Teaching about September 11th in middle school

Remembering 9/11 in my ELA Classroom

America has had plenty of tragedies that are not easy to explain to our children. 9/11 is one of those events, but it is also an important part of American history. Will you be teaching about September 11th this year? If you are thinking about …

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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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fake readers

Fake Readers: The Struggle is REAL!

I HATED reading as a kid. I would sit at my desk during silent reading time, stare at a book as long as my teacher made me, and I would daydream.  Yup!  I said it. I am a reading teacher who DESPISED reading as a kid …

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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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literature circles for middle grades

Literature Circles Made Easy

As a veteran teacher, I can share that I am still learning and refining my own practices based on the groups of students that I have the good fortune of working with each year.  As you know, no year or group of students is ever …

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