As children, we all read books that we would classify as unforgettable. For me, those books include Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling, Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, and Socks by Beverly Cleary. Since this month we will celebrate Children’s Book Week, it is a good time to dus...

We live in a fast-paced time with new software, applications, and devices introduced to the market on a daily basis. Young learners in this digital age often rapidly outpace teachers in their understanding and willingness to push boundaries of the various technologies available. While some believ...

My favorite teacher used to say that books seem to expand after every reading, as they soak in the reader's thoughts and ideas. As a child, I loved this concept and would carefully examine my books. I imagined that they would magically gain width as I moved between the first and last page. As a t...

During our language arts unit this month, we focused on persuasive writing. Students practiced higher-order thinking skills, and learned to develop the reasoning to defend their convictions. To introduce this concept, I started with a mini-lesson to help students develop a definition of persuasi...

For our writing unit this month we focused on constructing a class big book about cheetahs. This provided a fantastic way to give students a model for upcoming science research projects that the children will be working on. This has always been my favorite writing unit, as I love to see the stude...

Tomie dePaola is a wonderful author to focus on in the primary grades. Tomie dePaola is an author and illustrator of both picture books and chapter books. Because of his strong characters and beautiful illustrations, children thoroughly enjoy his books during this unit of study. As with mos...

It is essential for students to make connections to text as they read. For some students this comes naturally, however, for most students this skill has to be learned and reinforced by making written responses to texts. Recently, I have had the students in my class focus on making text ...

Writer's Workshop is an effective way to build a classroom of authors. However, it can be a challenge to keep your students, and yourself, organized. But eventhough it may require more planning, I have found that implementing a successful Writer’s Workshop in the classro...

Conducting an author study in your classroom has many advantages. When you focus on a specific, well-known author and his or her books, you give students a chance to analyze writing styles, themes, characters, and subjects. Kevin Henkes is a great way to introduce students to the idea of an autho...

How do students use a writer’s notebook? What exactly is a writer’s notebook? These are questions that came up during my first year of teaching. I found that even seasoned teachers struggled with the idea of how to get students to produce writer's notebooks that were unique and meanin...