Time Warp: I originally wrote this blog post more than 10 years ago! As I was looking over past posts, I realized that I worked with the id...

This week I started teaching my poetry unit, which is both exciting and scary! It's exciting because I love poetry, and I love the ch...

This year I've been working on new Article Response sets to use as ongoing practice and homework with sixth graders. They have worked w...

    I just love this quick routine for building student skill with finding text evidence. Yesterday, as we were reading the classic " T...

This week I decided to turn text structure on its head and and start with compare and contrast! I made this decision to provide some additio...

  I am finally wrapping up poetry. In November, I foolishly thought that I could squeeze the unit into the fourteen days between Thanksgivin...

  I love comparing texts as it always helps us to notice something new about texts and our world. As we have gone on with learning about fig...

Just as I like to work on summarizing throughout the year, I also like to work on comparing texts. Kids naturally enjoy finding connections ...

This is a term that I've been hearing more and more of lately. At first I discounted it as something that is beyond my students. But the...

As the year draws to a close, I find myself teaching more and more about comparing texts. This is the perfect topic for the end of the year,...

Don't you love it when everything just comes together? This week, as I reached for good picture books for teaching inferences, my choice...

As part of a project for a children's literature class, I'm working on compiling a list of high quality picture books that show diff...

Over the summer, my two sons and I loved finding out about mole crabs. When I went looking for information about them, I found that some of ...

Teaching the text structure of comparison and contrast can be tricky. If kids don't understand what either of these words mean, or if th...

I started making Powerpoints last fall, when I inherited a (slightly) broken LCD projector. I figured out the secret to making it work, and ...