The first six weeks of back-to-school are filled with getting to know students, testing, and figuring out our classroom routines. When we get into the second marking period, I always notice a shift in how my classroom does its business. There is a movement from the “getting to know you phase” to the “we can finally start learning and growing phase” each year. This phase takes place right around the six-week mark and involves focusing more on content than on routines and expectations. I look forward to this transition each year. I want to take a moment to pause and acknowledge the first skill that I teach students every school year is always the same: annotation in reading. I use non-fiction reading to implement this strategy because it establishes a routine for the rest of the year when we encounter a nonfiction text, and it transitions nicely to when we are dealing with larger works of fiction. In the past, I have done Article of the Week from Kelly Gallagher to teach annotation skills, but I am finding that online learning is causing me to adapt to a new way to teach annotation while online. Annotation is a brand new skill for middle-schoolers. In this post, I will outline how I go about teaching annotation skills, providing purpose for annotation, and how to keep mixing it up to keep kids interested.

As a teacher, it is easy to find yourself in a state of being pretty negative at school. Not necessarily with the students, but with other teachers and staff in the building. The cycle of negative talk-particularly negative teacher self-talk- is one that can consume school buildings in various spots, in entire hallways or sections, and in entire buildings. It manifests into people not wanting to come to work. Think about it like the culture and climate of your brain. The thoughts that we are thinking when we wake up, the ideas that cross our minds throughout the day while we are making millions of decisions, and the contemplations that we feel driving home are all indicators of who we are as people and where we are at in terms of self-care and belief about our work. Simply, we are our thoughts. This post is all about the connection our thoughts have to our actions and bodies. If we can talk about negative teacher self-talk in a way that helps combat fatigue and negativity in the workplace, we have a shot at changing our point of view. First, recognize the signs of negative teacher self-talk in yourself and in others:

1. Significantly reduced patience with classroom management (Quick to snap)

2. Increased levels of stress and anxiety

3. Trouble sleeping or waking up with a 3 am a to-do list

4. Taking work home to your significant other or family in a counter-productive way or bottling up completely about the issues at work to appear like you are fine

5. Lack of creativity or energy in lesson planning or delivery

6. Not wanting to get up to go to work for repeated days in a row

I love all things paper. A new notebook, journal, or planner is enough to get me to feel motivated about my goals. Fresh pages that are blank are sometimes all you need on a rough day to feel like a fresh start is in order. However, maybe like me, you have also had a notebook or office supply obsession get out of hand over the years. While I love a fresh notebook or journal, I will be the first to admit that I am one of the first people to not finish a notebook or journal and move on to something new. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that because of the inspiration that a new notebook brings, but I also know many of us are on the hunt for notebook, planner, or journal peace where we find a system that works for us in all ways.

If you check out examples in the planner and journaling communities, you can see a variety of journal types, writing and typography, designs, layouts and spreads, and ideas for organization. New notebooks make us feel good. Half of the fun in this journaling journey is the trying out of new ideas and systems to see what will work for us. If you are like me, you know what definitely doesn’t work for you. This post proposes different styles, types, and considerations when trying to find a journal or planner peace. The goal of this post is not to present you with a correct option, but show you the options that I have encountered along the way so that you find what works best for you.

I could talk about sketchnotes all day. I could also really talk about how I think sketchnotes merge seamlessly with thinking maps. Both of these tools create a visual method of note-taking for students that defies the traditional norms of the column notes or teacher-guided notetaking. They also have the power to transform assessment in our classrooms. Students light up when they are able to complete a formative assessment or a summative assessment in a way that isn’t standard. It is outside-of-the-box. It is necessary.

Sketchnotes is visual note-taking.

If you need to be sold on the love of doodling watch this TED Talk, or simply check out any of Lynda Berry's work, like Syllabus. I love Verbal to Visual because they have made an entire center for teachers to become familiar with sketchnotes. This post is a gallery post of examples of sketchnotes and applications from my classroom. This post is meant to be an inspiration to infuse art into your literacy classroom.

