Are your students ready to perform well on standardized tests that question their analytical skills?  We know that our students can answer the who, what, where, how, and why questions of a story, but can students compare/contrast, organize, assess, or examine a claim?  During class discussions, I would play it safe and ask the four […]

                As we move to a new decade, we must leave behind the old yellow-stained duplicated (ditto) workbooks and the reading textbook with four comprehension questions and one synthesis question. School competition is a fact of life, and if your high school produces several scholars that earn ACT scores that are in the 30s, your […]

My evaluator walked into the classroom and quietly took a seat in the back of the classroom. I was just gathering the paperwork for my small reading group.  I stood in front of the six students and began teaching.  The evaluator walked across the room and leaned while looking at the board.  She was looking […]

Four teachers met in a circle discussing the direction of the reading lab.  For three months, I had created lessons for the reading lab classes, using the same formula from the previous year.  Now, the 7th and 8th-grade teachers, along with the teacher leader, who is also a language arts teacher, were brainstorming how the […]

Have you ever driven to a new city without a GPS or map?  I would not suggest teaching without a “roadmap” or a lesson plan.  Recently, I was traveling three hours away, and I was riding with one of my sorority sisters, Jawana.  She is a supervisor of a satellite children’s mental facility, where she […]

On Fridays, I would check my students’ usage on the online reading program MindPlay.  Students were expected to complete two hours per week on the program.  I quickly saw that students were not completing the mandatory hours per week.  Every day, I used a timer, walked around the classroom, and watched students on GoGuardian (an […]