I first became familiar with the pre-writing portion of this assignment during a C3WP session I attended in 2019 through the National Writing Project. C3WP stands for College, Career, and Community Writers Program. If you are unfamiliar with the National Writing Project, it is an amazing network of literacy educators that often think outside of the box when it comes to teaching reading and writing. There is also a mission entrenched in the idea of “teachers as writers,” and continuing professional development as an integral way to continue building skills as an educator. Many of the writing sessions that are geared toward both adults and children focus on the inspiration from the life of the writer as a way to access the entire writing process.

Back in 2019 when I first wrote about generative writing, I said:

“...generative writing really is at the heart of all writer’s workshops because it uses the students’ interests and personal experiences to create the topics, provide the organization, and make the connections that are so necessary for engagement and comprehension.”

The term “generative” writing has a few different meanings in the world of writing.

It can take the form of an idea brainstorming in creative writing. It is often unedited and looks like a stream-of-consciousness exercise where the writer is not concerned with conventions like grammar, spelling, or punctuation. The cool thing about generative writing is that the students are the prompts. Your job as a teacher is transformative when you help facilitate the writer to discover their own writing process-including idea generation. Generative in the sense of this post means the ideas are generated from the writer’s life and then transposed into a variety of genres. This post will walk you through how to do this with argumentative writing, and then apply it to a writing workshop. 

Any teacher of literacy is going to come across this type of debate of reading levels and Lexile in their classroom and throughout their school buildings. To get right to the point: Should we, as teachers, be paying attention to the levels of reading that our students are at in terms of ability and demonstrated skill level? The answer is complicated. As a middle school teacher for over a decade, my students would enter the sixth grade at a variety of levels of reading ability and skill. This was due to a variety of factors, including tracking of students in elementary schools. The debate among educators is vast regarding reading levels and Lexile, whether or not your building has a particular strategic reading program or not. Here are some of the opinions about reading levels so you can get the gist of what everyone is talking about:

Students should be able to read any book they want. They shouldn’t be restricted to choosing books within their “range.”

Students should be limited to choosing books within their “range” because they can practice their demonstrated skillset. They can expand their selection with practice and skill acquisition. 

Students shouldn’t be told their reading levels or Lexile. 

Students should know their reading level. They are included in the process of helping them catch up. 

Teachers need to scaffold instruction with a variety of reading materials to reach students on their levels. 

Teachers need to expose their students to grade-level material to expose them to content at their grade level. 

Classroom libraries should not have publicly displayed Lexile or reading levels on books. Students should be able to choose their books. 

Classroom libraries need to be organized with a reading level in mind. Students should know what level of book they are holding in their hands to see if they can access the material. 

Programs like accelerated reader that give comprehension assessments are able to accurately show student knowledge. 

Canned programs are not able to demonstrate student understanding because it is simply measuring the student’s ability to take a test. 

There are even more viewpoints listed than the ones above. Everyone seems to have the right answer, while this post will contain my own personal opinions, it also serves as a starting point. This post is an invitation to conversation and reflection on the current practices in your classroom. As a curriculum consultant, I often will label materials with the Lexile or reading level information because it provides a means of information. Each teacher has their own opinion regarding Lexile or reading levels. In order to fully engage the conversation, educators need to understand what Lexile and reading levels are, how strategic reading classes are typically run, resources for reading level differentiation, and recommendations for selecting reading materials for your classroom. 

I was recently looking through Jill Jackson’s book “How to Coach Teachers to Teach (Almost) Anything: A Totally Practical Guide to Instructional Coaching” and I found myself nodding when she was talking about the difference between classroom management and behavior management. While some love talking about these topics, some stray away because of a variety of reasons: Fear of being wrong, feeling like “we are already doing everything,” or being downright frustrated with behaviors in the classroom. On the blog, I talk about all things reading and writing all the time, but the truth is, unless you have classroom management in place, the teaching of content cannot occur. This post provides a launching pad for brainstorming different areas of classroom management. The effort that goes into your routines and procedures really pays off, and then, you can focus on the skills that are attached to behavior management in your classroom.

