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Teachers, administrators, and school social workers also prepare for a fresh start with new students and ideas to engage in another year of educational and developmental learning. Unfortunately, as the school year progresses, the new beginning and excitement can give way to complacency, frustration, and sometimes hopelessness. The reality for students who are disengaged from school, as well as those who experience significant academic and behavioral issues, is a season of uncertainty, diminished expectations, and possibly serious life outcomes that are just beginning.

The post Solution building for student success appeared first on OUPblog.

What if there was a way to build in opportunities to reflect, in writing, about my teaching right in the place where the lesson plans reside? And what if that place could also offer daily inspiration and opportunities to set positive intentions for the week ahead?

The young writers sitting in our classroom will rise above the fears and struggles of being a writer, but it will take intentional planning, repetitive teaching, daily writing, and reteaching. Writing is hard work. Students don't become writers because we have writing workshop. Writers become writers because teachers have clear intentions and a vision of what's possible.

The Kodály Concept of music education is based on the philosophical writings of Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967) and incorporates principles of teaching music developed by his colleagues and students. His writings on music education provided the impetus of developing a new pedagogy for teaching music. On August 30th, we discussed five essential lessons from the Kodály Concept. Below are five additional hallmarks of his work.

The post Effective hallmarks for teaching the Kodály Concept in the 21st century: part 2 appeared first on OUPblog.

It’s back-to-school time again – time for getting back into the swing of things and adapting to busy schedules. Summer vacation is over, and it’s back to structured days of homework and exam prep. These rigid fall schedules have probably been the norm for you ever since you were in kindergarten.

The post How much do you know about ancient Greek education? appeared first on OUPblog.

You can learn a lot about students when you give them a chance to tell you want they know!

What teacher of writers superpower would you like to develop this year?

To teach music effectively, we must know our subject—music. We must embody and exemplify musicianship.” (Elliott, Music Matters, 1995, p. 271). But how are we to communicate our musicianship to students in meaningful ways?

The post Effective hallmarks for teaching the Kodály Concept in the 21st century: part 1 appeared first on OUPblog.

How do you get to know the writers in your classroom at the beginning of the school year?

Looking for ways to get families more involved with your classroom or program? Or for resources to send home with them? The First Book Marketplace is the place to go!

Visit us for great family read alouds, resource collections for kids ages 0-12 and tips to arm caregivers with the skills they need. When educators and families are on the same page and pulling in the same direction it gives kids the confidence they need to keep building skills.

Build Strong Families with Stories

The books in this section model habits that families can adopt to grow stronger together. Each title is paired with a FREE downloadable reading guide designed for parents and caregivers. It includes activities, discussion prompts, and key ideas to take away from the story.

Tools to Get Families Involved

First Book proudly partners with content experts to provide easy-to-use tools to help you engage with families around subjects like healthy living, developing early literacy skills and building strong character. Our Family Engagement section includes 12 unique categories of books paired with free downloadable tip sheets, many in both English and Spanish.

The post Educators and Families: A Powerful Partnership appeared first on First Book Blog.

There are still a few weeks of summer left, but now is the time to find everything you need to build an enriching environment for the kids in your school, class or program. First Book’s Back to School Hub is your source for great books and resources that will help turn a successful first day of school into a successful school year.

The Back to School Hub includes:

• School supplies
• Learning games and activities
• Books celebrating diversity and inclusion
• FREE ebooks and more!

The first day of school can be a little stressful for students, teachers, staff…and even the school itself! Help ease those first day jitters by reading the charming School’s First Day of School by Adam Rex with illustrations by Christian Robinson, available on the First Book Marketplace.

The post Welcome Back to School appeared first on First Book Blog.

Last Thursday, I endeavored to explain writing workshop to parents in my district at Parent University. As I drove home after the presentation, I felt unsettled, like there had been a gap in what the parents were hoping to learn and what I delivered. What would you be sure to include in a presentation to parents on writing workshop?

Throwback week continues on Two Writing Teachers. Today, Anna throws back to Deb, who shared how to foster deep writing community bonds back in August.

Do your on-demand writing samples go into a folder or do they help you plan your next steps?

We are doing a special promotion through 9/15/15 to coincide with our favorite season.  We’ve teamed up with a bunch of really cool kidlit authors to offer some great free and discounted eBooks.  4EYESBOOKS has discounted The Nutt Family:  An Acorny Adventure on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks & Kobo.  Chess Nutt and his sister Praline are always pretending to have crazy adventures. What happens when these two acorn siblings have an unexpected real life adventure on their own? Things get a little nutty!

Other books in this great promotion will be discounted from 9/11 – 9/15.  Check them out HERE.

I'm back from summer break! Not that summer is entirely over: here in Colorado, it's still a balmy eighty-something degrees, with no end in sight... I'm kind of looking forward to fall, to tell you the truth.

But it's back to school time, which means I'm back to work. I'm writing a crime novel for adults (work-in-progress, stay tuned), and generally getting caught up with what's happening in mystery, YA, MG and for us grown-ups.

And back-to-work also means I'm stocking up on school supplies while they're on the shelves, including a good stack of spiral notebooks. They're my tool of choice when outlining, brainstorming, pretty much anything to do with writing. I should plant a tree for all the paper I go through...

How about you?? What are you up to? Read anything good lately?

Back to School Night is around the corner! When it comes to writing workshop, what do we need families to know?

We've curated some of our top 'Back to School' posts to help you plan and launch your writing workshop.

The heart map is a great tool for helping students find personally meaningful topics, but used year after year, it might feel a little stale. Writing territory maps is another option!

