Topic: Engagement

Literacy assessments provide critical insights, but their real power lies in how teachers use that data to drive instruction.

By gaining a clear picture of each child’s reading abilities from the start, educators can tailor their instruction to meet individual needs, ensuring that every lesson is relevant, engaging, and effective.

Discover practical ways to use assessment data to personalize instruction and improve student outcomes in elementary and middle school classrooms. Learn strategies that teachers can implement today.

Adapted from The Joy of Reading, Donalyn Miller and Teri Lesene explore some suggestions for how to find motivation for reading, even in difficult times.

Small-group reading lessons have the potential to transform students into confident and skilled readers.

A list of Heinemann professional books published in 2023.

Understand and value each writing process stage to guide students from initial ideas to completed works.

As educators, we all want our students to have the skills and insights needed to navigate the world outside of their classroom. In this mission, the significance of relevance in reading cannot be understated.

During whole-group literacy, it’s important that students are interested in the books, discussions, and teachings for the most impactful, engaging literacy instruction.

Comprehension is not about spitting out facts and filling in blanks. Comprehension is about understanding. And reading is not merely about word calling. Reading is about thinking.

Providing young children with lots of opportunities and encouragement to read unfamiliar books helps them to become adventurous, confident readers who are highly engaged meaning-makers.

Read-aloud time is an opportunity to mentor children in the mindset, habits, and strategies of proficient readers.

The goal of The Book Love Foundation is to put books in the hands of teachers of teenagers. We aim instruction toward increasing volume, stamina, and joy in reading in middle and high school.

Finding the right books for your classroom of adolescent readers is key to building engagement. The right book in the hands of a kid can change a life forever.

Practical Strategies for More Joy and Less Struggle Next Year

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?

Engagement, in part, depends on what you feel and sense when you enter a classroom. It's the culture—unseen and unheard, but omnipresent, and it's a little tougher to pin down.

Our ideas about engagement were for formed in early childhood by our parents, and have been solidified by what our teachers did to 'motivate' us. In classrooms now, many of these old notions are concretized by what our colleagues believe about motivation and engagement.