Teaching inspiration often comes in cycles, especially for literacy teachers. We get excited about a reading project, and then figure out a workshop for writing that just works. We create a project for kids that gets them moving, and then come up with the perfect book-tasting setup that makes them want to read more. We hone in on the aspects of teaching that keep us going when it gets rough. Sometimes we know inspiration fades away during periods of burnout. This project with writing got my creative flow turned on again to want to research, put together, and create a lesson and activity for kids. Creative writing play kits are loose part containers that show kids how to find story ideas in everyday surroundings. They could be used for a variety of things, and you could easily create them with things you find at the Target dollar spot, local craft store, or even things around the house. Many of the things were items that my two-year-old can’t play with just yet because they were too small. This post is an outline of creative writing play kits: What they are, how to use them, and how to get inspired by putting them in front of kids.

The teaching of a poetry unit always begins the same. We talk about what is poetry, and then students will almost always give me their opinion on poetry writing as a genre. Some students love poetry. Some students immediately throw defenses up because they have notions about poetry that involve feelings, emotions, and talking about personal stuff. They aren’t wrong, but poetry is more than that perception. As teachers, we are charged with showing our students that it is okay to express feelings. It is okay to write about ourselves because it is a reflection of the safe environment we have created without our classrooms. While I have taught many different poetry assignments over the years, I have loved observing student reactions and seeing their faces when I play slam poems. It is like watching a show or attending a performance. There are tons of videos on Youtube, but this post will look at some of my favorites. Besides awesome examples you can use with kids today, I have given a few additional poems that teacher leaders could use when leading teacher training as well.

“Something has to happen…” This is what I said to one of my teaching colleagues at school regarding the level of stress, burnout, and fatigue that we were all experiencing.

I have said this in previous years, but now going into a full two years this March of teaching in a pandemic, alterations need to be made to my strategies of self-care that are realistic and adjust to the new normal of teaching and motherhood. My life has changed in a multitude of ways in the past two years.

1.) Virtual teaching and the Covid-19 pandemic created an atmosphere where we lost boundaries we never had. Teaching moved itself into our living rooms. We taught with our children on our laps, in our living rooms, and with dinner cooking during staff meetings.

2.) I became a mama. Now with an almost toddler, I am still trying to navigate my schedule on a daily basis as a classroom teacher and what that looks like after bedtime.

Classroom teaching has remained unchanged. It is just as hard as it was before, but my overall tolerance for inadequate systems is becoming something that can’t be ignored anymore. When we moved back to in-person learning, the education system as a whole tried to hold on to the things that were good about virtual learning, but we quickly fell back into old habits, routines, and schedules. We lost the social-emotional learning aspects of teaching that were so important and needed for so many children. But, we also remembered that realistic self-care wasn’t just wanted for teachers; it was needed. This post is a declaration of boundary-setting and some strategies I am going to propose regarding setting actual healthy boundaries with the profession of teaching as a whole. I am beyond wanting band aid fixes. I acknowledge that I do not have all of the answers, but one thing I know is clear: I can’t keep doing business as usual.

I have been talking to my teacher friends about something that naturally occurs each school year: Each of us will end up with at least one tougher class than the rest of the classes. This might be an advanced class that is really concerned about grades, a class that struggles with engagement or behavior, or a class that seems to constantly be at odds with each other. We have all seen the teacher memes or posts that highlight many of these ideas:

Your most challenging student will never be absent.

Dear teacher, I talk to everyone. Moving my seat will not help.

When a student asks to go to the restroom, just seconds after their best friend.

Welcome to teaching! When salaries are low, and everything is your fault.

When you find out that your worst-behaved student…has 3 younger siblings.

There’s no tired like teacher tired.

The sayings are true. We are tired. We are constantly making minute-by-minute decisions, and we are genuinely exhausted. Instead of dreading a class, I would like to offer some ways to turn that class into one that you love again. Nobody wants to be miserable. So, if some systems are put into place for both the teachers and the students, then the parameters are setup to safeguard your happiness as the leader of the classroom. You are no longer controlling chaos, but perhaps enjoying being in front of 30+ middle schoolers (at least in my position) again. This post offers 25+ tips that are designed to revise and edit classroom systems, reframe negative thinking, and insert more love and joy into your classroom for each and every hour. Take what you need. If you are struggling with a particular hour in your day, maybe you try one or two of these tomorrow or next week.

