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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Writing Instruction
How to Make the Best Use of Time in Your Literacy Classroom
We Never Have Enough Time When you are an educator, time is a precious resource. I have had a lot of conversations with teachers over the years about TIME. There just isn’t enough of it… EVER. As a classroom teacher, I felt it, too. Lately these conversations with teachers seem to be the only conversations I’m having. …
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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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Teaching Kids About Gratitude
It’s November already–time to focus on all those things we are grateful for! One thing we at Teacher2Teacher Help are grateful for is YOU! What a year it has been, huh? But you have hung in there and given your best to your students in the most challenging times. On behalf of all the children and families …
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How to Keep Students Engaged During Virtual Learning
Everything about this new normal is challenging. Just thinking about all of the “unknowns” is enough to make you want to pop a Xanax. In our recent post about connecting with students, we suggested that we turn our attention to what we know for sure and what we actually have control over. Let’s continue down …
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Rainbow Editing
In Legos and Editing and One-Minute Editing Check, I shared the idea of giving students a lens through which to edit their writing. Rainbow Editing is another strategy that helps them do that. The physical use of a different color of pencil for each convention gives students a concrete tool for a skill that often seems …
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Daily Dictation Sentences
I used to use Daily Oral Language (D.O.L.) to teach many grammar and usage concepts to my students. I thought I used it pretty effectively, too. Then I started to hear rumblings that maybe this was not the best practice, but I didn’t really know why, so kept doing it but behind closed doors. Even though …
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