Reading is personal. What we like, when we feel like it, how we like it — or don’t. Sometimes I read slowly and carefully, pausing to let an idea sink in or to get a tissue or to text a friend who’s read the same …
One 9-Week Plan on Choice Reading in the Classroom (a Follow-Up)
There is no neat way of capturing the beautiful messiness and grappling that happens when we offer our students choice.
Mirrors & Windows Booklists: Literature as Advocacy for Ourselves and Others
How can literature advocate for society? How do teachers make space in the classroom to read for discovery, problem solving, identity forming, and healing as students make sense of their worlds – our world? Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity…They [young people who …
A Loving Test: It Matters How You Assess
“I love test days,” I say to a classroom full of bewildered eighth graders. On each desk is one copy of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and a 2 page, 2-sided test. “What?” I hear scattered across my audience. “I’m gonna …
Becoming Part of the Reading Community
by Lesley Roessing I considered myself to be a very involved middle-level ELA reading teacher. I loved to read, and I loved to share books with my students. I book-talked books that I read and thought some of my readers would enjoy reading. I continually …
Romance and Sex in YA Novels
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 …
9 “Whole” Weeks of Free Choice Reading
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 …
Uncovering the”Theme” of Reading Instruction in Schools
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 …
Anthologies: Limitations in Higher Education
by Elaine Magin Ethical ELA resonates with my own experiences as a teacher who often feels limited by what I’m able to teach in the classroom. Even though this blog is not focused on teaching English language arts in higher education, I am overwhelmed by …
Fatigue in teaching: A few tips for getting back to the teacher you want to be
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 …