Teaching and learning in grades 4-8

Decolonizing My List of YA Speculative Fiction

Where were the authors of color in Dina Strasser’s recent recommended list of speculative fiction for YA readers? Dina revisits her December post and considers why she overlooked women of color. Her commitment to being more inclusive includes new titles and future reviews.

Effective School Leaders Are Guided By Values

To be the education leaders our society needs, operational expertise and pedagogical know-how are necessary but not enough, says author and mentor principal Toni Faddis. It’s by walking our ethical line and adhering to core values that we’ll achieve our school missions.

Conferring Moves That Help Readers Open Up

To better understand what readers are thinking, Gravity Goldberg and Renée Houser urge teachers to reflect on current conferring questions, collaborate with colleagues on deeper questions that align with goals, and allow their teacher curiosity to help guide the conference.

Using SEM to Develop Student Mathematicians

After detailing the processes and skills needed for math, the authors discuss how the Student Enrichment Model may be implemented in a wide variety of environments, writes educator Michael Hernandez. New to SEM, he finds lots to use in his math and algebra classes.

3 Strategies for Teaching Academic Vocabulary

Although we have always known the importance of teaching vocabulary, there’s been a recent surge of interest in teaching academic vocabulary across the content areas. Author Barbara Blackburn describes three strategies she recommends to help make the new words stick.