Inside this Post: Tired of students forgetting what they’ve learned? Research emphasizes the value of previewing and reviewing. Keep reading for practical, manageable ways to build spacing into your classroom. Travel …
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Inside this Post: Need to deepen student investment in graphic organizers? Try differentiating. One of the highest levels of choice we can offer is student-created graphic organizers. Find the details in …
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Inside this Post: Are your graphic organizers getting stale? Unlock the power of specialized graphic organizers, and watch critical thinking soar. (I’ll also be speaking about this topic at a …
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Inside this Post: How to maximize student engagement with a simple secret…eye-catching graphic organizers. This is the second post in a series about graphic organizers. Want to start at the …
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Inside this Post: If your experience with graphic organizers has been less than enchanting, stick around. This post has simple, specific suggestions for modeling with graphic organizers to increase learning! …
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TED Talks are videos that present engaging ideas in 18 minutes or less. Their compact, visual format makes them a great vessel for the middle and high school classroom! Truly, …
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Wondering how to create a calm, predictable, and inspiring classroom atmosphere? Let’s start at the beginning! What is classroom atmosphere, and why does it matter? It’s actually quite abstract! Classroom …
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Looking to teach students about how character development impacts theme? First, you’ll need to model with some specific, high-interest examples. Students need to know what character development looks like from …
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Getting ready to begin student-led literature circles? Literature circles are the perfect opportunity to combine reading, writing, speaking, and listening in an authentic way! But, sometimes the broad nature and …
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Are parent-teacher conferences in your near future? Getting organized is important. It can be challenging to communicate everything you want guardians to know in a short 10 or 15 minute …
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Ever wondered where to start with vocabulary instruction? Sometimes, it can feel like we are throwing darts in the dark. The target has to be out there somewhere, and if …
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Does it ever seem like standardized test writing prompts are intentionally wordy and confusing? If you have stumbled upon this post after finishing your testing for the year, enjoy! For …
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Looking to improve student-led discussions? While these conversations may be packed with some of the most powerful skills we can teach students, they certainly pose plenty of challenges. Consider, for …
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Searching for engaging ways to build students’ background knowledge? Perhaps you need an activity to help students prepare to read a complex text, to write an essay, or to engage …
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What do your students do at the end of the class period? Do those last few minutes ever feel chaotic or unorganized? Without a structured routine, students will often line …
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Inside: Is your choice reading program feeling stale? Are the independent reading activities falling flat? We can engage students and keep book love fresh by weaving in new ideas from …
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Inside: Have reading logs on your mind? Still wildly popular, reading logs have serious negative impacts on our students’ relationships with reading. This post is full of honest answers about …
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Inside: Looking for an alternative to covering the syllabus or using awkward ice breakers on the first day of school? Try this multi-faceted approach to help students begin building relationships …
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Inside: Wondering how to help students analyze diversity in literature? This post includes nine reflective questions to help guide conversations. It felt gigantic. The more she thought about it, Hailey …
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It’s happened to me frequently. I sit down, head swirling with ideas, clear about the direction I want to go with my instructional sequence. And then…as soon as I try …