Years ago, if I had been asked the question “Are you teaching or just telling?”, I would have been insulted. Of course I was teaching! Or was I? I have done a lot of self-reflection on my own instruction, and one thing I have worked really hard at is making my teaching as.explicit.as.possible. It has …
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[FREE WEBINAR] How to Increase Student Engagement, Thinking, and Comprehension
Kids Need to Talk in Order to Learn Kids like to talk. No, kids LOVE to talk. I know I’m not telling you anything new. Managing talkative students can be one of our most challenging classroom management issues. But did you know that kids NEED to talk in order to learn? In fact, whoever is …
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How to Make Sense of the Science of Reading vs. Balanced Literacy Conversation
Not long after I started teaching in the late 1980s, literacy educators were involved in a “reading war”. For those too young to remember, it was the “whole language vs. phonics” debate. While I embraced much of the whole language philosophy, I never abandoned systematic phonics instruction. I learned to read with a phonics approach and couldn’t imagine …
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How to Reach Your Disengaged and Reluctant Readers with Home Run Books
If you are like me, you are always searching for ways to reach your struggling, disengaged, and reluctant readers. The truth is, there are many ways that a reader can struggle and many reasons why they are struggling. For some students it is at least partly an engagement issue: they don’t like to read, so …
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Build Your Reading Community and a Sense of Safety with Read-Aloud Rituals
As I write this blog post, I am on a 10-hour drive back home to Michigan. We just moved my daughter to New York City…up to the fifth floor of her apartment building (no elevators)…for the second time in 3 years. It was much easier 3 years ago! Good thing we brought her 6’3” brother for …
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Who is Willard?!
If you have read any of our recent posts, you may have noticed some advice boxes labeled Willard’s Words of Wisdom. You may even have noticed that Willard has his own “About” page. So who is this mysterious character? Today we unveil Willard. He is a snake plant or Sansevieria, pronounced (san-se-vi-ee’-ri-ah) and is a …
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Celebrate poetry month AND Mother’s Day with this {FREE} mini-unit!
This week I opened a dresser drawer that holds mementos from various times of my life. A whole category of mementos comes from the period of time that my children were in elementary school. Of course, I have saved and treasured every card they ever made for me. But I also found things like this: …
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Amazing Resources to Support Your Poetry Writing Unit
I LOVE teaching poetry writing! I mean, I really love teaching poetry. But I didn’t always feel that way. Free verse poetry used to scare me! How One Student Changed My Attitude Toward Teaching Poetry My poetry-teacher-life changed one day when Joey Q. wrote this poem: First, let me tell you a little bit about Joey. He was in my second-grade …
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