This website and professional texts by Jeff Zwiers offer a variety of resources (tools, research, videos, etc.) for strengthening the quality and quantity of productive academic conversations.

A high school teacher describes an assignment in which students study the histories and social reception of words (in some cases considered obscenities) used to insult people of various social categories. Students come to recognize the powerful, sometimes damaging effects of language, enabling them to fight those effects intellectually. Many derogatory terms are cited as examples in this essay.

In this Cult of Pedagogy podcast, Jennifer Gonzalez defines three different approaches to designing rubrics to assess student work and provides examples of each, while discussing the benefits and drawbacks of the different models. Teachers may find these resources useful as they consider how they use their rubrics for response to and/or assessment of student writing.

Guide to planning assessments for specific learning objectives, including establishing validity and reliability.

This blog post provides an overview of how mentor texts fit in lessons.

In this English Journal article, Mazura et al. describe six strategies to use during the revision process, showing how these strategies support the development of students’ voice and agency as writers.

This is an example of the Mentor Text Table you will submit as Evidence of Preparation and Planning.

This blog post on the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership website offers a concise and clear overview of how to read and analyze a text in preparation for unit plan design.

Describes a study that integrates grammar into the teaching of writing. Provides a good review of other articles and titles that will help explain the research base for this approach.

Assessment definitions and principles for literacy assessment adopted by the National Council of Teachers of English.

This document walks teachers through the questions to ask in preparing a writing task and helps them consider all aspects in creating a writing prompt.

This position statement from the National Council of Teachers of English defines the components of effective reading instruction and cites research to support these ideas. It provides a comprehensive overview of the teaching of reading in the 21st century as well as recommendations for teaching reading for teachers and guidelines for policy makers.

This Nearpod resource allows students to explore the life and history of Shakespeare and helps them prepare to read the tragic play, Hamlet. This resource has interactive discussion boards, short assessments, matching games, virtual tours, and informative videos to help students learn about Shakespeare.
This resource can be completed in a class setting or assigned to individual students as a homework assignment. This resource will give them the needed background information to understand and enjoy reading Shakespeare.

In this English Journal article, Elizabeth Thackeray Nelson describes a writing unit she taught with 12th-grade students. She defines the learning goals and describes the range of writing strategies she used with her students throughout the writing process––from inquiry to drafting to revision to publication––of developing community action projects. This article may help teachers who would like to read about how a teacher builds a unit and integrates writing strategy instruction and reflection with student writers.

This text provides an overview of the components of effective vocabulary study for middle grades readers. It includes meaningful supports for selecting words, word study, vocabulary development, and assessment.

NCTE and its constituent groups have developed position statements on a variety of education issues vital to the teaching and learning of English language arts.

Contemporary nonfiction for young people plays a crucial role in the reading and writing lives of K–12 students. It is a rich and compelling genre that supports students’ development as critically, visually, and informationally literate 21st-century thinkers and creators. The purpose of this position statement is to propose a paradigm shift for teaching and learning with nonfiction literature in K–12 education.

This article provides guidelines for teaching students skills to successfully present in front of the class including addressing stage fright, effective voice, gestures, and posture, and a downloadable and editable grading rubric.

This toolbox highlights thinking routines developed across a number of research projects at PZ. A thinking routine is a set of questions or a brief sequence of steps used to scaffold and support student thinking. PZ researchers designed thinking routines to deepen students’ thinking and to help make that thinking “visible.” Thinking routines help to reveal students’ thinking to the teacher and also help students themselves to notice and name particular “thinking moves,” making those moves more available and useful to them in other contexts.