When I make a list of non-negotiables each year, Friday Free Write is on the list. Free-writing doesn’t have to be on a Friday, but the English teacher in me loves the alliteration, and I love ending the week with a little bit of joy. Free-writing is joy. Why? Free-writing allows students to explore the topics, genres, and prompts of their choice. When I survey students at the end of the year, they always say to keep free-writing. I even always offer for the administration to come do walk-throughs and observations during these times because I want them to see the excitement and happiness kids get out of free-writing. While I can infuse love into academic writing, there is nothing like having time to think of your own story and then share with others. This post walks you through what is free-writing, what it looks like in a middle-school classroom, and the logistics of setting up a free-writing time-block in your own literacy classroom. I answer commonly asked questions including what to do when kids won’t write. I would urge non-English teachers to also consider free-writing time as it helps students learn the power of generating their own ideas and showing them their ideas are important enough to put down on the page.

In the midst of summer break, I wanted to take some time to discuss the number of teachers who are leaving the profession as a whole. There is a mass exodus of teachers who are retiring early or leaving positions due to the work load, the toll of the past school year, and the general atmosphere that is education in the current social and political state. It is also now the norm when I run into people I haven’t seen in awhile to ask me: “Are you even returning in the fall?” The assumption is I would run from the experiences of the past 2020-2021 school year. The prediction is that I would leave teaching, and if I said that I wouldn’t be returning in the fall, I would be met with an all-knowing look of “i get it.” I acknowledge that the teaching and education job culture and climate has reached a critical mass of unrealistic expectations that are demeaning and unhealthy. However, this isn’t the first time many of us have contemplated leaving the field of education.

The idea of leaving teaching is one that I have spoken extensively about on the blog for many years. The first post sparked many of the other posts that really got my blog going back in 2017. I spoke about the paper load and the time spent outside of the classroom on teaching-related tasks. The second main one addresses why I stayed teaching for over 10 years (at the time of the post publishing) and continued to come back each year. I said in that post: “I hate the amount of paper and workload we have, the criticism that teachers face, the growing pressure to “fix” the achievement gap, standardized testing, stress and stress eating, the absurdity of sub plans, and the growing anxiety we feel related to work.” This was before the pandemic happened and virtual learning took place.

The first few moments of class are critical for a variety of reasons, but the main reason for really focusing on those first few minutes is your entire lesson could be a success or failure depending on whether or not your students are engaged from the beginning. I love talking to teachers about warm-ups. I love hearing different strategies and ideas. One of the most powerful pieces of teacher advice I have to give is there is power in sharing the why or purpose behind your lesson right away. Our brains are hardwired for the information of “why am I here?” to feel safe and to create a sense of belonging. On another level, your warm-up helps unlock your classroom environment. You make students feel welcome with a warm-up.

So, how do you start class?

I have started my middle school English Language Arts class in a variety of ways. I sometimes rotate my warm-up strategies based on the grading marking period or trimester. I sometimes keep things that work well, and then I toss out other things that don’t. I almost always come back to some form of creative writing or choice reading with conferences.

The first six weeks of back-to-school are filled with getting to know students, testing, and figuring out our classroom routines. When we get into the second marking period, I always notice a shift in how my classroom does its business. There is a movement from the “getting to know you phase” to the “we can finally start learning and growing phase” each year. This phase takes place right around the six-week mark and involves focusing more on content than on routines and expectations. I look forward to this transition each year. I want to take a moment to pause and acknowledge the first skill that I teach students every school year is always the same: annotation in reading. I use non-fiction reading to implement this strategy because it establishes a routine for the rest of the year when we encounter a nonfiction text, and it transitions nicely to when we are dealing with larger works of fiction. In the past, I have done Article of the Week from Kelly Gallagher to teach annotation skills, but I am finding that online learning is causing me to adapt to a new way to teach annotation while online. Annotation is a brand new skill for middle-schoolers. In this post, I will outline how I go about teaching annotation skills, providing purpose for annotation, and how to keep mixing it up to keep kids interested.

