The walls of the classroom look emptier than they looked a month ago and a few remnants of the presence of students remain: a pencil here or a sticky note Read More…
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Although we hope that our students’ learning won’t stop just because school does, it’s good to help them reach a sense of closure during the last few weeks of the year. Good…
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On Move-Up Day, a rite of passage for the children at my school, I tend to feel a bit wistful as the second graders I've been teaching head off to meet their…
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Summer camp was a big part of my childhood. When I think back to my experiences at sleep-away camp, I remember a clear line between the camp with an atmosphere of safety…
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You can do this one in conjunction with packing up the classroom library: each child chooses a favorite book and tries to convince classmates to read it over the summer. There are…
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By mid-July, my two children had finally settled into summer. I knew when I got downstairs one morning and saw my nine-year-old son, Ethan, coming through the back door in his bathrobe…
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How much of the stuff that’s cluttering your classroom could be gone before school starts up again? Teachers keep all kinds of stuff we never use. Why do we keep these things?…
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We asked four Responsive Classroom consultants,"What's one great resource for teachers as they look ahead to the next school year?"  Here are their responses:
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I’d just read Tina Valentine’s post called “Will Your Students Keep Learning This Summer?” when I happened on another article on the same topic in the current International Reading Association newsletter. “Stopping…
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Did you know that two-thirds of the achievement gap in reading can be related directly to unequal summer learning opportunities? Even though I've seen firsthand how students can lose ground in their…
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For students, teachers, and parents alike, few events bring more hope and nervousness than the start of a new school year. As the summer winds down, many teachers begin to have conflicting…
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