poetry
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When I requested funding for the NCTE registration fee from my admin team in the early fall, I said I wanted to focus on activism and middle school literacy instruction. Learning more about both as a relatively new sixth grade teacher at a progressive lab school seemed valuable. However, now that I have returned from…
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At the beginning of April, I published the Pot of Gold portfolio of resources (digital one-page, bulletin board, zine, and podcast). The focus this month: POETRY! I’m not exaggerating when I say that poetry saved my sanity during the first year of the Pandemic. Usually a voracious reader, I could NOT read books. I couldn’t…
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On Valentine’s Day, I led a 45-minute session of professional learning on “Making the Most of the BAS” for the K-5 teachers in my school. The BAS takes time and getting it done can feel so final and complete, but it’s really just the beginning! The amount and variety of information we learn from the…
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February 2, 2022 is the 13th annual World Read Aloud Day! In the Before, my colleague and fellow reading enthusiast planned a day of read aloud activities. This year’s offerings are going to be a lot more passive. Our school is just coming off of a very draining week, and asking teachers to do *another*…
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This summer, I’m participating in some summer work focused on Cultivating Genius by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad. Our second Zoom discussion is next week, so I’m putting together my thoughts based on the assigned reading. I love this reflection question so much: How does this lesson help students see themselves or others? I used Canva to…
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Two summers ago, in The Before, I attended the Summer Poetry Institute hosted by The Poetry Foundation (PoFo) in Chicago. It was a glorious week of being immersed in poetic forms and devices. I learned and learned and learned and wrote and wrote and wrote. I’m embarrassed to admit that I learned a new-to-me literary…
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Our beloved post office transformed into a theatre recently! To help build students’ background knowledge, we watched a video of a backstage tour of a theatre and I’ve been reading at least one picture book a week about theatre. We’ve been so inspired we even wrote our very first play about our shared reading text,…
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Now that teachers are wrapping up their Writer’s Workshop launches, they are gearing up for their first standards-based units on personal narratives. This is exactly why next week’s theme is SPECIAL PEOPLE. I especially love the background knowledge resources: a special StoryCorps video and some of my favorite picture books. In fact, one of the…
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Since it is the most gorgeous time of year in New England right now, I decided that next week’s theme will be AUTUMN! To get students in the writing mood, I *highly* recommend taking them OUTSIDE for a nature observation walk. Check out the poems I selected and my resources and ideas for teaching them…
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This year, I’m pumped to support the second grade team! I spend my days helping students at home with their remote learning, so I created digital conferring sheets to record their strengths and goals. After filling one out, I share it with the teacher for their records. I’m hoping it will provide some consistency and…
A SEA OF TALK 