The Brown Bag Teacher – Teach the Children. Love the Children. Change ...

Five falls ago our District rolled-out Common Assessments to all fifteen (14 at the time) of our elementary schools and included accompanying scantrons sheets with each one. Initially, our 1st grade bubble-sheet learning curve was significant. Finally...

Opinion Writing Mentor Texts offer students a ‘real’ perspective on a genre and give students professional authors to emulate. Making writing concrete is valuable, and mentor texts help us do this.
Once a mentor text has been read, place it on an easily accessible classroom bookshelf for students to re-read and use in their own writing. Choosing opinion writing mentor texts based on our unit “I Cans” help keep our mini-lesson time focused and intentional...

Change can be hard. It can be necessary and uncomfortable. Sometimes we know we need to change but we’re not sure what that looks like.
Our teacher worlds change all.the.time. As we learn more, watch others teach, work with different students, develop new strengths – we and our classrooms evolve. This is a good thing. Over time, we are honing our craft based on our learning, the research...

Oral Language matters. We want students speaking, share, and writing in complete sentences. When we give students opportunities to talk before writing, we are scaffolding their thinking and language. Launching Opinion Writing, the goal of this lesson...