As a teacher, it is easy to find yourself in a state of being pretty negative at school. Not necessarily with the students, but with other teachers and staff in the building. The cycle of negative talk-particularly negative teacher self-talk- is one that can consume school buildings in various spots, in entire hallways or sections, and in entire buildings. It manifests into people not wanting to come to work. Think about it like the culture and climate of your brain. The thoughts that we are thinking when we wake up, the ideas that cross our minds throughout the day while we are making millions of decisions, and the contemplations that we feel driving home are all indicators of who we are as people and where we are at in terms of self-care and belief about our work. Simply, we are our thoughts. This post is all about the connection our thoughts have to our actions and bodies. If we can talk about negative teacher self-talk in a way that helps combat fatigue and negativity in the workplace, we have a shot at changing our point of view. First, recognize the signs of negative teacher self-talk in yourself and in others:

1. Significantly reduced patience with classroom management (Quick to snap)

2. Increased levels of stress and anxiety

3. Trouble sleeping or waking up with a 3 am a to-do list

4. Taking work home to your significant other or family in a counter-productive way or bottling up completely about the issues at work to appear like you are fine

5. Lack of creativity or energy in lesson planning or delivery

6. Not wanting to get up to go to work for repeated days in a row

I often go speak to pre-service teachers at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI. It is right down the road from my school building, and I love answering questions about teaching. It makes me a bit giddy. However, I have started to realize over the years that I am answering the same questions and some questions-that are really important-never come up. I wanted to make a post to outline the questions that I think new teachers should be asking before they step foot into a classroom, and then offer some words of advice or encouragement about each question. The post shows the 10 questions that I think matter to pre-service teachers and new teachers in the field. The hope is if we start having the conversations now with new teachers, the hard parts of teaching won’t catch anybody off guard. The goal is always for teachers to keep teaching, even when we think it is impossible.

I could talk about sketchnotes all day. I could also really talk about how I think sketchnotes merge seamlessly with thinking maps. Both of these tools create a visual method of note-taking for students that defies the traditional norms of the column notes or teacher-guided notetaking. They also have the power to transform assessment in our classrooms. Students light up when they are able to complete a formative assessment or a summative assessment in a way that isn’t standard. It is outside-of-the-box. It is necessary.

Sketchnotes is visual note-taking.

If you need to be sold on the love of doodling watch this TED Talk, or simply check out any of Lynda Berry's work, like Syllabus. I love Verbal to Visual because they have made an entire center for teachers to become familiar with sketchnotes. This post is a gallery post of examples of sketchnotes and applications from my classroom. This post is meant to be an inspiration to infuse art into your literacy classroom.

Jason Reynolds in his keynote at the ALA Annual Convention this past summer talked about how we are all walking libraries. I loved this metaphor because it provided an image as to how each person is made up of a collection of their identities, experiences, and memories. We are all databases in motion. While many websites, blogs, and social media accounts are contributing to the call for the presence of more diverse texts, the work is still in progress. This comparison only clarified the position to mandate more diverse texts in classrooms and in the publishing industry overall because we have to honor the collective and individual experiences in our schools. Our main libraries, our classroom libraries, read aloud choices, and book talks all need to be purposeful and selective in voice, author, and representation. Because the goal, in the end, is to honor diverse voices as part of our daily and yearly norm.

When speaking about diverse texts, it is important to remember diverse to whom? The School Library Journal summarized the updates to the widely known infographic regarding diversity in children’s books. These infographics remind us that while progress has been made, there is still work to do in the field of education and in publishing. As teachers, we are reminded that diverse texts are a way to access comprehension and unlock engagement in our students because students see themselves in our curriculums. The concepts of windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors are more than analogies; they are points of access to be humans with our students. Cornelius Minor in We Got This.: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be reminds teachers that the very act of using diverse texts is engaging to our students because we are including them in the content and the strategies in our rooms. He also reminds us that “teaching without this kind of engagement is not teaching at all. it is colonization (28). Zaretta Hammond in Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students also reminds us “Instead, I want you to think of culturally responsive teaching as a mindset, a way of thinking about and organizing instruction to allow for great flexibility in teaching” (5). The use of diverse texts in our schools is a mindset and necessity- not a strategy.

