Dana Murphy
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Dana Murphy has been an educator for 17 years in Illinois. She was an elementary teacher for eight years and coached for nine. Dana is now in a fifth-grade classroom. Dana wrote for the Two Writing Teachers blog for many years.
Most Recent Content
A New System for Anchor Charts
Dana Murphy develops a love-hate relationship with the faded anchor charts peeling away from her classroom walls. She finds a move to anchor charts in a sketchbook and a website for chart images improves the quality of her charts and their usefulness.
A Better Status of the Class
Dana Murphy finds that adding numbers of pages to her status-of-the-class list for reading makes all the difference in assessing students’ growth and needs as readers.
Setting and Using Classroom Norms
Class promises, rules, and norms—most teachers set them at the start of the year. But how can we make sure students live them? Dana Murphy shares some tips from her fifth-grade classroom.
A Homework-Free Classroom
Dana Murphy looks at homework from the twin perspectives of mom and teacher, and finds she hates it from both views.
Using a Strategy Notebook in Small-Group Instruction
So many needs for groups, and so little time. Dana Murphy finds that a strategy notebook is invaluable as a teaching aid in her fifth-grade small groups.
Student-Centered Notes
Dana Murphy discovers that what works for one student doesn’t work for another when it comes to note-taking. She provides options and then hosts a gallery walk so everyone can discover what works best for them.
Alternatives to Graphic Organizers
Dana Murphy is dismayed by the ways graphic organizers can sometimes limit student creativity. She uses writing notebooks and a few other strategies to begin to wean her fourth graders from depending too much on organizers.
Forming Groups Using a Planner
Dana Murphy explains how her small-group planner is an essential tool for organizing groups in her fourth-grade classroom.
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