Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! Several months ago, my fifth-grade class asked me to play Red Light, Green Light. Not typically a game my fifth graders request, it came as a surprise. Later that week I watched the first episode of a very grown-up […]
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Literacy Matters and We Need to Start Acting Like It
The aha moment hit me nearly two months too late. For weeks, I had been working with one of our SPED teachers to figure out how to get students to turn in their work. After years of effectively managing my classes through meaningful work with clear deadlines, I was overwhelmed by the number of student […]
Equity Check: Changing Our Teaching Practices in Literacy
Reading and writing are essential tools for success in life. Imagine how you would survive, make a living, or even make purchases at the grocery store without basic reading and writing skills. In order to be successful in today’s technology age, students will need to know how to communicate on all platforms. Students will need […]
Reinforcing Literacy Skills in Mathematics
I work primarily with students who struggle with mathematics. My students are awesome kids and I would estimate that about 98% of the time, their struggles have little to do with their computation abilities, and more to do with solving word problems and the critical thinking that accompanies them. When I give my students a […]
Skills for Survival in Dystopia Part 2: Media Literacy
In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, it has become increasingly clear that we are entering an abnormal era of American history. The xenophobia, religious intolerance, and white supremacy, aren’t new to life in America. But, Donald Trump’s presidency has made many of us feel that the “moral arc of the universe” is bending away from […]
How to Integrate Literacy into the Non-ELA Classroom
If there is one message that I get when I examine the Common Core standards for reading and writing, it’s this: Share the load. I think that English teachers have often shouldered the burden of literacy. We have felt that it is simply our job to teach students to write and to read and to analyze […]
Adventures in Going Paperless: Making Assumptions about Digital Literacy
I am an immigrant—digitally speaking. Like many born in the late 70’s, I have fond(ish) memories of hovering over my Brother WP 1400D, busting out a 14 page essay due the next day. I used card catalogs, bound journals, and microfiche for my research. I didn’t even have an email account until college, much less […]
In Balanced Literacy, Johnny’s Reading Means More than Decoding
Throwbacks in education are common. This time, Robert Pondiscio, a Senior Fellow and Vice President for External Affairs at the Thomas B. Fordham Institution is itching for a fight to reopen old “reading war” wounds.He has taken umbrage with the NYTimes (7/2/14) opinion piece Balanced Literacy Is One Effective Approach by Lucy Calkins: Director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University and a proponent […]