Getting Beyond Blank Stares: Help Students Negotiate Conversations About Books
We have all sat and watched as students stared at each other blankly. Or we have walked over to a group and thought they were talking...
Why Students Forget and What We Can Do
As classroom teachers we worked hard and planned hard. We taught our students how to not just copy facts from books, how to read text...
Making the Most of Reading Notebooks
Reading Notebooks... we love them, we struggle with them, we know they can be used much more effectively. In our books What Do I Teach...
Keeping Our Teaching Simple: Focus on Two Main Areas of Fiction
It can seem like there are hundreds of skills to teach when it comes to reading fiction. We've seen anchor charts covering every inch of...
What Is Decision-Fatigue and How Can Teachers Avoid It?
As teachers we make more decisions all day long than just about any other profession. By the end of the day when we sit down to decide...
How To Choose Books for Instruction and Focus on Learning
One common question we are asked is, "How do I choose a book to use for instruction?" This question is so common because we know how...
Why Students Struggle to Figure Out Main Ideas in Nonfiction Texts
We have all sat next to students in a conference and asked them what they think the main idea is in the nonfiction text they are reading...
We Love Questions!
We love questions! Our new book series, What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow? is one of the most common questions teachers consider. The...
The Journey of Two Friends and Two Books
We’ve been friends since 2004 and in that time we completed several marathons together, too many triathlons to count, two full distance...
