Each summer I try to squeeze at least a couple professional books into my summer reading pile. This year, I knew I wanted to read Kylene Beers and Robert E Probst’s new book, Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters. Teaching my 8th graders not just to read, but to love to read has been my main goal. […]
reading
Getting my Struggling Readers to Thrive in the Content Areas
How do you get your struggling reader to succeed in the content areas? This was my dilemma as a fourth-grade teacher. I was frustrated for my struggling students. They experienced failure in almost every class because they struggled in literacy. I worked hard over the years to get every student to meet my objectives. With text […]
Why What Teachers Read Matters
This summer I had the privilege of sitting in on interviews for a new ELA teacher in my building. In my fourteen years in the district, this is the first time I have been able to take part in something like this, and since the hired person will be my classroom neighbor and part of […]
Discovering Dostoevsky in Middle Age: Why Education Is Usually Wasted on the Young
“Did I tell you that’s what I did when I was flying red eyes? I would stare out the window at the stars and get frightened by the enormity of the universe.” – High School Best Friend, Pilot, Autodidact Cory was my best friend in high school. To this day, he remains one of my […]
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 […]
The Power of the Right Read
The power of the right read is indisputable to me. It always has been. I mean, I LOVE to read. I have been an avid reader for as long as I can remember. Even as a teenager, living in a foreign country, I read religiously. And I have always believed that the right book can […]
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 […]
Using Literature to Teach Math: Five Great Books to Use in Middle School
I’m always trying to come up with different ways to teach math that will grab the interest of my students. If you’ve ever taught math or been taught math, you know there are some students that just don’t like math, but love reading. So, what if you incorporate literature in math instruction? I’ve got five […]