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"Whether you are in your first years of teaching (welcome to our rewarding profession!) or, like me, you’re starting the school year for the 34th time, the way you begin matters. We only get one chance to set the tone and establish a shared vision for living and learning together, so let’s make the most of it! With that goal in mind, I’ll offer a few books for read alouds and ideas that you might try as you build relationships on the 'days you begin.'" Read more from The Ramped-Up Read Aloud author Maria Walther on Corwin Connect.

"Balanced literacy is more than grouping students. But grouping for instruction is important and, sadly, neglected." Read more from Nancy Frey, co-author of This Is Balanced Literacy, on Corwin Connect. 

Colleen Cruz, author of Writers Read Better: Nonfiction and Narrative, writes in her Corwin Connect blog: "We know that the students we teach, without the benefit of years or even fully formed pre-frontal cortexes, are particularly vulnerable to being convinced to think, buy, or do any number of things—especially when they see it online or in social media. One of the most effective ways, if not the most effective way to counteract this is by actively teaching students first to write whatever material we want them to read critically."

In this Corwin Connect blog, Laura Robb, author of Read, Talk, Write, offers strong reasons for why your students should lead discussions in the classroom. 

Douglas Fisher, co-author of This Is Balanced Literacy, explains how the term "balanced literacy" today is used to describe instructional arrangements. A simple Internet search for “balanced literacy” will result in a wide range of graphics that indicate that whole class and small group instruction must be in balance. But that’s not where the term originally comes from.

Whether you’re a novice or an expert kidwatcher, there are 3 moves you can make to ramp up your observation skills—then take what you observe to make decisions based on who your kids are as full humans. Read more on these 3 moves in Julie Wright's blog on Corwin Connect, based on her book, What Are You Grouping For?.

"You will forever be a character in the story your students will tell. I learned this from our brilliant colleague, Jim Burke; the things we do today will determine which kind of character we will become when the story is told later. Let’s consider for a few minutes how we might use fairy tales to enchant the everyday stories our students live." Read more from Text Structures from Fairy Tales author Gretchen Bernabei on Corwin Connect.  

It is important for teachers, administrators, and coaches to serve as a conduit, connecting current ideas and and explaining classroom practices to our students’ caregivers—our partners in children’s learning. Read this blog from Pam Koutrakos, author of Word Study That Sticks and The Word Study That Sticks Companion, for three ideas that yield buy in and intend to ignite the imagination of families. 

The number-one fear of mankind is public speaking, according to various studies. While we can’t guarantee that we can alleviate all of your students’ stage fright, we can provide you with this lesson from High-Impact Writing Clinics to make their forays into oral presentations a bit more successful with helpful hints to alleviate their fears.

We know that writing skills reinforce reading skills, but what’s the best way to capitalize on this beneficial relationship? By flipping the traditional “reading lesson first, writing lesson second” sequence, Colleen Cruz, author of Writers Read Better: Narrative and Nonfiction, ingeniously helps you make the most of the writing-to-reading connection with carefully matched, conceptually connected lesson pairs. Attend this webinar to discover how you can do the same and establish a healthy reciprocity that effectively and efficiently develops students’ literacy skills.

In this introduction from Text Structures from Poetry, Grades 4-12, Gretchen Bernabei explores her own past difficulties with teaching poetry, her insights from working with Laura Van Prooyen, and how to use this book to rethink and transform how you teach poetry to your students.

In this lesson from Text Structures from Poetry, Grades 4-12, students read and dissect the poem "Love Waltz With Fireworks" and write their own poetry based on their text structure analysis.