I absolutely hate assigning a letter grade to student writing; it’s depressing. Not because my students are bad writers because they aren’t. It’s that I hate to see all the mini-lessons, and drafting, revising, editing, conversations, and growing as writers reduced to one letter. A percentage in the grade book. As soon as that grade is […]
Katie Sluiter
Katie Sluiter is currently an 8th English teacher in West Michigan. She has taught middle school, high school, and community college and has her Masters Degree and is currently working on her doctoral degree in Teaching English. Her writing has been featured on Writers Who Care, The Nerdy Book Club, and Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. She is a member of the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE), the Michigan Council of Teachers of English (MCTE) and ALAN (the Assembly on Literature of Adolescents of the NCTE). She is a National Writing Project participant, has presented at both state and national conferences, and has been published in the Language Arts Journal of Michigan multiple times.
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Six Books for Secondary Teachers on Teaching Students to Read
Teaching how to read used to be considered the job of elementary teachers. They would teach the students to read; secondary teachers would teach students literature assuming students know how to read it. However, it has become clear that teaching students how to read doesn’t end when students enter junior high school. In fact, since 50% of […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum, Literacy
How to Create Reader Response Prompts
The response to my posts about using Response Notebooks rather than Reading Logs has been wonderful! The most common question I get is how to create quality reader response prompts for students to respond to after they do their individual reading. I’m pretty confident that my students think the prompts I give them are random; although, maybe […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
From Literature Circles to Inquiry Circles
Last spring, my 8th grade students were involved in Literature Circles where they read one of six Young Adult Historical Fiction selections. The Literature Circles took about five weeks to complete. Previously, I wrote a series of articles that cover procedures, mini-lessons, and assignments and assessments. One of the major areas I worked on with my […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Five YA Novels to Understand Refugees
Staying informed by watching and discussing current events is one way for students to know what is going on in the world outside their immediate universe. Sometimes those events seem so far away–even when they are happening in our own country. Research has proven repeatedly that reading builds empathy. Whether the latest current events about how […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
An Alternative to Book Reports: Assessing Independent Reading
I am a huge advocate for student choice when it comes to reading, but one thing that people repeatedly ask me is: How do you assess and grade students’ independent reading if they are all reading different books? I’ve written before about how I don’t use Reading Logs, but rather Response Notebooks. I use response […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
NCTE and ALAN Conference Highlights
I spent the weekend before Thanksgiving in Atlanta, Georgia at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the NCTE (ALAN) conferences. As a first-timer, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I have been to local and state-level teacher conferences before as well as national blogging […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
How Response Notebooks Differ From Reading Logs
When I moved from teaching high school to teaching 8th grade English three years ago, I was introduced to an independent reading requirement: each student would read one book of their own choosing each quarter. How we chose to implement this requirement was up to the teacher, but each student had to produce a product […]