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Listen to Lead
I could tell the teacher had organized the classroom library without student input. It had all the telltale signs: Pinterest-perfect labels on the book bins Colored stickers on the spines...
Digital Interactive Read Alouds
Something we’ve been trying with teachers in the last few months is digital interactive read alouds. During the digital read aloud, we watch a short film with students and use...
Followership
I was sitting down with one of our teachers for his final summative meeting as part of his evaluation. In my office, he showed on his laptop a digital rendering...
Issues Overload
One of my favorite books from childhood was Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary, published in 1955. Beezus lives an almost idyllic life in a loving home on Klickitat Street....
Changing How I Teach Small Groups
I’ve changed lots about my teaching over the years, too many things to count. Many of the changes I have made help me listen more and let the students’ words...
Learning Standards: No Best Way
Not long ago, I took part in a work group to deconstruct standards for language arts teachers. I’d reluctantly agreed to serve on the work group as a favor for...
Data That We Can Trust
Data analysis is not a clean process, at least if we are trying to gain a true measure of student success. Many schools (including mine) rely on screeners and benchmark...
Coaching in PLCs
In our last fourth-grade PLC meeting we had tackled the first two questions, “What do we want students to learn?” and “How will we know they learned it?” Standards had...
Preparing for Book Club Discussions
“When do we start book clubs?” “Who’s in my book club?” Book clubs are a much anticipated and loved part of our literacy curriculum. Most of our kids love the...
See Your Students
I saw the widely acclaimed author Jason Reynolds at Nerd Camp in Michigan. He delighted the participants with a story about his childhood. He told us about an event called...
Using Picture Books for Rhetorical Analysis
It was ninth period, the end of the day, but the energy in the room was running high. Twelve 11th graders were sitting in a circle, each clutching a picture...
Picture Books for Mental Wellness
For seven months my husband and I attended a class with our daughter so we could learn more about supporting a person with emotion dysregulation. It took a long time...
Student Moves
Students move in and out of our schools all the time. Families are transient, and their kids go with them—down the street, across town, across the state, across the country....
There You Are
If you live near deciduous trees, you've probably seen, when the leaves fall, squirrels’ nests lodged high in a V formed where a large branch meets a tree’s trunk. Every...
Choice in Literacy Workshops
Early in the school year, I came across this message posted on social media by Donalyn Miller: Unpopular opinion of the day: If your students don’t have any autonomy or...
Nurturing Independent Reading Lives in Middle School
Independent-choice reading is the lifeline of our literacy classroom. We are firm believers, like the educators we admire and learn from, that when given the right books, time to read,...
Fostering Cultural Awareness Through Book Clubs
I teach in a small, rural school district that is 99 percent white. My students do not have a lot of knowledge about other cultures, and their exposure to people...
Meet Someone New Monday: Using Picture Book Biographies to Bring Marginalized Voices into the Classroom
During a summer stroll, I realized my mind was wandering to a beloved corner of my classroom library—my collection of picture book biographies. Although they are available to my readers...
Flipping Literature Discussions
One of my fondest memories of literature classes in college is of our sitting in a circle and working through a difficult poem as a group, discussing and making meaning...
Book Talks Go Digital
What’s the first thing you do after you turn the last page of your book? I usually sit in silence for a few moments and soak in the lessons I’ve...
Building Online Writing Groups
One of the last moments I spent with my grandmother happened when she was in a temporary care facility while my aunt, her primary caretaker, was on vacation. Grandma had...