Narrative writing is always the first big unit taught in sixth-grade English, but I would also argue that narrative writing is the perfect way to open up a brand new school year because we are finding out about our students’ stories. I am also pretty sure that October may be one of the toughest months to teach in considering that it consists of conferences, the end of the first marking period for my middle school, the flu season that starts circulating, and it is my birthday month. The last part is not a bad thing, I just find it easier to resent less “me time” with all of the to-do lists piling up. This post contains step-by-step directions for teaching a personal narrative writing unit at the secondary level. This includes directions, elements of the assignment, teaching strategies, and mentor texts. I also wanted to include information about writing conferences and grading information.

During this past week of school, I had a realization that the newness of the back-to-school season was starting to wear off. I found myself getting used to routines with remote teaching, and I felt like I finally had some organization to my day-to-day schedule again. With this feeling, almost always comes the anticipated dread of the stacking up of the paper pile. Whether this stack is in-person or virtually in a Google Classroom, this pile can feel draining. I can insert other words all associated with burnout. I wanted to do a round-up of posts about grading in general on the blog that I have used throughout the years. Some of these posts are more general posts about grading categories, reflections on blocking out time, and trying to manage the load. Some of these posts are about specific ways that I work through larger assignments to give feedbacks (Hello, conferences and using rubric codes). You will also see a vulnerable post that started the blog in 2017 where I admitted that working through the giant stacks of paper is one of the reasons I would ever consider leaving teaching. As teachers, managing the to-do list and paper load is one of the most important points we make in our own self-care. My hope is that you find a strategy that lightens the stack you have growing on your teacher's desk or in your inbox. Check out these 15+ posts to inspire your grading routine.

I waited tables at a restaurant during college as many did during their formative years. I hated whenever I had to order something OTF or On The Fly. Why? Because immediacy demanded attention out of me, the cook line, and everyone else around me. I would dare say that the entire field of education operates under OTF standards. Everything is an emergency in education, yet there is no fear like the fear that sets in when sub plans have to be made. In my 105 Ways to Make the Most of Winter Break post, I remind everyone to schedule in those sick days...even if you aren't sick. However, the ultimate fear of scheduling sick/sub-days-planned or not planned-is making sub plans. These lessons take hours, are a giant hassle, and sometimes will get printed or set up correctly, and then sometimes not. Now, with the move to online learning, it is important to adapt to this type of environment as well so that creating sub plans is easier even in virtual teaching. I think this transition will change how sub plans are done forever as we move to everything being available online. This post strives to give 25 different sub plan ideas and more for the writing teacher. These could be used for any teacher, but they are particularly helpful if you are an English teacher that focuses on writing.

The fall inevitably brings about the desire and need to change and update your course syllabus. A syllabus is something that is often debated in the English classroom because the crux of the syllabus is really the organization of how the class will run overall. You get information about the materials, the grading practices, and a course schedule. While middle schoolers are brand new to the idea of a course syllabus, high schoolers and college students come to expect this piece of paper on the first day of class. This post shows you some ways to create an engaging document using the computer program Canva. I have included pictures of my old syllabus and what my syllabus looked like in the 2019-2020 school year. If you choose to use Canva, you can make an amazing syllabus using the free version of the program. I personally pay for the upgraded program to get access to pictures, watermark features, downloading features, and more.

Reading and writing are all too often cyclical. Everyone knows good reading fuels good writing and vice versa. As a middle school teacher, I really wish that I was able to teach reading and writing separately or even give them their own block of time, but I do also love the impossible harmony that is being a reading AND writing teacher. This post will explain how I start my week with students, and how I often will start each class. I always start each hour the first day of the week with a book talk about a middle grade or young adult novel or nonfiction book. It kicks off my mentor text work with kids, and it gets them excited about a book they may or may not have heard about before. This post goes into detail to explain why the simple act of talking about books in a way that makes kids want to read them is one of the most important things we can do as teachers each day.