When I was in junior high, there was this one super-cool girl. She had the most beautiful name, Shoana, which I thought was close to Sarah and, therefore, we had to be friends. Shoana lived with her mom in an apartment by school; their relationships …
What would happen if we let students choose everything they read in our-their English class? In the past, I would begin every school year with a shared text. My thinking was that if we could have a shared experience, we could come back to the …
Within a week of starting this school year, junior high students spent about four days taking a reading test (MAP, Measures of Academic Progress) on our new Chromebooks. It took four days, in part, because we had wi-fi problems causing the computer-based test to stall or …
A laptop held in the crook of an arm that used to carry a plan book. An empty stainless steel canister in hand, curled close to the chest. The free hand now pulls out an empty chair at a table where several teachers offer a …
Below are links to assignments I created for the inclusive literature workshop to promote conversation about and across books for reading conferences, book groups, blogs, movies, and speeches. In every case, I tried to use these assignments as ways of entering or continuing a conversation …
Katrina is reading on her belly, sprawled out on the classroom floor, red hoodie tied around her waist, Jacqueline Woodson’s Feathers in one hand and a pencil in the other. A pad of sticky notes is off to the side with the words “Jesus Boy” written …
We are four weeks into the school year. Our reading classes are focusing on a few specific standards. The first one is learning language in context; the second is reading a variety of text; the third is reading closely; and the last couple are speaking …
At the end of the 2015-16 school year, I wrote a proposal to be considered for a Chromebook pilot in our junior high. In 2017-18, our school district would be a 1:1 school, but this school year (2016-17), the district was looking for teachers who …
How are you encouraging students and their families to make time for weekend reading? Now that we are back to school, my #bookaday is not getting much action. With more to do, I have to be more deliberate about making time to read, and I …
From living in a 1930s Kentucky mining town in Empty Spaces to being the last man on earth in Y:The Last Man, from being an orphan on the streets in Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London to being an orphan in a haunted house in The Night Gardener, from being the outcast robot among forest creatures in The Wild Robot to being the outsider on a roller derby team in Roller Girl, from the escapades of a trio of teen boys in Ms. Bixby’s Last Day to a trio of teen girls in Raymie Nightingale — only with books could I have spent time with such an interesting group of people (#bookaday).