In this Stenhouse Summer Series blog post, Annie Syed writes about how to use bio-poems during the first week of school to help teachers and students get to know each other for a successful year ahead.

In the first post of our Stenhouse Summer Series, fourth-grade teacher, Nathan Lyon, writes about how preparing to build classroom communities that are safe and affirming of LGBTQ+ students is critical work we must all engage in as we begin planning for the new school year.

When students learn to have skillful conversations—academic or not—it is not only a powerful way to develop content understandings, thinking skills, and language, but they are also more equipped to overcome a wide range of life’s challenges.

“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!

Below is an excerpt from Lisa Lucas’s book of simple self-care strategies for teachers, Practicing Presence. This is just one many tips from this wonderful resource that are designed to help teachers from feeling “tired, wired, and running in circles.”

We talked with Matthew R. Kay, author of Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom about the meaning behind the title of his book. Here’s what he had to say.

Below is an excerpt from the new book, From Curiosity to Deep Learning: Personal Digital Inquiry in Grades K–5 by Julie Coiro, Elizabeth Dobler, and Karen Pelekis.

The following is an excerpt from Activate: Deeper Learning Through Movement, Talk, and Flexible Classrooms by Katherine Mills Hernandez on how to incorporate movement into your routine to benefit your students' test-taking.

One way to think about using movement to benefit testing is to consider when and where as opposed to what methods to use. We already know that rigorous cardiovascular movement wakes up the brain, so we need to strategize when and where to do it on testing days. We also know that the greatest benefits are achieved when movement happens before cognitive challenge.

If movement is going to happen before the test is administered, then students should be prepared to do some of this on their own, before arriving at school, since state tests usually begin at the start of the school day. There are also ways to build in brief movement sessions together, before the test begins. 

by Katie Egan Cunningham

I believe what happens in the first weeks of the school year determines how well one’s entire school year will go. Planning classroom routines in advance of the first day of school allows all members of the classroom community to have their social and/or emotional needs met so you can meet students’ academic needs all year long.