Jason Reynolds in his keynote at the ALA Annual Convention this past summer talked about how we are all walking libraries. I loved this metaphor because it provided an image as to how each person is made up of a collection of their identities, experiences, and memories. We are all databases in motion. While many websites, blogs, and social media accounts are contributing to the call for the presence of more diverse texts, the work is still in progress. This comparison only clarified the position to mandate more diverse texts in classrooms and in the publishing industry overall because we have to honor the collective and individual experiences in our schools. Our main libraries, our classroom libraries, read aloud choices, and book talks all need to be purposeful and selective in voice, author, and representation. Because the goal, in the end, is to honor diverse voices as part of our daily and yearly norm.

When speaking about diverse texts, it is important to remember diverse to whom? The School Library Journal summarized the updates to the widely known infographic regarding diversity in children’s books. These infographics remind us that while progress has been made, there is still work to do in the field of education and in publishing. As teachers, we are reminded that diverse texts are a way to access comprehension and unlock engagement in our students because students see themselves in our curriculums. The concepts of windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors are more than analogies; they are points of access to be humans with our students. Cornelius Minor in We Got This.: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be reminds teachers that the very act of using diverse texts is engaging to our students because we are including them in the content and the strategies in our rooms. He also reminds us that “teaching without this kind of engagement is not teaching at all. it is colonization (28). Zaretta Hammond in Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students also reminds us “Instead, I want you to think of culturally responsive teaching as a mindset, a way of thinking about and organizing instruction to allow for great flexibility in teaching” (5). The use of diverse texts in our schools is a mindset and necessity- not a strategy.

Narrative writing is always the first big unit taught in sixth-grade English, but I would also argue that narrative writing is the perfect way to open up a brand new school year because we are finding out about our students’ stories. I am also pretty sure that October may be one of the toughest months to teach in considering that it consists of conferences, the end of the first marking period for my middle school, the flu season that starts circulating, and it is my birthday month. The last part is not a bad thing, I just find it easier to resent less “me time” with all of the to-do lists piling up. This post contains step-by-step directions for teaching a personal narrative writing unit at the secondary level. This includes directions, elements of the assignment, teaching strategies, and mentor texts. I also wanted to include information about writing conferences and grading information.

For many years, I lived in the school of thought that my middle-school students wouldn’t want to read picture books. As with many things in teaching, we don’t know until we know. I love reading aloud to my students, and naturally, they love it because reading aloud goes back to a time when they loved reading as young children. As I could spend a lengthy bit of time here on this post about the apparent lack of love of reading that my sixth-graders come into my classroom with every fall, I will l quote Pernille Ripp from #NerdCampMI: “My goal is to make them dislike reading less.” Reading aloud to my students starts to work on this mission. The power of the read-aloud is equivalent to the power of the book talk. When kids hear stories and your recommendations for stories enough, they start to listen. Colby Sharp, a 5th-grade teacher in Parma, Mi, said this past week, “This year the picture book read aloud is as close to normal as anything we are doing in my classroom. The energy in the room is electric and I feed off it” (@colbysharp). This post contains 15 books that will spark electricity with words and stories.

If I were in my classroom’s physical space, I would plan to read one picture book aloud to my students each week. Now that I am virtual teaching, I plan at least 3-4 picture book read-alouds a week. One of my reflections from the 2018-2019 school year was that I loved how I felt solid with my growth in my independent reading program and my mentor text work, but I felt like I needed to be a driving force behind building empathy and compassion through both of these works. Empathy and reading were my two goals for 2019-2020, and they remain my two priorities in online learning. Reading aloud helps build not only a reading community but empathy and compassion in the form of community listening.

