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...
To ensure that thinking and understanding are taking place both during and after reading, a conversation about the book is critical. Conversations about books should be...
A top priority in reading for my primary grade-level readers is to be able to retell a story and state its most important details. The details that I want my students to be...
This is the last post in my Disabilitiy Awareness Activities Unit series. Every day this week I've broken down how I use multiple texts, with corresponding writing...
It is important for classrooms to be an environment where students can openly speak and learn about disabilities and what it means to be "differently-abled". If a student...