Teachers have been asking for help for years all the while doing the work of multiple professionals in one work week. Between lesson planning, grading, communication to home, activities, and the actual working with kids during the school day, teachers have long been burning out. The newfound trends with AI (Artificial Intelligence) have taken the world of business by storm, with many saying that “you are behind if you aren’t using AI.” Yet, as a former classroom teacher, I was hesitant to check it out. It felt like plagiarism. It reeked of cheating. But, then I adopted a new approach:

What if AI can help teachers do the tasks that take up so much time so that teachers can actually focus on the work of teaching kids?

This post explores the transformative potential of AI in the secondary English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. AI has rapidly evolved, paving the way for innovative educational tools and resources that can empower educators to create dynamic and personalized learning environments. In the realm of secondary ELA, AI can serve as a virtual assistant, offering a plethora of benefits ranging from lesson planning and differentiation to supporting English as a Second Language (ESL) and English Language Learners (ELL) students. With AI by your side, you can unleash your creativity, efficiency, and effectiveness as an ELA educator. Specifically, let’s look at how AI can help out with the everyday tasks of teaching including lesson planning, activity preparation, and differentiation to be inclusive of all types of learners.

This post is for anyone who judges a book by the cover or the first page. When it comes to narrative writing of any kind, the opening lines can make all the difference in captivating readers' attention. Narrative hooks are the secret ingredient that sets the stage for a compelling narrative. In this blog post, I provide a step-by-step guide to teaching narrative hooks in the secondary ELA classroom, empowering students to craft captivating beginnings that hook their readers from the start. You can take from my own lesson examples, or use the stories I use to design your own lesson.

If you are journaling and not playing around with notebook sizes, I highly recommend trying different sizes out to see what fits your style! I recently have been working the most in B5 sizes (Roughly 7.48 × 9.84 inches). It is the largest notebook I have ever worked in because the typical notebook I grab for is an A5 (5.70 × 8.26 in), B6 (4.9 × 6.9 in), or traveler’s notebook size (4.33 x 8.25 inches). All three of these notebooks are smaller and can easily fit into a bag with the rest of your materials. I always thought B5 was too big, but what I am finding out is that I stick around longer in a B5 notebook and it fits just fine in a bag or tote. This post explores two of my favorites: The B5 Archer and Olive Notebook and the B5 Dingbats Notebook. I will give you insights into their similarities and differences including paper quality, size, feel, and durability. You can’t go wrong with either notebook-it all depends on personal preference!

I think one of the hardest things to implement in any classroom, let alone an English Language Arts classroom, has got to be incorporating opportunities for students to speak to one another about content. Talking with teachers, many of them voice concerns about the management of speaking and listening activities and being afraid of the “chaos” that might ensue when we put students in charge of talking about what they are learning. If we as teachers are brave enough to let out students focus on speaking and listening skills and strategies, it might just be the key to unlocking great reading and writing learning. Effective communication lies at the heart of language arts education. Developing strong speaking and listening skills is crucial for students to express themselves confidently, comprehend information, engage in meaningful discussions, and collaborate effectively. In this blog post, we will explore 25+ strategies that all educators (not just ELA) can implement in any classroom to promote and enhance students' speaking and listening abilities.

The summary assignment in the upper elementary and middle school classrooms often doesn’t get talked about much in professional development materials, but it is one of the MOST assigned assignments during a given school year. Teachers are focusing on skills surrounding retelling, comprehension, and checking for understanding regarding genre. Summary writing is one of the cornerstone types of assignments that need to be mastered before moving to more complex material. Often, as a new teacher, you may not know where to begin. This post is an introduction to teaching the narrative summary and the nonfiction summary in grades 4-8. You will find the difference between narrative and nonfiction summaries, strategies for tackling both assignments, and then example assignments you can use now.

After 13 years in secondary education, you start to feel like you know a thing or two about working with kids. You feel good about your strategies, you revise lessons that have already been made, and you hone in on your craft as an educator and a teacher of reading and writing. You have a pile of successes and losses that you can relate back to when you feel like you need direction. You understand the work that goes into helping students in grades 6-12 learn how to really care about reading and writing.

Then, you realize after having your own child that it is possible to start over. To be a beginner again. There is something amazing about starting at the beginning of something. The beauty in starting over is that you are humbled by the idea that you are a constant student of learning. I know I said this for years in my own classroom, but feeling like an utter beginner in many senses has been exciting, but also frustrating.

I have a toddler, like many toddlers, who loves all things sensory. She is sensory seeking in many ways. She loves books, but she is also on the go. I wanted to start introducing her to more ideas that were themed or grouped together to help her with learning her words and put ideas together. We also needed to insert something into our daily mama and daughter routine that we could look forward to each day either before lunch or after the nap.

