Topic: Anna Gratz Cockerille

This week is the August Writing Institute at The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. There, Thousands of educators from all over the country and world are learning, thinking and writing together.

As the saying goes, “Well done is better than well said.” Nowhere is modeling more important than in the teaching of writing.

If your classroom library is still a work in progress, don’t worry - with some planning, organization, and creativity, you can turn your classroom library into a truly inspiring place.

A classroom library is the at the heart of reading instruction. The kinds of texts students encounter in their library will help shape the kinds of readers they become.

This week, institute season kicks off at The Reading and Writing Project, as thousands of educators gather at Teachers College in New York City to reflect upon, reinvigorate, and refine their teaching of writing.

If you are an educator with some time away from school this summer, hopefully you are using a lot of it to recharge. This time to re-anchor to what energizes you is crucial and much-needed.

As we move into the summer months, many kids will have a lot of hours to fill. As teachers, we have a lot of power to make sure that at least some of kids’ time this summer is taken up with reading.

The whole class, teacher included, is feeling it: the approach of summer, marked by warmer days and possibly by shorter attention spans.

Helping students to reflect on all they’ve accomplished in a way that celebrates the leaps they’ve made and highlights what they’d still like to tackle will set them up for the strongest finish to the school year.

It’s a wonderful feeling when a new teaching resource arrives, along with it a sense of rejuvenation, creativity, and thoughtful anticipation about how one’s teaching will shift for the better.

For many teachers and students, the summer months are a chance to change pace, to dig in to projects of personal interest, and just…breathe. But for many kids, summer is also a time when learning grinds to a halt.

At this week’s TCRWP Twitter chat, Katy Wischow and Audra Robb will lead a discussion on recharging your workshops after testing. If you or your students are experiencing post-testing slump, don’t miss our experts chatting about how to combat that in fresh, exciting ways.

If you read aloud regularly to your students, you know: there is no time in the day quite like read aloud time. A good read aloud can bring a group together like nothing else, can provide a foundation of camaraderie, trust, and respect in a classroom.

All students, those that gravitate toward nonfiction and those that don’t, need opportunities to engage with nonfiction not just during nonfiction reading units, but all year long.

Engaging students in lines of inquiry and independent projects of their choosing is a way to teach into transferable skills and to give students practice with the kind of learning that is lifelong.

In the upper grades, students don’t often move up reading levels as quickly as they do when they are younger. But that said, it’s still important to take note when a student has been in the same level for what seems like too long.

At this week’s TCRWP Twitter chat, Janet Steinberg, Research and Data Manager for the TCRWP, and staff developer Rhea Royster will lead a chat on what is most important in helping students in grades 3-8 prepare for tests.

If you work with students with learning disabilities, do not miss this week’s TCRWP Twitter chat. Colleen Cruz— a powerhouse of information on working with youngsters who need extra support to learn best— will facilitate that chat.