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Building Cultural Awareness
I don’t understand why they just didn’t call the school if they wanted to find out more . . . Did they just show up late to their meeting? When...
Reading Bingo
Every teacher understands the winter slump—the time of year when enthusiasm (both in students and teachers) wanes and established routines begin to feel mechanical and devoid of the life they...
Identity and Coaching
What happens when you consider yourself good at something and then your skill is questioned? For example, I consider myself a champion chocolate chip cookie baker, but when I brought...
The Power of Paper
My husband is particular about his tools. He has a certain hammer he likes for some projects and not others, and wrench choices require lengthy explanations if I dare to...
Scaffolding Revision with a Mentor Text
“I’m finished,” Hayden says, waving his arm, clearly proud of his accomplishment. We smile and let Hayden and our other “finished” students place their writing in the basket before we...
Enticing Teachers to Write
The teachers who grow the most in the art of teaching writers are teachers who write. More than anything else, I know supporting a teacher in being a teacher who...
Literacy Morning Announcements
As a young student, I loved the morning announcements. There was something exciting about listening to the voices come through the loudspeaker to welcome me to the day. I remember...
Bringing Multiple Texts and Perspectives into Teaching Point of View
This year my fifth-grade students struggled a lot with point of view. I thought it was something they had already learned in the years before. They might have covered it,...
Detour Texts
Students in the intermediate grades have a lot to learn as readers. They need to pay attention to the small details in a text, keep track of multiple characters, understand...
Revising Dialogue in Narrative Writing
The more I teach young writers, the more I can predict the challenges they’ll have within various genres. Although some children benefit and learn from mentor texts that are more...
Practical Revision Strategies
We started a recent conference with Kyra by asking a typical question: “What are you working on in your writing?” Kyra pointed to her memoir and responded, “I’m revising for...
Never Again
I was coming home from a conference in Chicago when I saw a familiar site: a hotel that served as a meeting place for my family when I was growing...
Linking Evidence to Reading Response in First Grade
A group of first graders we work with is reading level M texts independently in late winter. Although the texts they’re ready and able to read have more complex ideas,...
Creative Reading Responses: It Begins with You
I am part of a teacher book club where we gather together in person and online to read children’s literature selections: picture books, early chapter books, nonfiction selections, young adult...
Readers Want to Respond
My family and I were driving to a local bookstore when my son said, “I took an AR quiz today.” What?! I thought. I specifically asked his teachers not to...
March Read-Aloud Madness
I am always looking for ways to introduce teachers to new books to read aloud to their students. I have given book talks, displayed titles, and even created book tastings...
5 Strategies for Engaging Boy Writers
I was ashamed. I have spent a good too many years since—too many, I think—being ashamed about what I write. ...
Things That Can Fly Away—A Tribute to Mary Oliver
Things that can fly away in memory of Mary Oliver Take the word butterfly— drinks from every urn in a continuing thirst for grace. Take the word blackbird— flies in...
Helping Teachers Use Their Writing in Instruction
Early in my career, Katie Wood Ray offered this advice to a room full of teachers. It changed me. She said, "I believe we all should make a commitment to...
Mindful Test-Taking
Have you ever lost yourself in a great book and become unaware of the sounds and events happening around you? Have you ever seen a child so engaged in playing...
Grammar Games
In Tony Wagner’s book Creating Innovators, he talks about the importance of passion, purpose, and play for young learners. Although I can’t always infuse passion into the realm of grammar,...
