The Stenhouse Blog

“This book began when our small group started working together to become better teachers—to help the children, each other, and ourselves.”

In the new book, Engaging Literate Minds, we are introduced to seven colleagues who set out to think deeply together about how to create intellectually, socially, and emotionally healthy classrooms. With Peter Johnston and his books, Opening Minds and Choice Words as their guide, they spent the last ten years challenging themselves and each other to hone their instruction and promote a school curriculum that is thoroughly permeable to children’s interests and proclivities. They combined their stories into this professional learning resource. Let’s meet them!

On Tuesday, 12/10 at 9:00 p.m. ET, we will close out the year with a #StenhouseMath Twitter Chat with author of the new book, Up for Debate!, Chris Luzniak. Here are the questions we will discuss. If you're looking for ways to get your students engaged and talking about the math you're teaching them, join in the conversation!

In this episode of Teacher's Corner, we sit down with Kassia Wedekind, math coach, Stenhouse editor, and author of Math Exchanges, and Allison Hintz, teacher educator at the University of Washington, former fifth grade teacher, and co-author of the book, Intentional Talk. Listen as they share stories, research, tips, and tools to help your students become better listeners. You 'll also learn ways teachers can become better listeners too.

This blog post was written by Geoff Krall, educator and author of Necessary Conditions: Teaching Secondary Math with Academic Safety, Quality Tasks, and Effective Facilitation.

There’s that famous yarn about how if someone time traveled from 100 years ago everything would look different except classrooms. That’s not really true. At least, not now. In fact, if this time traveler walked along the hallway of a math department, they’d see all sorts of disparate things. Sure, some classrooms might have desks in rows with the teacher lecturing at the board. But in other rooms students would be working in groups. In other rooms still students would be plugged into a piece of instructional software. This would-be time traveler would have no idea what’s going on!

It wasn’t easy, but your students are now talking in the classroom. So now how can you make sure that the conversations they’re having are meaningful and productive? Here are some resources to help you take classroom conversations to the next level and give your students the power of effective communication.

Many Stenhouse titles focus on building tolerant, accepting communities inside and outside the classroom, helping students see beyond themselves and the immediate world around them. Preview these titles online to find the one that best fits your students.

Start with Joy by Katie Egan Cunningham

Start with Joy: Designing Literacy Learning for Student Happiness links what we know from the science of happiness with what we know about effective literacy instruction. By examining characters in the books they read, children develop empathy for others and come to understand that we all struggle and we all love. When given a choice about what to write, children express hopes, fears, and reactions to life’s experiences. Literacy learning is full of opportunities for students to learn tools to live a happy life. 

Black Ants and Buddhists by Mary Cowhey 

Most students and teachers think about subtraction as "take away" but Marian Small, author of Understanding the Math We Teach and How to Teach It  is offering different ways to think about subtraction that don't expire and that lead to greater math success in grades K–8.

By now, your reading and writing workshops are up and running. But are you noticing  there's something missing in your instruction that would bridge the two together? Jeff Anderson and Whitney La Rocca noticed that in their own instruction and they figured out a way to close the gap!  

In this video, hear from Jeff and Whitney about how taking just 5 minutes from reading workshop and 5 minutes from writing workshop each day, you can use their process known as the Invitational Process, or Patterns of Power Process, to strengthen your students’ comprehension and composition skills. Find out why this process works and how you can use it to create a space where students notice the beauty and meaning of writer’s craft in the texts they read and in the world around them.

It's time for the annual National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference in Baltimore! Check out our in-booth activities below and be sure to schedule them into your agenda. You don't want to miss an opportunity to meet and learn from these authors and educators!

"The unfortunate reality is that it's really hard to standardize thinking that's not standard."