writing
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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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It’s been a minute (or more than two years) since I posted a collection of literacy links. I’m thrilled to return to this routine. As I revamped this site, I revisited past literacy links and gleaned loads of great back-to-school ideas. Still have over twenty to go, so I’ll keep my pen and notebook handy.…
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I know that Scholastic Book Fairs aren’t equitable and show loads of privilege, but I’m still going to recommend books to my young readers and their families. So I learned how to make Instagram Reels. Whew! I *truly* understood how my grandparents must’ve felt when they learned how to email. It took me DAYS to…
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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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This week I’m helping launch a first grade readers’ workshop, so I mined my kindergarten resources for familiar reading goals from the Super Reader unit, also known as my favorite kindergarten Reading Unit of Study. Tomorrow, the first grade readers will get a plastic sheet protector to record the number of books they want to…
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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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Reading is a huge part of my life. It’s who I am. My car has a bumper sticker that says “read”, and I have MANY reading-themed graphic tees. So I was devastated when my brain wouldn’t let me read during the pandemic. I would try and then lose track after a few sentences. Eventually, I…
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Man, I really wanted to publish Volume 100 by the end of this school year. Turns out being a full-time, *first-time* kindergarten teacher and full-time coach was too much even for an overachiever like me. I don’t feel too bad though. I taught kids how to *read* this year (and even got them all to…
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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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One of my favorite memories from my own kindergarten experience was a Valentine’s Day station rotation that imitated the process mail goes through to travel from one home to another. So when I started planning a unit on connecting with others as part of my Better Lesson coaching, I knew it would involve some kind…
A SEA OF TALK 