100-Word Stories: A Short Form for Expansive Writing by Kim Culbertson and Grant Faulkner is a wonderful resource for teaching with micro texts and for helping students in levels 5-12 develop both writing and reading mastery, writes middle school ELA teacher Erin Corrigan-Smith.
Educator and author Regie Routman considers heart-centered principles that can help us go a long way to ensure that what we do and are asking our students and loved ones to do will result in personal and professional growth, gratitude, generosity, and even sparks of greatness.
During this reading activity, partners think out loud, supported by active listening, to deepen their individual and shared understandings. Rather than reading without focus, this strategy teaches students to attend to their reading by stopping to “say something” at intervals.
Marilyn Pryle’s five crucial questions help students become critical readers in the Age of Disinformation as they learn to look more deeply into any text, in any form, and see the influences around it, the voices and sponsors, the craft and rhetoric, the intent and message.
The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 takes a great first edition and makes it even better, says literacy coach Pam Hamilton, noting Jennifer Serravallo’s contention that reading strategies are important across K-12. “This book should be in the hands of every teacher of reading.”
Responding to text can take many forms, write literacy experts Brenda Krupp, Lynne Dorfman and Aileen Hower. Teachers want to encourage sincere, honest responses where students share their thoughts, feelings, opinions, and insights about the fiction and nonfiction they read.
Literacy coach Pam Hamilton finds lots to like in Kylene Beers’ latest version of When Kids Can’t Read – What Teachers Can Do. The second edition keeps some of her favorite features from the original and adds many new kid-tested ideas to help teachers reach all their students.
Interactive student notebooks are a great way to reduce the amount of time your students spend on screens, writes middle school ELA teacher Jenna Smith. Her step-by-step example of a week-long literature study – plus how-to tips and lessons learned – make it easy to get started.
The authors of Shifting the Balance (Grades 3-5) invite literacy educators in the upper elementary and early middle grades to “engage in both the headwork and the heartwork required to ensure our practices are science-aligned and student-centered.” And do it in a safe space.
While most middle schoolers can decode text, the crux of any worthwhile lesson is assuring they understand what they’re reading and how it might impact them or the world around them. Peg Grafwallner shares strategies to help embed these literacy skills across the content areas.
