Heinemann Blog

How do we recognize engagement? Today on the podcast, a special read aloud by author Ellin Oliver Keene from her new book Engaging Children: Igniting a Drive for Deeper Understanding.

We are proud to announce that P. David Pearson, a legend in literacy education and research, is retiring after 48 years.

Shared teacher learning in the digital age must be authentic, participatory, generative, and relevant to our teaching lives. Technology and digital tools can strengthen and expand a strong learning community to empower teacher learning.

A classroom library is the at the heart of reading instruction. The kinds of texts students encounter in their library will help shape the kinds of readers they become.

Following are some practices developed around quickwrites to help students read and write successfully.

Week two of Jennifer Serravallo's online Summer Writing Camp for teachers is officially wrapped up! This week, participants focused on strategies for writing poetry. Find a debrief of each day below, along with links to videos of Jen explaining the strategy of the day.

If educators don't have a language to define and describe engagement—a point on the horizon toward which we're working—and if we don't incorporate talk of engagement into our discourse with students, how can we help children become truly engaged?

Today on the Heinemann Podcast, Lucy Calkins, author and series editor of the Units of Study for Reading and Writing, shares in her own words the latest, groundbreaking work to come out of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project: the new Units of Study in Phonics for grades K–2.

Setting up our classroom furniture might seem haphazard at first, but each decision we make has a significant impact on how our community functions, and thrives.

Today marks the end of the first week of Jennifer Serravallo's online Summer Writing Camp, and what a week it's been! Jen walked 'campers' through five strategies for writing fictional narratives.

Today on the Heinemann Podcast, a special conversation between Linda Rief and Penny Kittle. Both are at the Boothbay Literacy Institute. Penny talks with Linda about her new “The Quickwrite Handbook: 100 Mentor Texts to Jumpstart Your Students’ Thinking and Writing.

While school libraries and bookrooms both house books to be shared and even may be located in the same physical space, in many schools they serve a different role for students and teachers.

When it came to choose between these two titles for our summer book study, it quickly became clear that we needed both. The intersection of messages and range of ideas for application—not just in our schools but in our lives—will create critical conversations as we mentally and emotionally prepare for the work that awaits us in August.

Offering a variety of elaboration strategies will also help students to vary the types of details they may include in their piece, so their drafts don't end up sounding one-note.

This Wednesday night, TCRWP staff developers Samantha Barratt and Anna Sheehan will lead a chat on ways to integrate the learning of the June reading institute into new teaching practices and gear up for the best possible start to the coming school year.

As we build a supportive environment, we must also set the expectation that all students will participate actively in an ongoing discussion. For this, students need not only to be willing to share thoughts but also to respond in constructive ways.

This year we join Kylene Beers, Robert Probst, Penny Kittle, Linda Rief, Chris Crutcher, and Teri Lesense, Kwame Alexander, and Kelly Gallagher to investigate aliteracy and our students through reading, thinking, and writing. We'll be adding to the blog as this multi-day institute progresses so keep checking back!

Today on the Heinemann podcast, we’re packing our bookbags for summer camp!