Cue early literacy learning bins for our weekday unboxing during downtimes.

By incorporating sensory activities into her early literacy world, I can create a stimulating and engaging environment that enhances their cognitive, language, and motor skills. In this blog post, I present a 7-day overview of sensory early literacy learning bins tailored specifically for toddlers aged 1-3. Each day focuses on a different theme, allowing a little one to explore and discover various concepts while having fun. As always, take what you need from my ideas.

Let's dive in!

Teaching perspective and point of view when it comes to reading analysis is often the first step in a more advanced interpretation of any story. It is one of the capstone lessons that take place in middle school, and it is almost always found in canned curriculum guides that are used by larger districts. Traditionally, teachers focus on the first person, second person, and third person. Then, within third person- third person omniscient and third person limited. Narrative reliability often happens in 8th grade and beyond. This post is about how to do a brief introduction to the basic concepts of first person, second person, and third person.

As a reminder, here are quick definitions of each of the points of view:

First Person- the speaker or whoever is telling the story is speaking

Second Person- focuses on the listener of the story, think of this like a tour guide (On your left, you will see…)

Third Person- a voice outside of the speaker and the listener is telling the story

Third Person Limited- the voice doesn’t have all of the information, the individual scenes of a story are told with just that scene’s information

Third Person Omniscient- the voice is all-knowing, it knows all events, feelings, back stories, and what is going to happen

Creative writing isn’t just for famous authors or story writers. One thing I have really noticed since becoming a mother is that imagination and play have such a huge role in our lives, and as we get older, the former methods of play kind of fall away. They seem not needed. Almost trivial. In the classroom, creativity and imagination in the form of free writing with limited rules are one of the most beloved activities that kids crave year after year. It is not because it works in every single classroom, it is because they can feel that imagination and be able to play is fun again. Learning should be fun. Also, life and having kids should be fun.

Mamas have all sorts of stories to tell.

Stories of when we were kids.

Stories of times before we had our own children.

Stories of giving birth and labor.

Stories of how we adjusted to parenthood.

Stories of raising little ones.

Stories about our fears and triumphs, our hurts, and our hearts that now walk outside of our bodies.

We keep these stories in important places. We carry them in our physical beings and in our minds. We take pictures to not forget these moments. We write down important moments. We teach our babies about the value of stories. The power of creative writing unlocks the ability to share the real stories that happen to form the memories in our lives, and it allows us to dive deeper into our imaginations. We teach our babies to think "outside of the box," and our writing allows us the same outlet for play. Creative writing allows us to be heard in some way. We get to be silly. We get to have fun. In many cases, we get to heal. If children learn about their worlds through exploration and play, we can learn about ourselves through the stories inside of us.

Mama, you are already a writer without putting one word down on the page. This post contains a free resource to download or preview, and anyone can pull from the creative writing prompts to find inspiration, fun, and play.

I recently found my way back to a Leuchtturm journal after bouncing around a few different brands and types of notebooks for a while. I even stopped a journal completely during my family’s recent cross-country move because I needed to focus on planning and to-do lists in my planner. However, it was time to move back into a notebook. As soon as I received my Leuchtturm in the mail, I remembered why I loved these notebooks for so long. When I first started bullet journaling in 2017, I was drawn to these notebooks because everyone said these were the “holy grail” bullet journaling notebooks. After years of poking around journals and trying to understand some of the lingo, I get the positives and some drawbacks of this style of notebook. This post is a review of the A5 notebook from Leuchtturm1917. It is set up in a Q&A format, and then you can take a peek at some of my Leuchtturm journals from over the years.

You don’t have to be a journal or notebook lover to be obsessed with office supplies! There is nothing like a new planner, sticky note, or pen to make you feel organized and on top of everything. Sometimes it feels like a journey to find the perfect notebook or planner. You may weigh in your mind things like size, paper style, paperweight, pen loop or no pen loop, hardcover, softcover, and more…the easier part of loving office supplies is browsing through journal accessories that will speak to your inner office supply lover and planner lover. 

Because who doesn’t feel more on top of things when they have journaling supplies in stock?

This post is a mini-shopping guide roundup of all of my favorite office supplies to buy…after the perfect notebook is already in your hands. If you are still looking for the perfect notebook or the perfect journaling system at this point, start with this post: “Choose a Journaling System That Works For You” to get you started. These are items that make journaling or using a notebook just fun and allows you to be really creative. You will also see pictures of my journal or planner because I use items like these all the time.

