Corroboration, Conflicting Sources, and Competing Narratives by Brooke Feldman Students often ask me, “how do we know what really happened?” As historians, we tackle this sophisticated question by corroborating, sourcing, […]
3 Ways to Build Students’ Word Consciousness by Abi Frost Most teachers I know have a deep interest in words and academic language. That’s probably why many of us became […]
How Do You Eat an Elephant? Preparing for PARCC Writing, Part 2 by Megan Hyland On November 7, I wrote Part 1 of this blog, which explained the first bite […]
3 Go-To Close Reading Strategies by Abi Frost With the shift to Common Core State Standards, there has been lots of talk of “close reading.” As a reading specialist, my […]
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Kathleen Stern Recently, I revamped a poetry analysis lesson using feedback from the other Transition Fellows. I asked my seventh grade students to analyze the […]
The 40-Year-Old Paperboy by Peter Sipe When I was in 6th grade, my parents, displeased with my less than Stakhanovite approach to labor, signed me up to deliver a weekly […]
Cultivating Discussion Skills in Literature Circles by Abi Frost and Kathleen Stern Why Discussion Skills? Discussion skills are easy to neglect, especially when there are so many reading and writing […]
What’s In a Word? On Vocabulary Instruction by Kathleen Stern As a middle school reading teacher, I constantly find myself thinking, “If my students knew the meaning of more words, they […]
Make Your Students “Poetry Geniuses”! by Abi Frost I recently discovered a web resource called “rap genius”. This Brooklyn-based startup allows users to explore and understand the meaning behind […]
Visuals and Reading by Kathleen Stern Over the last few years in my seventh grade reading class, I’ve asked students to do more visual analysis and creation. This has nothing […]
