Although I’d been doing some form of independent reading for several years, with each year better than the one before, I came into last school year determined to commit in a way I hadn’t before. I wanted to find a way to make students’ independent… Read More
I‘m ashamed to admit that for many years, I rarely built in any time for independent reading. The extent of independent reading in my classroom was taking students to the library to check out a book, telling them it was due by X date, and… Read More
August always brings mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’m always surprised and sad that summer is coming to an end. Lazy days at the pool, s’mores over a campfire, water ice after dinner—I know I’ll be missing these days all too soon. On the… Read More
It’s almost time! Please join us for a Twitter chat with author and educator Ariel Sacks as we discuss a more student-centered approach to teaching novels.
Kylene Beers posted this on her Facebook page this afternoon: When I finish reading a book, I want to think about it and talk about it, and then I want to start reading my next book. Never have I closed the covers, sighed, and said to… Read More
Glance at almost any education focused website, blog, or Twitter feed in mid-August and you’ll find no shortage of first-day-of-school activities. In one of my education-related Facebook groups, someone recently asked for suggestions on how to spend the first day in class. Others asked about… Read More
“So, you’ve been busy.” And so began a conversation with Judy, one of my writing project friends and mentors. We were meeting over coffee to discuss our thoughts on the third edition of Atwell’s In the Middle. In April, I had shared with Judy how I had started… Read More
In the midst of my classroom prep this week, I came across the binder of letter-essays that my 9th graders wrote at the end of the year. In this binder are 75+ letters that described their favorite independent reading selections. As I paged through their letters again, I couldn’t help… Read More
Today I finished reading yet another pedagogy book, this time Whole Novels for the Whole Class by Ariel Sacks, an educator and English teacher in New York. Over the last ten years, Sacks and her colleagues have developed an approach to teaching novels with their students… Read More
* This is Part 3 in a series on how to use the signposts from Kylene Beers and Robert Probst’s Notice and Note to inspire student writing. Here are parts 1 and 2. In Notice and Note, Beers and Probst make this important observation: As you… Read More
Tricia Ebarvia 
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