At the end of lunch a couple of weeks ago, a group of seventh grade students called me over to their table to tell me that they’d been talking about our read-aloud novel, Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead, which will come out this August, and they had a suggestion. On double period days, we should… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Posts about pedagogy
Reading Aloud in a Middle School English Classroom
The other day, I read Joe McGee’s powerful blog post about being the kind of hero who doesn’t need a cape: the kind of understated hero who reads books aloud to kids. I recommend reading the post in its entirety, but in one part of it, Joe describes reading to one of his three sons: “I sit… Read more »
“Why are we allowed to read this…?”
Pretty soon, I’ll post the final installment of my series on engagingly fallible first-person narrators, but in the wake of Banned Books Week last week, I wanted to post something else while it’s fresh in my mind. After A.S. King visited my school last spring and gave three amazing presentations to grades 7-9, several students… Read more »
The Value of Failure?
For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about the value of failure. Sounds counterintuitive, I know. But last week, I went with the other teachers at my school to the NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) conference for a day. I expected lots of information about how we can set our students up to… Read more »
Reading Levels Don’t Tell You Everything: A Great Book Is a Great Book
This year, the theme for fifth and sixth grade English and social studies at my school is China. Last winter and spring, I read several China-related novels as I tried to figure out my book list for sixth grade English. I wanted a range of books that would engage sixth graders, expose them to aspects… Read more »