Teacher Clarity in the Classroom Why is teacher clarity in the classroom important? Teacher clarity is important for teachers because it brings purpose and fulfillment to a career that is otherwise demanding. Without a why to return to, it’s easy to spiral into dissatisfaction. It’s important to students so that they can buy into the…
5 Simple Solutions to the Standards for Overwhelmed Teachers
Overwhelmed Teachers Teachers long to celebrate not only their results but having a clear direction for their work. Without this clarity, we often can’t even see that our work is making a difference. Instead, we stay trapped in cycles of overwhelm that go something like this: get excited about an idea → try it →…
Increasing Teacher Productivity: Do Less To Maximize Reading Growth
Increasing Teacher Productivity Before I dive in, let’s talk about the “Increasing Teacher Productivity” from the title. It’s important to remember that productivity isn’t about doing more. It’s about achieving the best results in the most efficient manner. When I began developing the four moves every literacy lesson plan needs, I believed that I could…
Super-Charge Student Engagement With Five Powerful Moves
Student Engagement Today we’re discussing five absolute essentials for engaging students in education for life. It wasn’t until I was preparing this video that I realized how important engagement is (you can catch the video version of this post here). I had always thought of engagement in the short-term, as something to help a student…
Three Tricks to Beat Student Stagnation for Good
Ever had a student who did all the work and still didn’t make adequate reading growth? I have. For a long time, I struggled with how to explain to this type of student why they weren’t getting the results they wanted. I struggled with what to do differently. Not anymore. Last week I hosted a…
How to Make Magic with the Class Discussion Teaching Strategy
Class Discussion Teaching Strategy There was a point in my career where I walked away from class discussions. The large-group conversations didn’t achieve what I wanted: all students included and conversing without my mediation. In small groups, students were more likely to participate, but they still avoided authentic conversation, just sharing round-robin style without any…
Spend More Time on These 3 Techniques of Teaching Writing
Techniques of Teaching Writing If you are a language arts teacher, do you write? I decided to teach language arts because I love to write. This seems to make me an outlier, as the traditional teacher chooses the field because of a love of literature. I like literature too, but it was really my life…
What Reading Means: Do You Really Know?
What Reading Means Oftentimes at the secondary level, reading is getting meaning from text. Language arts teacher training programs almost exclusively focus on reading comprehension, with maybe a little fluency and vocabulary thrown into the mix. While this may seem to fit the majority of secondary readers, it doesn’t include all of them. It privileges…
Assessing Text Complexity the Easy Way
Assessing Text Complexity Image: person sleeping in hammock and holding a book. Text: Assessing Text Complexity Teaching is a demanding profession–intellectually, physically, emotionally. Everything clamors to be the top priority. Assessing text complexity is something that happens for most teachers in an instant, and usually only the first time they decide to use a text.…
The Best Small-Group Games for Discussion
Best Small-Group Games Girl laying with book on her face. Text: When the teachers says, “Discuss,” and everyone goes in a circle and says what they wrote on their paper. The best small-group games can help with this phenomenon. I don’t blame students for having these circular “discussions.” They avoid the give-and-take of actual discussion,…
