My passion is teaching children to read and write. I wanted to share some sites that will help you find the perfect books for your children, no matter what their age. Teachers first 100 books Oprah’s reading list for kids Common sense media book lists Scholastic 100 books USA Today 2012-02-14 100 greatest books for- [...] Related posts:Father’s ...

Instead of assigning everything my students will read, I’m trying something new this year: a move to Reading Workshop in my English 9 class. My ninth graders will participate in The 1,000,000 Word Challenge. When I look at the research (thank you, Stephen Krashen), it’s a no-brainer. Free, voluminous, voluntary reading is the way to go. ...

Earlier today I read John Spencer’s interesting blog  about books that make students uncomfortable: books should make you feel uncomfortable John mentioned that he disliked To Kill a Mockingbird, and many of us jumped in to defend the book. Atticus would have been proud! To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite childhood books. As [...]

I was excited about class on Friday because we were going to discuss Wallace Stegner’s “Town Dump,” a beautiful essay about his Canadian childhood. Students generally like the essay because of Stegner’s vivid descriptions of the items he finds at the local dump. Since the essay is told through the eyes of a seven year [...]

I received an email yesterday from a teacher who wanted to know if I would share my lesson plans for teaching In Cold Blood. I had to apologize to her for not sending anything because the plans that I have for teaching the book are all inside my book. I don’t type up plans for [...]

Yesterday, I picked up a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink. Dave Ramsey has been recommending his latest book Outliers on his radio show lately but when I got to Barnes & Noble, I realized Blink was available in paperback and so was therefore quite a bit less expensive. I’ve heard Dave recommend it before, so I decided to go with the less ...

I have a very simple question for the language arts teachers out there. A little background first When I was in school and took the TAAS reading exams (as well as the SAT), I quickly discovered that I am a fairly slow reader. I also don’t get a lot of the specific details when I read a [...]