Teaching and learning in grades 4-8

Center Your Students with Literacy Workshop

From a drawing to a book, Maria Walther and Karen Biggs-Tucker trace a 5th grader’s growing creativity, curiosity and individuality. Discover their innovative ways to streamline literacy instruction while offering students opportunities to follow individualized learning paths.

Reimagining Teaching as We Lead Literate Lives

In her book Stephanie Affinito brings together the importance of reflection and the need to examine our classroom practices. She provides a framework for celebrating our reading and writing lives and offers ways we can help our students develop these habits for themselves.

What Leaders Can Do to Prepare for 2021-2022

As school leaders begin typical summer work, they will need to include recovery strategies that identify effects of the pandemic and address emerging issues. Ron Williamson and Barbara Blackburn share key areas of focus to help teachers and students thrive in the new normal.

Carrying Forward Our Lessons About Teaching

Each educator braving the gauntlet of Covid-era teaching has been stressed and stretched to wits’ end. It’s time to collect the payoff from this strenuous work. Curtis Chandler relates 5 questions teachers asked themselves during the crisis. “If we begin the new school year with solid answers, we’ll be rewarded.”

Trauma-Informed Schools to Support All Students

In Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education, Alex Shevrin Venet has written not only to inform us but also to call us to reflect and take action, writes middle school leader Bill Ivey, who anticipates readers will evaluate their practices to find areas for improvement.

3 Questions We Can Ask about Informational Texts

Asking three basic questions can help middle grades readers connect with informational texts and make sense of their meaning. Literacy consultant Sunday Cummins describes several classroom-tested steps that can aid students in identifying and analyzing new information in nonfiction material.