Interactive Reading Logs using Pictures

Reading logs are a tricky thing!  I get it! Continuously charting pages and book titles and gathering signatures is just not a method that encourages and instills a love of reading. I understand that we want to keep students accountable for what they are reading, but …

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best books for middle school readers

50 Best Books for Middle School

Every summer, I get a few emails or texts from parents and students asking for book recommendations. I typically know these readers well, so I can fire off 5-10 book recommendations that I think their middle school readers will love. In hindsight though, I should …

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teaching reading fluency

5 Reading Fluency Tricks for BIG KIDS

“Why do I have to read aloud? I hate reading aloud!” -a struggling 6th grade reader A number of years ago, when my school district began our work with Response to Intervention or RTI, it became even more abundantly clear that many of our upper elementary …

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word wall ideas and activities for middle school

ELA Word Wall Ideas and Activities

Student: “Wait…I know I should know this, but what does that word mean again?” As teachers, we are constantly referring to various terms in our content areas that we want/NEED students to know. To cement understanding, I designed a word wall to display academic terminology …

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Back to School Favorites for ELA Teachers... I have been blogging for over 10 years. Here are some of my favorite posts to get teachers geared up for back to school season.

Back to School Favorites for ELA Teachers

2024 is my 24th back to school season!  While I began my teaching career in 1998 (with a few years off staying home with my littlest), every back to school season seems even more exciting than the one before.  Over the years, I have written …

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amazon classroom essentials

10+Amazon Essentials for Middle School

“Your classroom environment speaks to your students before you utter a single word. What is your classroom saying?” These thoughts from Megan Dredge resonate with me as a middle school teacher. As teachers, our classrooms are our home away from home. I also believe that …

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