For Teachers

Teaching the Reading Process (with videos)

Teaching the Reading Process (with videos) As a writer of nonfiction, I use the Reading Process to guide my thinking in order to comprehend and then synthesize the information I get from research reading. As a middle school reading teacher, I organized my instruction around that same process. The Reading Process refers to the three …

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One Book. Three Types of Nonfiction: A Lesson For Students on How and Why to Use Different Types of Nonfiction in Their Writing

My picture book biography, Monet Paints a Day, (Charlesbridge, 2011),was written using three different kinds of nonfiction.  This was done because I had so much interesting information to present but wasn’t sure what information to leave in and what to leave out. In short, I faced the decision every writer faces as they move into …

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Teaching Students How to Revise: A First Step

Throughout my years as a writing teacher, I consistently saw that many students didn’t know how to effectively revise.  “My sentences are complete, and I’ve corrected my spelling. I’m done,” they would tell me. But they weren’t.  And even if they had beautiful language, a well-organized beginning, middle and end, and grammatically correct paragraphs, their …

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Four Essential Attributes Every Writer Needs (And Teachers Too!)

Obviously, as a writer, it is important to continually work at understanding your craft and improving your skills. However, to my mind, just as important to literary success is purposefully developing the irreplaceable attributes of a writer’s mindset; patience, perserverance, the ability to reflect, and most important of all, self-forgiveness. Patience: We all know that …

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What Teachers Can Learn About Motivation from NFL Coach Gary Kubiak

I am not a football fan, but when I taught middle school, I pretended to be one, so I’d have something to talk about to some of the boys in my class.  I will admit though, to discovering that I really liked the motivational stories of players’ grit and determination.  As I read about the …

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Optimism and an “I Believe in You” Attitude Are Powerful Teaching Tools

We’ve all heard the saying, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” Now, substitute the word teacher for mama. And then, substitute the words optimistic and supportive for the first happy in the quote. You now have a new, albeit, less memorable saying: If the teacher isn’t optimistic and supportive of student success, then the …

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Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

“The main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing.”  –Stephen Covey In the flurry of day-to-day lesson planning and teaching, the emphasis on standardized testing and the increasing social/emotional demands placed on teachers (and I’m not even mentioning remote learning!), it is easy to lose track of what the “main thing” is in …

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