Reading Notebooks... we love them, we struggle with them, we know they can be used much more effectively. In our books What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow? we wrote a whole chapter on how to help students use them authentically so that we teachers can use them to make instructional decisions. Let's take a look inside the book at a few of its many resources. A whole chapter about reading notebooks- how to set them up and how to use them for decision-making We researched students

It can seem like there are hundreds of skills to teach when it comes to reading fiction. We've seen anchor charts covering every inch of classroom space. Teachers spend hours and hours sifting through resources to decide what to teach each day. It is overwhelming and exhausting. Maybe we don't need to make it so complicated. We spent time thinking about how we could make it all a lot simpler. We realized that all of the skills and teaching points we ever taught for reading fi

As teachers we make more decisions all day long than just about any other profession. By the end of the day when we sit down to decide what to teach tomorrow we are often beyond burnt out. This led us to the research on decision-fatigue-- yes, that is a real thing. While we have plenty of firsthand experience with this situation, and we are sure you do too, it is helpful to read a bit about what exactly it entails. “Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible peopl

We love questions! Our new book series, What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow? is one of the most common questions teachers consider. The books are framed around the questions that reflective teachers ask from school to school across the country. Take a look at the questions below and notice if any (or all) of these ring true for you too? And a few more questions... What qualities matter most when deciding on books for my students? How can I help students actually care about the