Lexile Levels and Just Right Books
I remember the year we started using the Scholastic Reading Inventory to determine a students’ lexile levels. What a gift we’d been given; we’d now […]
Unexpected Teacher Appreciation
Yesterday was what I really consider my first day of retirement. Officially, June 5 should hold that mark, but yesterday, all of my teacher friends […]
Homework Excuses
The dreaded weekly reading log. I didn’t like it as a parent, and to be honest, I didn’t love it as a teacher. It wasn’t the actual […]
Middle School Revising and Editing Ownership
Students often struggle with generating ideas for writing. They labor through jot listing and creating idea webs. Once that is done, they grab onto a […]
Building Confidence for Struggling Readers
The students in my 7th and 8th grade reading classes were struggling readers, the students who did not meet the standard for satisfactory performance on the […]
Listening To The Many Voices In My Head
Working with a small group of students I leaned in and said in a quiet voice, “I have something I need to tell you.” I quickly […]
My Classroom Workshop World
My summer socializing with my teacher friends ALWAYS leads to sharing plans for what we want to put into place to make our classrooms successful […]
Encourage Choice for Middle School Readers and Writers
A great way to introduce ourselves to our students at the beginning of the year is to share who we are as readers and writers. […]
In The Middle Book Study
Several summers ago, I set up an online course for my teachers to collaborate and learn through the summer with Nancy Atwell’s book , In […]
Recently Retired Teacher
30 years. For 30 years I’ve called myself a teacher. I haven’t always officially been called a classroom teacher; I’ve been called an academic achievement […]