I first became familiar with the pre-writing portion of this assignment during a C3WP session I attended in 2019 through the National Writing Project. C3WP stands for College, Career, and Community Writers Program. If you are unfamiliar with the National Writing Project, it is an amazing network of literacy educators that often think outside of the box when it comes to teaching reading and writing. There is also a mission entrenched in the idea of “teachers as writers,” and continuing professional development as an integral way to continue building skills as an educator. Many of the writing sessions that are geared toward both adults and children focus on the inspiration from the life of the writer as a way to access the entire writing process.

Back in 2019 when I first wrote about generative writing, I said:

“...generative writing really is at the heart of all writer’s workshops because it uses the students’ interests and personal experiences to create the topics, provide the organization, and make the connections that are so necessary for engagement and comprehension.”

The term “generative” writing has a few different meanings in the world of writing.

It can take the form of an idea brainstorming in creative writing. It is often unedited and looks like a stream-of-consciousness exercise where the writer is not concerned with conventions like grammar, spelling, or punctuation. The cool thing about generative writing is that the students are the prompts. Your job as a teacher is transformative when you help facilitate the writer to discover their own writing process-including idea generation. Generative in the sense of this post means the ideas are generated from the writer’s life and then transposed into a variety of genres. This post will walk you through how to do this with argumentative writing, and then apply it to a writing workshop. 

Any teacher of literacy is going to come across this type of debate of reading levels and Lexile in their classroom and throughout their school buildings. To get right to the point: Should we, as teachers, be paying attention to the levels of reading that our students are at in terms of ability and demonstrated skill level? The answer is complicated. As a middle school teacher for over a decade, my students would enter the sixth grade at a variety of levels of reading ability and skill. This was due to a variety of factors, including tracking of students in elementary schools. The debate among educators is vast regarding reading levels and Lexile, whether or not your building has a particular strategic reading program or not. Here are some of the opinions about reading levels so you can get the gist of what everyone is talking about:

Students should be able to read any book they want. They shouldn’t be restricted to choosing books within their “range.”

Students should be limited to choosing books within their “range” because they can practice their demonstrated skillset. They can expand their selection with practice and skill acquisition. 

Students shouldn’t be told their reading levels or Lexile. 

Students should know their reading level. They are included in the process of helping them catch up. 

Teachers need to scaffold instruction with a variety of reading materials to reach students on their levels. 

Teachers need to expose their students to grade-level material to expose them to content at their grade level. 

Classroom libraries should not have publicly displayed Lexile or reading levels on books. Students should be able to choose their books. 

Classroom libraries need to be organized with a reading level in mind. Students should know what level of book they are holding in their hands to see if they can access the material. 

Programs like accelerated reader that give comprehension assessments are able to accurately show student knowledge. 

Canned programs are not able to demonstrate student understanding because it is simply measuring the student’s ability to take a test. 

There are even more viewpoints listed than the ones above. Everyone seems to have the right answer, while this post will contain my own personal opinions, it also serves as a starting point. This post is an invitation to conversation and reflection on the current practices in your classroom. As a curriculum consultant, I often will label materials with the Lexile or reading level information because it provides a means of information. Each teacher has their own opinion regarding Lexile or reading levels. In order to fully engage the conversation, educators need to understand what Lexile and reading levels are, how strategic reading classes are typically run, resources for reading level differentiation, and recommendations for selecting reading materials for your classroom. 

Journal brainstorming session (n): a time period where you think about how you will set up your journal or notebook and what theme may bring all of the layouts together

Layouts or Spreads: Individual entries in a collection in a notebook, Example: January layouts for the week, month, reflections, goals, etc

Inspiration for your journal is everywhere. This past week, I got caught up in thinking about how I might update my vision board for the month of January. Vision boards are typically collages with tons of pictures, and I noticed that I do the same process on Pinterest when I am looking for inspiration in my own journal for themes, layouts, doodles, and more. This post contains some ideas to get you thinking about your next journal entry.

• What will you learn to draw?

• What colors will you use?

• What tools will you need to make it happen?

Think of your next journal project as a vision board of creativity. This post has 12 different journaling mood boards to be a source of inspiration for your next project!

I was recently looking through Jill Jackson’s book “How to Coach Teachers to Teach (Almost) Anything: A Totally Practical Guide to Instructional Coaching” and I found myself nodding when she was talking about the difference between classroom management and behavior management. While some love talking about these topics, some stray away because of a variety of reasons: Fear of being wrong, feeling like “we are already doing everything,” or being downright frustrated with behaviors in the classroom. On the blog, I talk about all things reading and writing all the time, but the truth is, unless you have classroom management in place, the teaching of content cannot occur. This post provides a launching pad for brainstorming different areas of classroom management. The effort that goes into your routines and procedures really pays off, and then, you can focus on the skills that are attached to behavior management in your classroom.

