Melissa Quimby offers time and intentional planning to build students’ confidence and capacity as essay writers.
Hannah Tills and Josie Stewart teach students to write informational poetry. They remind us that poetry can serve as a mentor text in many units and does not have to be siloed in its own unit.
Joanne Emery has curated a fabulous list of resources and ideas to build a poetry-conscious classroom community.
Joanne Emery rounds up several ideas for embedding vocabulary routines in the school day. She also shares many rich vocabulary resources.
Jodie Bailey shares practical ways to nourish students’ thinking routines in her math classroom. She is inspired by Peter Liljedahl’s book Building Thinking Classrooms.
Matt Renwick worked with a speech therapist after having a stroke. Through this process, he realized powerful teaching points to help students become stronger public speakers.
When Leigh Anne Eck noticed her students’ reading practices weren’t as robust as she expected, she realized she was the one who had drifted away from key instructional practices. Leigh Anne offers several ways to support students in their independent reading lives.
Given an assignment to break a china bowl and rebuild it allowed Gretchen Schroeder to engage in the Japanese art of kintsugi. What surprised her were the lessons she learned about growth and innovation in her teaching practice.
Vivian Chen gives four steps to adjusting a lesson from the teacher’s guide to reclaim your time and make the lesson more meaningful and engaging to students.
Mallory Messenger is intentional about monitoring and supporting cognitive engagement while students use online practice tools. Use her tips so your students are engaged too!
Leigh Anne Eck gives advice to her middle school writers for collecting research notes.
Jodie Bailey encourages us to use “What if” questions in all content areas to give students the space to use their innate curiosity to engage in meaningful learning.
Plagiarism is an age-old issue, but with the emergence of AI tools, it’s plaguing our classrooms again. Vivian Chen offers three practical (and essential) approaches when working with writers.
Katie Linder reminds us of the importance of listening to (or ignoring) our own inner voices when delivering whole-group instruction. Katie guides us in using our inner voices to make in-the-moment decisions that sharpen lessons.
Stella Villalba noticed her students were so busy writing quickly, they were not paying attention to crafting language. A student, Gabriela, turns to a book and asks for help to make her writing sound like the book. Stella uses this moment to slow down the class and create space to be inspired to write in beautiful ways.
David Pittman offers practical and timesaving tips for using AI to help make instructional plans. Need a rubric or discussion questions? David shows how using AI offers a springboard in creating tools for elementary literacy instruction.
Do struggles with handwriting matter? They do when a student can’t even decipher his own words. Katherine Sokolowski confers with fifth grader Sauvi to help him find solutions to the problem.
Dana Murphy reminds us that having a teaching toolbox makes planning efficient and effective. In this second installment of a two-part series, Dana offers two additional approaches to delivering strong reading instruction.
Dana Murphy names two practices that made a big difference in her work as a reading specialist. You may be surprised at the simplicity and smallness that led to powerful gains in her readers.
Every now and then we make the classic teaching mistake: assign rather than teach. Dana Murphy curated her favorite teaching tools that help her stay inspired to continually teach students. This is part one of a two-part series.
Stella Villalba guides us to expand the counter-narrative texts we use in our classrooms. Counter-narrative texts challenge the stereotypes often seen about a group of people, and they celebrate the joy and resilience of a community. Stella provides a list of critical questions that allow us to deeply explore texts, as well as suggestions of books to read.
Jodie Bailey approaches setting up her math classroom as a blank space with an invitation for students to engage in establishing identity, creativity, and collaboration.
Dana Murphy encourages us to go beyond teaching students to recognize different genres by helping them establish expectations of genres so they’ll be ready to read.
Jen Vincent outlines a twist on book talks—the Emoji Book Talks. This is a fast and fun way for students to share books and build their Books to Read lists.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share ways to establish middle school reading routines. They share two downloads to help support reading routines in all classrooms.
Jen Vincent scaffolds conversations to help students discuss their independent reading books in small groups…even when everyone is reading a different book! Download and print a copy of the guide to support students in their small-group conversations.
Vivian Chen tackles the difficult topic of helping students become independent as writers. She offers tips for before, during, and after writing time to uplift student agency.
Melanie Meehan shares three tips on helping students be independent and productive writers. She also includes a hefty list of craft moves from mentor texts to use while teaching writers.
Melanie Meehan shares the immersion process of writing graphic novels with middle grade students. You won’t want to miss the incredible student writing that shows the power of offering choice to young writers.
Joanne Emery supports students as readers and writers of graphic novels. Included is a list of resource books and websites, as well as students’ favorite graphic novels.
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