Last Saturday I joined two car loads of librarians and English teachers for a drive down to Santa Monica for Yallwest 2019. Yallwest, an epic festival celebrating young adult and middle grade books, is a joyful event. It’s more than a book festival because it is all about young teen and tween fans in attendance. […]
What I Was Thinking Pretty much anyone who has been teaching a long time has figured out that traditional grading systems don’t work. Last spring, during my nineteenth year teaching 7th and 8th grade English, I decided to do something about it. Without getting too deep into my disillusionment with traditional letter grades, I’ll just […]
Have I mentioned I’m new to this library business? Among the many new skills I’m learning is the art of the booktalk. That’s the one-word-on-purpose booktalk I heard about in library school. There is one major goal for booktalks: Get students to check out books and read them! Easy, right? Well, sometimes it works and […]
First of all, I learned way more than five things at the 2019 California School Library Association Conference, but I don’t have a ton of time to write, so…five it is. Who does not love a good conference? There’s something about the feeling of collegiality and enthusiasm you get from being around people who are […]
What I’m Thinking About: Students need to do research. They need a way to report the facts they’ve learned. Posters are a time honored way for students to show what they’ve learned with a little bit of artistic panache. That said, how many poster projects does the typical junior high student complete in a year? […]
Well, I start by collaborating with my inspiring colleagues. There is nothing like starting a new job to remind you how much we need to support each other as educators. Thank you, @msawoods! Before school started, my colleague Amy Woods and I made a seventh grade orientation lesson involving QR codes. Instead of talking at […]
When it comes to entry routines—whether we call them starters, bell ringers, or do nows—I have tried every system you can think of. Now that my students have iPads, there are even more options. Over the past year, I’ve experimented quite a bit with different digital tools for formative assessment and engagement. This blog will […]
