Teaching and learning in grades 4-8

It’s Time to Reimagine Reading Comprehension

Educator and author Nancy Boyles helps teachers plan for accelerating reading comprehension in post-pandemic classrooms by rethinking answer frames and strengthening instruction using more nuanced strategies that involve all students in complex tasks for complex texts.

Trauma and Teaching: Boundaries and Bridges

In relating to students experiencing trauma, teachers need to consider boundaries – how much we share of ourselves and how we respect our students’ personal spaces. Alex Shevrin Venet offers her insights about equity and trauma in school and ways to respond and build bridges.

A Great Summer Break? Kasey Short Has Tips!

In the aftermath of a school year full of challenge and uncertainty, teachers are looking forward to something closer to a normal summer. Middle school teacher Kasey Short shares ways she plans to regroup, relax, and recharge: unplugged, outdoors, by journaling, and more.

How to Empower Students as Questioners

Jackie Acree Walsh’s Empowering Students as Questioners provides teachers with the skills, strategies and structures to help each learner reach their potential by transforming their understanding of questioning, writes 5th grade teacher Kathleen Palmieri.

The Ditmas 9/11 Project Rejects “Learning Loss”

Middle school educators at Brooklyn’s Ditmar IS 62 chose to overcome “learning loss” by engaging their sixth, seventh and eighth graders in a long-range project documenting the tragic story of 9/11 through research, oral family and community history and literacy activities.

Reading for Pleasure Helps Keep Us Healthy

The positive physical, cognitive and mental benefits of reading for pleasure might convince overworked educators that diving into your favorite fiction or hobby books can be guilt free – even therapeutic! Stephanie Affinito shares the research, the rationale, and the method.