August YA Book Releases 2023 Get ready for back to school with these fabulous new books! All You Have To Do by Autumn Allen I am so excited for this book. It’s told in two overlapping narratives. The first is set on an Ivy League campus in the wake of MLK Jr.’s assassination. The other…
Professional Reading for Teachers To Do Summer 2023
Professional Reading for Teachers These titles are not new, but it takes me awhile to get through my professional TBR pile as I prefer to go slow and focus on fewer titles. Do you! Literacy as Liberation, Visible Learning for Literacy, and Cultivating Genius Literacy is Liberation by Dr. Kimberly Parker First, I am so…
Get Back to School With 8 Easy And Fun Activities for High School
Back to School Activities for High School As I planned back-to-school activities for high school students this year, I thought long and hard about what experiences and values I wanted to center, using that to drive what we did. The results are so great. First, I wanted everyone to connect with me in some way.…
Recent Research on Independent Reading
I always set goals for myself to read more actual research, but I rarely follow through. In this post, I’ll share some research from 2020 and later on independent reading that I actually read. Yay! What comes first–print exposure or reading skills? van Bergen, E., Vasalampi, K., & Torppa, M. (2021). How Are Practice and…
Read These June 2023 YA Book Releases
Recommend these new summer reads to your students, or gather them for yourself! Going Bicoastal by Dahlia Adler In this queer rom-com, teen girl has to choose between spending the summer with her dad (and the girl she’s crushing on) in NYC or with her estranged mom in LA (and the guy she never saw…
May 2023 YA Book Releases to Read Now
May 2023 YA Book Releases Finish the school year strong with these May 2023 YA book releases! Hurt You by Marie Myung-Ok Lee For teachers looking for a replacement or paired text for Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. This Korean American contemporary retelling of Of Mice and Men tells the story of a teenage girl…
The Best April 2023 YA Book Releases
April 2023 YA Book Releases Get your students reading with these amazing new titles! Star Splitter by Matthew J. Kirby For students who like action and science fiction. This would be a great book to entice students to read more science fiction. Reminds me of 172 Hours on the Moon by Johan Harstad, a fave…
What Students Think about Reading Independently
Reading Independently There are lots of positive thoughts students have about reading independently, but this post is about the negative ones, why they’re valid, and how we as teachers can respond. You can see an Instagram live version of this post here. What Students Think About Reading Independently Here are some of the most common…
Instagram Vs. Reality: How To Teach Independent Reading Edition
Have you seen those Instagram vs. reality videos and memes? Photos by Geraldine West This is like that for how educelebs say independent reading should look versus how it actually looks. I am having a little fun with this post, but I really do appreciate an aspirational lens and am inspired by people who capture…
8 Rights for Teachers of Reading to Reclaim
Not sure if you’ve seen the readers’ bill of rights from Daniel Pennac which is often used in schools, but I am riffing on that idea as rights for teachers, because you too, Gentle Reading Teacher, have rights. Here they are. You can add, revise, and delete, as you see fit. You know best. There…
