classroom several years ago. We spend the day sharing favorite read alouds from visitors, staff...
Shining the Light on Truthful Histories
At the 2024 NCTE convention, I was surrounded by professionals who valued that year's theme: Heart, Hope, and Humanity. During one of the keynote addresses, I was struck by these...
An Alternative to Spelling Tests
As I read through my students' writing journals, I was reminded of the question I get from parents from time to time: “What happened to spelling tests?" When parents fret...
Library Choices for All: Providing Activities for Every Student
It’s a typical day in my library, and the students have finished checking out books. Today we read Unplugged by Steve Antony. The book is about a robot who gets...
Bingo! Games to the Rescue
"Nobody knows how things will turn out, that's why they go ahead and play the game... You give it your all and sometimes amazing things happen, but it's hardly ever...
Making the Case for Reading
The word just has really begun to get on my nerves. When an administrator asks about scheduling a walk-through and asks, “Will you just be reading at the beginning of...
Latest and Greatest Ways to Show Independent Reading Is Valued
Tara was recently moving her daughter's bedroom from downstairs, where she’s been for many years, to an upstairs bedroom. Although the room she moved to is larger, she wasn’t able...
Rethinking Flow in the ELA Classroom
My superpower in junior high school was reading. I couldn’t keep track of my assignments. Homework was a nightly battle. But if you gave me a book I wanted to...
Tough Conversations
When I’m frustrated with someone, I tend to have long conversations in my head, picturing all the ways I could explain exactly how this person has annoyed me. I’m looking...
Purposeful Ways to Incorporate Interactive Writing at the Start of the Year
One of the instructional methods we love the most in primary classrooms is interactive writing. It allows us to target the needs of our learners as individuals and reinforce the...
Talking Back: A Strategy for Annotation
We should think of marginalia as a genre, or so Roy Peter Clark suggests in his 2024 book How to Write Short. The purpose of marginalia, he says, is “learning,...
Design for the Edges: Strategies for Supporting Unique Readers and Writers
One of the symptoms of my ADHD could be described as “promiscuous reading”: jumping around from one half-read book to the next. For example, I started the novella Mapping the...
Swarm: Embracing the Unexpected
I left the Zoom session of the virtual writing retreat, took a sip from my mug of tea, and reflected on the thoughtful feedback I'd just received. As I considered...
Hidden Lessons: Are We in Control of Who We Become? (Part 4)
In this final installment of the “Hidden Lessons” series, I turn to perhaps the most complicated question of all: To what extent are we in control of who we become?...
Authentic Audiences for Writing in School
The first time we posted an article on the blog we shared was several years ago. We weren’t sure that anyone besides ourselves would even read it. At the time,...
Writing in the Wild: Bringing Back Authenticity
Papers, sticky notes, and folders are strewn across the tables as my second graders work on their fantasy books. They've studied several mentor texts of various types of fantasy writing:...
Embarking on a New Curriculum: What I Must Carry with Me
"The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change [their] future by merely changing [their] attitude." — attributed to Oprah Winfrey I am next in line to...
Coach-Principal Meeting Template
An Agenda Template to Streamline Principal-Coach Meetings Every administration and their building needs are different. For coaches, traveling between buildings can often feel like whiplash. The building goals are different....
Hidden Lessons: Why Do Relationships Matter? (Part 3)
By the time they reach high school, many students have learned how to survive change, but not always how to make sense of it. They’ve lost friendships, switched schools, experienced...
I Am a Listener Who…
Behind the small-group table, he sat on the floor with his legs outstretched. His head rested on the cabinet while tears streamed down his cheeks. Although I had seen him...
Building Trust in Our Classrooms
The beginning of the school year brings many demands: reading and writing assessments, seating charts, and binder setup, to name a few. It can be easy to hit the ground...
