Today I'm excited to have Dr. Katherine McKnight sharing her expertise on implementing Literacy Centers into classroom instruction. Give my guest blogger a warm welcome! When...
A unit that focuses on studying characters is one of my favorites. I enjoying teaching characters because it always seems to build my students’ love for reading. This year...
Attention all principals and teachers! Today is the third post in my ongoing professional development series that highlights the 'thinking routines' from the book Making...
Last spring, my students took the SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) for the first time. To prepare my students for this rigorous assessment I researched any and...
As I have mentioned in several posts last month, one of my favorite genres to use with my students is historical fiction. There are many interesting yet informative picture...
In January, I began what will be an ongoing monthly post describing a 'thinking routine' from the book Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding and...
The Year of the Dog by Grace Lin is a great book to use with upper elementary grade-level students. The main character, Pacy, is trying to "find herself." She wants to figure...
"Teachers make a difference." When I see or hear that statement, I feel proud to be an educator, because I believe teachers do make a difference. To non-educators, it refers...
Here is a post for all you teachers AND principals out there. Last June, you might have read a post where I shared a few books that I thought would make good summer reading...
As an English teacher and a librarian, I am a huge proponent of audiobooks. I am often asked, “Is it really reading if you are listening to a book?” and I always answer with...
If you have never completed a reading engagement inventory on your students, do it... I bet you will find the results fascinating! An engagement inventory is an observational...
Students will perform better if they are interested in what they are doing. This is a statement I think about every time I begin to work on my reading lesson plans. If the...