Everyone has their own opinions about Project-based learning.  I loved it, but I had many respected colleagues who wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.   I think it depends on how much organized chaos you can take in a classroom! ? Why try PBL? For me, there was something magical about watching kids work together to come up with a solution to a problem.  I liked that students, for the most part, were kind and helpful, that they listened to each other, and together, they got excited about their solutions. It felt like I was watching the better part of th ..read more

"What's the purpose of the author writing this book?" "I know! Oh, wait.  Is that, like, entertain, persuade, or inform?" Does PIE even work? An author's purpose for writing a book goes well beyond wanting to persuade, inform, or entertain.  PIE is a cute acronym and it works well in the primary grades, but it misses the boat by a long shot for upper elementary and middle school.   I think we shortchange students if we don't teach them to dig into their texts a little more than that.  Otherwise, you could argue that all fiction is written to entertain... ...and maybe ..read more

"Can we sit around the room?" was a frequently asked question in my class.  My rule was simple: if I saw that they couldn't handle it, they were back at their desks.  Read Around the Room So when I wrote this series of short passages about Legos, it made sense to frame it with some movement.  There are 8 task cards that you can: Print out, laminate, and tape around your room. Print out multiple copies and lay them on surfaces so more students have access Print out copies for each student or pair of students and have them read at their seats. Have your students work indi ..read more

 In January, I blogged about ways to make the study of ancient civilizations fun.  I included some things I did in my classroom, and a few that a friend made for her Social Studies classes.  This week, I'm turning to ancient Japan and looking at samurai warriors. The Way of the Warrior Years ago, a 5th-grade teacher told me about reading a book to his students that they went wild over.  The book was The Way of the Warrior by Chris Bradford, and it's the first in an 8-book series.  I bought the books for my classroom library and talked about them with my ..read more

This is the time of year when many ELA teachers are looking to get students into books.  Do you run a Literature Circle?  Or a Book Club?   There's really only one major difference between book clubs and literature circles, but that one change makes a big difference in the way your groups run.  I have done both, and although I prefer one over the other, most of the time I make my decision based on what I think my students can do. Literature Circles Literature Circles are small groups of students who choose the same book to read together.  Each member of the grou ..read more

 Do you celebrate St. Patrick's Day in your classroom?  Have your students read about the man and have them separate fact from myth. The Man St. Patrick was a real person who lived in the 4th and 5th centuries, although he wasn't Irish.  He grew up in England and was kidnapped and enslaved in Ireland for six years.  Deeply religious, he heard a voice telling him to escape, so he went back to his home in England.  When he heard another voice telling him to return to Ireland, he trained as a missionary and lived in Ireland for the rest of his life, convertin ..read more

There are lots of good reasons to get your students involved in a March Madness Reading Challenge.  I'm giving you three because I want to keep this post readable! Why take on March Madness Book Brackets? It's that time of year when kids are getting restless and teachers are exhausted.  Am I right?  I always felt like the end of February and the beginning of March lasted about 100 days!   Mixing things up a bit is a good thing to do at this time of year.  This is the kind of project where you watch your kids take off and you're pleasantly surprised! You're gi ..read more

True confessions: this time of year was the hardest for me as a teacher.  I was tired of grey, cloudy days, it felt like spring would never get here, and going through training for state testing?  Well, you know. Would you like some free resources to help you through the spring?  I know that this time of year can be stressful for 5th and 6th graders (and teachers) until all that standardized testing is over. Could you use: ✔ A free lesson that you can use right now  ✔ A free resource that you can use to review skills for testing ✔ A free resource to use after testing ..read more

A Poem for teachers too, perhaps? I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins I had to laugh w ..read more

Stealing is bad. Yeah. I know. But my brother Levi is always so sick, and his medicine is always so expensive. I didn’t think anyone would notice, if I took that credit card, if, in one stolen second, I bought Levi’s medicine. But someone did notice. Now I have to prove I’m not a delinquent, I’m not a total bonehead. That one quick second turned into juvie a judge a year of house arrest, a year of this court-ordered journal, a year to avoid messing up and being sent back to juvie so fast my head will spin. It’s only 1 year. Only 52 weeks. Only 365 days. Only 8,760 hours. Only 525,600 minut ..read more