Book clubs provide an authentic purpose for reading closely, note-taking, and writing about reading--to prepare for great conversation. When book clubs meet, the conversations are usually open-ended and completely student-directed. (continue reading)
Conferring is built on learning what students are doing and how they are thinking. In the first stage of a math conference, the teachers looks, listens, and asks with the goal of building an interpretation of student thinking. (continue reading)
This week on the Heinemann Podcast we’re learning about the importance of personal identity work in education. To understand this work better, and its impact on teachers, we’re handing this week’s podcast over to Heinemann Fellow, Minjung Pai. (continue reading)
The Reading Strategies Book and the Writing Strategies Book now come with free online indexes to help you quickly locate strategies to use in your classroom! (continue reading)
In reading and writing workshop, strategic partnerships can help us provide an audience, built-in feedback provider, and peer-reviewer for every student. While we can’t clone ourselves and have a teacher next to every student, we can set up partnerships that support, motivate, and inspire. (continue reading)
The overall design of an academic assignment, from the layout to the words used, is critical to not only how well a student preforms, but how they continue to learn throughout their academic journey. By taking a user approach, Jim Burke suggests that we can design better work for our students. (continue reading)
“We learn lots from hero stories, but sometimes they leave out the concrete realities of change,” writes author Cornelius Minor. He goes on to write: “The ‘teacher as superhero’ story can be similarly misleading.” Today on the Heinemann Podcast, we’re exploring the reality of that story. (continue reading)
Getting Started with Beginning Writers is not a script you can follow, of course. But regardless of the children sitting in front of you, and regardless of whether it's the beginning of the year or sometime later, there are very specific big ideas and beliefs that can guide your practice. (continue reading)
There are so many instructional opportunities when conferring with students: we can nudge readers and writers to clarify thinking, address a need through teaching points, model for students what it looks like to use literacy to make sense of the world — and so much more. (continue reading)
While good readers are able to meet state reading standards and often achieve at the highest levels on standardized tests, they can be helped to become more thoughtful readers. (continue reading)
