Helping Writers Justify
When students are writing explanations, or explanatory essays, they often need to justify their thoughts and ideas. Here is a page where I explain a couple of ideas and give a resource from my book, The Big Book of Literacy Tasks. Ideas for Justifying Happy Teaching,...
Using Our Work in Different Ways
Last week I tweeted that one of my doctoral students was giving a presentation in class using some of the material from my new book, The Big Book of Literacy Tasks. I thought I would share the lesson she was using to teach her colleagues in the doctoral course. Sara...
Three Ways to Engage Writers in Narrative
You can engage writers in different ways with narrative. Some of us prefer to give students prompts to get them writing, others like to have students write fairy tales or novelettes (depending on their age, of course). I prefer to have students work on personal...
Three Steps to Interactive Reading
Sometimes, I am asked to model an interactive read aloud. Teachers often ask me, “How do you know what to say during the read aloud to keep students engaged?” Deciding what to say starts with you deciding on a focus. How to choose a focus? Well, I go to my state’s...
The Gradual Release: It’s a Swan Dive Not a Long Distance Swim
It’s summer, but we are thinking about getting the classroom ready, and those first weeks of school. What will I teach the first day? The first week? It’s so easy to get caught up in what we are going to present—when the truth is, it’s more powerful to envision what...