While I am a classroom teacher and love all things office supplies, I also have many people in my life who love all things paper, office supply and feeling organized. You have to admit: There is nothing like a new planner or journal to make you feel on top of it and ready to take on the world. This post gathers some ideas about the person in your life who appreciates the same feelings you may have toward sticky notes, new pens, and stickers that can make your day better. Remember, this is a gift guide for other people, but you may find yourself clicking “add to cart” for yourself as well. My favorite thing about gifting office supplies is that the “treat yo’ self” factor does not have to be a big one. Sometimes a small pack of pencils can make my day better. Have fun spreading some holiday cheer with all things paper, writing, journaling, and organization!

Teaching inspiration often comes in cycles, especially for literacy teachers. We get excited about a reading project, and then figure out a workshop for writing that just works. We create a project for kids that gets them moving, and then come up with the perfect book-tasting setup that makes them want to read more. We hone in on the aspects of teaching that keep us going when it gets rough. Sometimes we know inspiration fades away during periods of burnout. This project with writing got my creative flow turned on again to want to research, put together, and create a lesson and activity for kids. Creative writing play kits are loose part containers that show kids how to find story ideas in everyday surroundings. They could be used for a variety of things, and you could easily create them with things you find at the Target dollar spot, local craft store, or even things around the house. Many of the things were items that my two-year-old can’t play with just yet because they were too small. This post is an outline of creative writing play kits: What they are, how to use them, and how to get inspired by putting them in front of kids.

The teaching of a poetry unit always begins the same. We talk about what is poetry, and then students will almost always give me their opinion on poetry writing as a genre. Some students love poetry. Some students immediately throw defenses up because they have notions about poetry that involve feelings, emotions, and talking about personal stuff. They aren’t wrong, but poetry is more than that perception. As teachers, we are charged with showing our students that it is okay to express feelings. It is okay to write about ourselves because it is a reflection of the safe environment we have created without our classrooms. While I have taught many different poetry assignments over the years, I have loved observing student reactions and seeing their faces when I play slam poems. It is like watching a show or attending a performance. There are tons of videos on Youtube, but this post will look at some of my favorites. Besides awesome examples you can use with kids today, I have given a few additional poems that teacher leaders could use when leading teacher training as well.

Everything that reminds me of journaling also reminds me of fall types of things. This may be the best season for grabbing a notebook and getting ready to write.

Hot beverages.

Warm blankets.

Crisp mornings.

Sunlight in windows.

Nanowrimo.

Brain-dumping worries.

Moving a little bit slower in life as we get ready for winter.

Thinking about how the goals for the year are going so far.

Getting ready to think about goals for the new year.

Whether you like the fall for the football, changing leaves, or pumpkin spice lattes, journaling has a place in everyday routine. This post is an ode to fall journaling. Think of it like a fall journaling toolkit. These are all easy things you can add to your journaling routine to get the most out of fall. Included in this post, you will find an update on my fall journaling routine, cozy fall music links to set the vibe, fun accessories and stickers, and reflective prompts to get you thinking.

Anxiety and stress have always gone hand and hand. On the blog, I have written about the natural anxiety and worry that comes with being a classroom teacher for years. Many of my posts mention waking up in the middle of the night thinking about lesson plans, feeling like I can’t get ahead of my to-do list, or wondering how to fit it all in to achieve the ever-elusive “work-life balance.” Then, I became a mama, and a newer level of worry took over. Anxiety is a natural part of life. Tapping into the fight or flight response, anxiety is one of the most natural things that someone can feel. However, when unchecked, it can also make life more difficult. Some people seem to worry more and some less. Some people cope better with stress and worry than others. No matter where you are on the spectrum of anxiety, a notebook or journal can be a useful tool to calm a busy mind. This post includes a video overview of 5 different strategies for responding to anxiety including grounding, timed release, squared release, making a creative music playlist, and growing your own thought garden. You can also go a bit slower and look at the description of the exercises in detail.

Daycare has proven to be one of the toughest hurdles so far in motherhood. I love the analogy for parenthood that our kids are our hearts walking around outside of our bodies. That about sums it up. I didn’t know how hard it was going to be to trust someone with my little heart. There are so many things to consider, research, and question when it comes to finding childcare and a daycare provider. Often, the availability of good daycare is so hard to find because of age, circumstances, or if they are full. The younger the child is the harder it seems to be. I have found daycares that weren’t a great fit for us as a family, and I have found daycares that put my mind at ease. This post is to help a mama’s mind during drop-off. Whatever your reason for needing and choosing a daycare, those reasons matter. Grab a notebook and pen and get ready to circle one of the following 25+ affirmations that stick out to you. If you need to, put it on a sticky note on your rearview mirror or take a glance at it before you start your engine.