In this guest post from the Lee & Low archives, professor Katie Cunningham discusses ways to diversify Common Core recommended texts. As we gather resources to begin the new school year, Katie’s post is a good reminder that each year offers a fresh opportunity to look at the books we use with new eyes to see if they are serving us, and serving our students.

We live in an increasingly diverse society. Nowhere is this more evident than in classrooms, in both urban and suburban schools.  Nationally, our classrooms are almost 45% non-White and the trend toward greater diversity is expected to continue. Our classrooms reflect this trend, but our classroom libraries do not. The New York Times found that despite making up about nearly a quarter of the nation’s public school enrollment, young Latino readers seldom see themselves in books. Those of us in schools working with children from minority backgrounds know this to be true as we scan our bookshelves and find protagonists that are overwhelmingly white and living in suburban, privileged settings. The Cooperative Children’s Book Center found that in 2011, only 6% of children’s books featured characters from African American, American Indian, Asian Pacific/ Asian Pacific American, or Latino backgrounds.

Toni Morrison said, “National literature reflects what is on the national mind.” More than ever, we have a responsibility to reflect national population trends through our literature selections. As of 2011, teachers are being directed to the Common Core State Standards and its corresponding Appendix B: Text Exemplars and Performance Tasks, which has suggested texts for read-alouds and independent reading for students at grade level bands K-12.

While not required reading, there remains confusion among teachers and administrators about how to approach the list. As you scan the suggestions, you’ll quickly find a return to traditional texts like Black Stallion in fourth grade and Little Women in sixth through eighth grade. I’m of the opinion that reading traditional texts like the Preamble and Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (also in Appendix B) can give students cultural capital needed to be successful within the educational system.

Yet, while we can turn to the Standards for suggestions, we need to turn to the children in our own classrooms and ask ourselves whether they see themselves represented in books. Not only a responsibility, this is a moral imperative. We need to ensure a balance between traditional texts and books that offer contemporary portrayals of life and youth today, that reflect the lived experiences of the students in our classrooms.

The Uncommon Corps has started a campaign to better Appendix B and has a running Better B list worthy of checking out to hear what’s on the national mind. Teachers searching for a solution can also consider classic and contemporary multicultural pairings such as those below, especially when searching for titles that represent childhood. If we keep questioning what’s accepted as our national literature for children, we will rightfully start to see books that provide mirrors for every child in every class.

Classic and Contemporary Multicultural Pairings

CLASSIC: Henry and Mudge by Cynthia Rylant

CONTEMPORARY: Auntie Yang’s Great Soybean Picnic by Ginnie Lo; Elizabeti’s Doll by Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen; Loose Tooth by Margaret Yatsevitch Phinney; Bird by Zetta Elliott

CLASSIC: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

CONTEMPORARY: Angel’s Kite by Alberto Bianco; Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

CLASSIC: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

CONTEMPORARY: Alicia Afterimage by Lulu Delacre; Cat Girl’s Day Off by Kimberly Pauley

CLASSIC: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

CONTEMPORARY: Galaxy Games: The Challengers by Greg Fishbone; Chess Rumble by G. Neri; Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri

ABOUT KATIE CUNNINGHAM: Guest blogger Katie Cunningham is an Assistant Professor at Manhattanville College. Her teaching and scholarship centers around children’s literature, critical literacy, and supporting teachers to make their classrooms joyful and purposeful. Katie has presented at numerous national conferences and is the editor of The Language and Literacy Spectrum, New York Reading Association’s literacy journal.

I thought my Internet connectivity problems were solved after Comcast came out to our house last weekend. Things were great until Friday morning. Since then, I haven't been able to connect to the Internet at all. It's so frustrating! All my poetry files are on my computer. In addition, I have been using my computer to do research for a poetry book that I have been working on. It gets SO frustrating!

At least, I can get some posting done when I have access to my husband's laptop. I thought I'd copy and paste three of my original school-themed list poems that I have posted at Wild Rose Reader before as this is back-to-school season.

Every library worker has gotten that request for a strange, old book which is still somehow required at some school somewhere. Betsy Bird did a terrific take-down of those outdated list earlier this summer, and an attempt to "update" the choices for teen appeal backfired in South Carolina and Florida.

Yes, assigned whole-class summer reading can be problematic. The number of titles (and the page lengths) required seems to have dwindled over decades, and other supposed innovations including "read any one book from the New York Times bestseller list" has led to a scramble for the shortest books.

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Instead we should concentrate on promoting free voluntary reading. NYPL has rejiggered the reading portion of their summer learning program to focus on time spent reading rather than particular titles, and researchers at the University of Rochester have demonstrated that elementary school students who select the books they want to read over the summer have significantly improvements in reading ability.

When I spent a week at a teacher workshop this summer, it struck me that many schools have already given up on assigning summer reading. From Massachusetts to Missouri, teachers weren't even suggesting students should be reading particular texts in preparation for a new school year. Transience and not being able to supply books for students were cited as two barriers, but other teachers just realized the reading wasn't getting done.

"It sets the wrong tone," said Melissa Pouridas, English teacher at Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, Maryland. Students don't even pretend to have done the summer reading and start the term with a bad grade, or else they cram just enough from Sparknotes to get by, which suggests that the class won't require real effort.

Instead, Pouridas suggested that there be "first week of school reading." In the flux of schedule changes, students can take a deep dive, together, into a text and establish a more rigorous reading pace for the school year.

It's got to be better than finding Cliff Notes for Brave New World up on all the library computers, or that junior asking you to tell them the plot of Huckleberry Finn, both of which have been part of my back-to-school realities...