Mentoring in the Middle
  Your students *sort of* know the different text structures, right?  They might even be able to remember 1 or 2 of them.   But do they real...
   You've got to love the optimistic spirit of 6th graders! In the country projects they created, almost no country has a military.   ...
A head's up:  This blog post has links to nonfiction resources and it's chock-full of information!  All the reasons to read nonficti...
  It might be scary to try.  But honestly, it's not that hard to do as long as you have systems in place. Kids love having choices.  The...
Two things.... and Each of these resources is just $1 today and tomorrow!  Click on the pictures to take a closer look.
 " The first time I was stoned to death by an angry mob, I was not even a criminal." Teacher friends, what are we to do with a sen...
Have you ever encountered grumbling from students that sounds like, "Why do we have to learn about this?  We're never going to use ...
  Have you been to all 50 states?  I've taken road trips to 35-40 states and I'm always blown away by the majesty of states that loo...
  By the time you get to the 5th or 6th grades, reading fluency gets less attention than it does at the primary level.  But you don't wa...
Holly-Mei has recently moved with her family from Toronto, Canada to Hong Kong because of her mother's new - and pretty high-pressure j...
  How did I manage to miss this book when it came out in October 2020?   A friend lent me a copy to read, recently.   And this is not one yo...
 I went for a walk in the park the other day and I was thinking about how beautiful the day was.  That got me thinking about how my students...
A year or so ago, I reread  Summer of the Monkeys  by Wilson Rawls.  And fell in love with the book all over again.  Rawls captures boy-inno...
I have a thought! I remember hoping at this time of the year when I was in the classroom, that I'd have more energy, the days being long...
   I was never a fan of giving up the structure of the school year once state testing was over.  That didn't mean we didn't have fun...
"I like Percy Jackson but that's it."   "I don't like myths or fables. “Really?  What if you could write your own? ” ...