Dabble with alternatives to the traditional research paper

Have you ever considered options beyond the traditional report? Check out what four different teachers did to dabble with research writing in their classrooms.    read more...

Engage more students with highlighter tape

West Side Middle School (Union City, IN) seventh grade teacher Carla Durham likes to engage her students with fun reader and writer tools in the classroom. One tool that she has found many uses for is highlighter tape.    read more...

Lead students through a nonfiction scavenger hunt

Nonfiction text features offer clues to the reader that aid in comprehension. However, there are many students that ignore these elements and think of them simply as decoration, rather than information. Be intentional about teaching text features, rather than assuming students learned them in a previous grade.    read more...

Picture books build background knowledge on hard-to-grasp topics

Most picture books (also known as "children's literature") are usually 32 pages or less with illustrations on every page or double-page spread. At first glance, most middle school and high school teachers would walk past them assuming picture books to be for an elementary classroom only. However, the power of these texts is that it can help students learn more about the world around them.    read more...

Jumpstarting a nonfiction/research unit

Jumpstarting a nonfiction/research unit is a popular topic with many teachers. Several of you emailed excited to dive into a nonfiction writing unit, so I thought I'd give you a couple additional ideas this fuel the fire.    read more...

Seeking out quality, short nonfiction passages

One way to help students with this type of crunch-time reading and writing is to give them more opportunities in class to read shorter pieces (short stories, short biographies, nonfiction passages on content-area topics, poems on content-area topics, etc.)    read more...

Finding the important info in nonfiction research

We know that comprehension increases when students have an authentic purpose for their content- area and textbook reading. Mary Hall (Sweetser Elementary, Sweetser, IN) helps her students identify their purpose by teaching them to turn traditional chapter subheadings into questions    read more...

Supporting reluctant readers

When assigning classroom reading, consider using techniques that target the reluctant and/or struggling readers in your classroom.    read more...