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Helping Parents Talk with Students
My educational work as a tutor brings me into contact with parents. These are parents with children who struggle, and literacy learning is a challenge. I am entrusted to intervene...
Picture It: Mentoring Organization
Here you see Mandy Robek has sorted her markers into color bins so kindergarten students can easily find what they need and return it to the right place. Valuable teaching...
Word Work Basics
Could it be that children teach us more than we teach them? Many years ago, a Reading Recovery student, Derek, shaped the way I think about words. While rereading a...
My Middle Schoolers Can’t Spell!
Dear Mrs. Taylor, I have a lot of concerns with John’s spelling. His previous teachers haven’t been worried, but I’m concerned about the volume of spelling mistakes that he still...
Writing Conference Role-Plays: Learning to Listen In
In the writing process, the teacher and student face the task of making meaning together. They start on a trip of exploration together. They find out where they are going...
Everyone Needs a Carly
This is kind of one of those “I’m leaving the classroom” pieces. But it isn’t. This “leaving the classroom” piece, mercifully, is driven not by the demons of standardization, defunding,...
Close Reading and Multiple Layers in Middle School
My eighth-grade students read to master literacy standards. Though this goal is always on my mind, I prefer for my students to forget they are reading as a means of...
Classroom Visits for Professional Development Insight
Have you ever seen the people at the mall with clipboards, pestering every person who walks by, asking them for five minutes of their time to take a survey? Have...
Learning from Students
I have long known that a teacher can render, ruin, or restore a child’s love of reading and writing. On the “ruin” side of things, I think of my brother,...
Spreading Out the Fun
Upon the completion of each school year, I always have the same feeling: I want to start over again right away so that this time I might get things “right.”...
Using Close Reading to Analyze Propaganda
Dystopian literature was wildly popular in my sixth-grade classroom last year, and I anticipate it will continue to be, so I decided to capture that enthusiasm and build a unit...
Can Books Harm Children? Support and Censorship
I recently read a blog entry written by a young adult author, Andrew Smith. He told of enduring a negative media storm around his book Marbury Lens. Responders believed that “harm...
What Kenny Taught Me
A language arts classroom can be a difficult place for young learners who struggle to sit quietly. Tradition tells us that in a school setting, reading and writing requires focus,...
Top 10 Intermediate Books for Boys
Two years ago I stood side by side with a student, glancing over the shelves of books in my classroom. Matt was, by his own definition, a nonreader. He knew...
Changing Focus with New Teachers
I push together two tables, set resources out, and adjust a dish of seasonal treats in the center of the table. Soon six “new” teachers will hustle in for our...
Getting Traction When There Is Nothing to Write About
I am at a writing retreat and I’m stuck. I have nothing to write about, nothing of value to commit to the page, no good ideas. I am on the...
Coaching Minute: Listen and Be Brave
Deb Gaby has wise advice about the coach's role with teachers in this brief video.
Rethinking Writing Notebooks
When I first began teaching writing workshop, I was told that my students needed to keep a writer's notebook. I was good at following directions, so I had students keep...
Teacher as Mentor Writer
For many years I have felt content and fulfilled with the reading workshop my students and I build each year. I am confident about my ability to plan for and...
Reader Response: Keeping It Real
The music starts in our first-grade classroom and kids begin to sign out of their computers, put books away, and select the ones they want to share. Everyone begins to...
Jumping Off the Buzz Wagon: The Value of Reading Logs
During a recent workshop I was leading, a teacher came up to me shocked that I had shared a student reading log in one of my slides. She sounded confused...
