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Crafting Action Plans with Teachers
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. —African Proverb Often as an English learners instructional coach, I get invited to observe...
Using Photographs in Remote Learning Communities
It is amazing how cameras and photographs have evolved with technology. I can remember days when I had to remember to bring my camera to school, take some pictures, drop...
Three Things Digital Tools Have Taught Me About Feedback
No digital platform is an effective instructional tool unless I am thoughtful about how I use it to give and receive feedback. As a middle school language arts teacher, I...
Sustaining (Not Just Building) Community Online
Some teachers had spent a wonderful day with me exploring instructional possibilities for using tools (i.e., Flipgrid, Kialo, Padlet) to meet, poll, see, and connect with our students as thinkers...
How Do Literacy Leaders Supervise and Support Online Instruction?
In our district, we have been talking about reentry in the fall for months now. How many kids can we physically have in the school? Will students need to wear...
Poetry Resources for Remote Learning
I have always loved poetry. I’m not sure if the love began when my grandparents gave me my first poetry book, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, or if it was...
Establishing Trust
The teacher and I had met about the second-grade student a handful of times, had had various hallway conversations, and had exchanged more emails than I could remember, but it...
Fact or Fiction?
Surely if alternative facts are untrue they should be called Ficts? Alan Dapre “Did you read that in nonfiction?” It was early February, and our fourth graders were learning...
Letting Students Organize Informational Books
I’m scared. It sounds chaotic. I envision books strewn all over the place and students moving around the room like ping-pong balls. I’ve read about how to do this, but...
Prioritizing Presence
I was so excited to be invited to a coaching cycle with Angie. Angie was a strong teacher, the quiet leader type, who was respected by peers and who just...
Routines for Building Gratitude
It was a particularly dreary Northwest winter morning. It had rained all night, and as I hustled to the car to leave for school, I noticed puddles of standing water...
Management and Middle School Workshops
I had the class gathered around the screen at the front of the room. I was going for a coach’s-huddle sort of feel, hoping they would all lean in and...
Lessons and Minilessons: What’s the Difference?
What is the difference between a lesson and a mini lesson? Minilessons are responsive to students by design. They can be planned for many purposes, to meet a variety of...
Varying Workshop Structures to Meet Student Needs
I just feel like I have so many students who need help. I end up sitting with just a few students and never see the rest. There’s never time for...
Developing Literacy Traditions and Rituals
On Saturdays during the spring, summer, and fall, my family and I like to go to the farmers’ market. It’s just down the street at the city park, one block...
Picture Books for Persona Poems
It was a Tuesday evening, and I was trying to get some writing done as I sat in the back of my daughter’s dance class. I had my notebook propped...
Call Me by My Name
Sometimes we forget. We forget that middle schoolers don’t wake up on school days and start plotting their teachers’ demise. We forget that second graders aren’t being naughty when they...
Sparking Ideas for Realistic Fiction
When we ask our young writers to come up with ideas for realistic fiction, we start by immersing them in stories about how real authors come up with their ideas....
Building Interest Through Artifacts
Far too many of my students have not been out of the town in which they live. If they have, it has been to visit a relative or attend an...
Historical Fiction Background Folders
I first introduced historical fiction background-information folders to my students the year each group chose books for which they had no historical knowledge. This became evident as a big problem...
Writing Realistic Fiction
One of the most memorable aha moments I have ever had with a student was with Wesley. He was working on an elaborate story that spanned days and maybe even...
