Heinemann Blog

I'm hearing from lots of people whose schools are launching or preparing to launch Units of Study in reading, writing or phonics—and I’ve been getting many requests for advice on how to make sure the work is successful. Here are my thoughts.

Lucy Calkins and her colleagues have developed a new Units of Study for Phonics for K-1 that will release early this summer. This new resource will help early educators provide an accessible introduction to phonics.

Each year, educators from across the country travel to Boothbay, Maine, to work with colleagues and literacy experts on issues of reading and writing.

This week on the Heinemann Podcast, we're talking with Harvey 'Smokey' Daniels, author of The Curious Classroom, about Student-Directed Inquiry.

Your first draft is like a dark room and our questions can show you the parts we’re curious to know more about—the places to shine your flashlight. It’s your choice as a writer which questions tug at your pen the most, but choose one or two, and cast your beam in those dark corners.

Stephanie Harvey & Anne Goudvis explain how The Intermediate Comprehension Toolkit is a resource, not a program. It can be adapted to and integrated with any instructional approach.

Once students are comfortable with the idea that mistakes are great, it is important that they begin to notice them on their own. As with self-correcting while reading, we want our students to notice when they are making a mistake and make attempts to remedy it.

If you read aloud regularly to your students, you know: there is no time in the day quite like read aloud time. A good read aloud can bring a group together like nothing else, can provide a foundation of camaraderie, trust, and respect in a classroom.

Patricia Vitale-Reilly's book Supporting Struggling Learners: 50 Instructional Moves for the Classroom Teacher provides practical strategies for empowering students with the right tools to grow and learn. In this video, Patricia talks about providing strong study skills.

To allow all learners to engage in argumentation, we as teachers need to develop our confidence in planning for the wide range of learners in our classrooms. How can argumentation be a goal and an expectation for all students?

We know all teachers have great tales to tell about their time in the classroom. Now is your chance to have your voice heard by Heinemann and beyond. We're seeking video submissions from teachers far and wide. Instructions on how to submit inside. Do you have a story to tell?

This month we look at ways to infuse concepts of community in the math classroom to support confidence and participation.

Sara defines social comprehension as developing “skills and habits to help us comprehend social issues and participate in relevant, transparent conversations.” She points out that this skill is learned, and to me, that means we need to be teaching it from the first day of school in kindergarten.

This book is for teachers who want to revive the art of analytical writing in their classrooms—from teachers of middle-grade writers who are making their first foray into analytical writing to teachers of experienced twelfth-grade writers who are looking ahead to college where their professors will expect much, much more.

Kelly and Penny discuss how this collaboration changed their teaching for the better. Our conversation with these two influential educators, picks up where we left off, by asking them to reflect on their year spent teaching together

If you, like me, suffer from bouts of the Blahs, I encourage you to develop your own plan too. To take care of our students, to do our part in ensuring Leticia and other young people like her don’t fall into the Abyss, we must first stay clear of it ourselves.

At the beginning of the school year, one of the most important things we do as teachers is get to know our children. It is during this “get to know you” time that we can easily learn about our students’ confidence levels.

At its heart, this book is about why we did what we did. Creating a classroom conducive to raising engaged readers, writers, listeners, speakers, and thinkers continually led us back to closely examining our decision-making process.