I am always on a mission to find more comfort and joy in life. Naturally, I became more curious about how I could infuse my classroom and the act of teaching with more comfort and cozy as well. I stumbled upon the word “hygge” on Pinterest after posting a few photos of rainy days, coffee cups, and twinkle lights as backgrounds. I love all things cozy, but the idea of taking this idea of coziness and comfort into the classroom didn’t hit until I started to read more and post more about hygge. I really don’t envision my classroom at school being filled with candles and everyone sipping peppermint tea like we are at a cafe, but I do see how some of the mantras from the practice of hygge can transfer over into the classroom and create an atmosphere of happiness. I think it is also important to consider the importance of comfort and cozy in the role of online learning. While I know many of us can’t makeover entire corners of our homes and online learning classrooms, some of the ideas in this post can apply to make ourselves feel a little more at ease while teaching from home. Hygge is about comfort. I am hoping that some of the ideas with hygge in this post lead to more happiness in my classroom and home, and therefore, lead to better wellness for me and my students.

According to The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living (The Happiness Institute Series) by Meik Wiking, “The word hygge originates from a Norwegian word meaning “well-being.” For almost five hundred years, Denmark and Norway were one kingdom, until Denmark lost Norway in 1814. Hygge appeared in written Danish for the first time in the early 1800s, and the link between hygge and well-being or happiness may be no coincidence” (ix). Let’s start with how you pronounce hygge. To sound it out, you would say “hue-guh.” Like the hues of the sun and guh rhyming with duh. Hygge is “about an atmosphere and experience, rather than about things” (vi). In short, hygge creates an atmosphere of calm and comfort in everyday things and experiences we all identify with naturally, and then these feelings create a sense of happiness.

I love looking at what other people have planned for the first two weeks of school. While some people feel inventive and creative, I sometimes feel really pressured to make sure that the first two weeks feel…perfect. And I can guarantee that nothing feels particularly perfect this year as we head back-to-school with online learning. However, I told my classes today: “No matter where we are, we are going to learn and have a great time.” I meant it. I wanted to include my favorite resources, books, and the learning platforms that I am using for heading back-to-school. I know that my teaching will be forever changed due to the adaptations and modifications I am making for my instruction in the current moment. This post starts with my first day plans, and then it provides a simple-structured outline for the rest of the two weeks. I did not include any language regarding essential questions and standards. I wanted to focus on the main activities and the tools I used to plan those activities along the way.

Whether you call quick writes your warmup, a focused writing prompt, writing into the day, or simply timed writing, a quick write has a range of possibilities that are just plain cool and useful in the English classroom. I adhere to the definition that Linda Reif uses in her book The Quickwrite Handbook: 100 Mentor Texts to Jumpstart Your Students' Thinking and Writing: “A quick write is a first draft response to a short piece of writing…” (3). Linda Reif uses other authors’ writing to spark ideas, but in my opinion, it can also be in the form of a question or another prompt to get students thinking. The three-minute quick write as a strategy is not new. It is a technique that published authors use, screenwriters, and classrooms young and old. This post is designed to help you revisit an old strategy and maybe weave in some new techniques to freshen it up a bit. If you are preparing the fall, it may be a perfect time to revisit your classroom weekly teaching routine.

The timing of three minutes is on purpose. It is just long enough to have a moment to think, but not enough time to really have a ton of delay that could cause disruptions in the classroom. I often will be able to put my response in my notebook and warn them just in time that they have a minute and a half left. The timing of this is “enough” time that it is not obtrusive to other activities in a day’s lesson plan. Think short and sweet, but just urgent enough that students will not have much time for hesitation in getting ideas down on paper.

I always end the first six weeks of school with narrative poetry. 1.) It is a mindset thing. I want to show the kids who don’t think they can write poetry that they indeed can write poetry. 2.) It is an excellent way to get to know students better. We may think we know each other after six weeks, but in reality, we have spent a lot of that time on testing and expectations. it is powerful to know our students and let our students know who we are as people. Cue Where I’m From Poems and I Am Poems. I use this form of poetry from George Ella Lyon each year to help build community and access important identity work. This post includes all of the assignment materials and my step-by-step process including mentor texts and a read-aloud.