Heinemann Blog

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

We see bookrooms as the perfect solution to provide the depth and breadth of books a teacher needs to supplement a core curriculum. In It's All About the Books, we share our vision of how a bookroom can become a shared instructional resource that provides us with what we need.

The study guide includes easy-to-use worksheets, reflection questions, and workshop strategies to invigorate reading instruction in your classroom and guide students through difficult texts.

This week on the Heinemann Podcast we welcome authors Kelly Gallagher & Penny Kittle of 180 Days. We had a lot to talk about, so we’re going to bring you our discussion in two parts. In Part One, we learn about their quest to engage and empower adolescents.

Books are the heart and soul of teaching literacy and our tools to develop lifelong readers. So how can we organize books across an entire school community to support student choice AND instructional goals? And how do we do this on any budget?

Last fall, I wrote about the Blahs, a predictable time of year when I struggle with energy, motivation, and self-doubt. A friend pointed out that our students battle their own Blahs as well.

One of the most important factors in successful student-centered instruction and learning is perseverance. If we let our students give up after the first try or get overly frustrated when they make a mistake, we are doing them a great disservice.