Literacy work stations are being embraced in many elementary schools as a way to ensure students of all ages are completing thoughtful, challenging tasks while their teachers meet with small groups of students. Debbie Diller, author of the book Literacy Work Stations, takes you into two primary classrooms to demonstrate how to create a thriving stations program. Patty Terry's first grade students and Vicky Georgas' second graders work in stations...

Powerful tools for mathematics instruction can make a good lesson great. Math tools in action: manipulatives make mathematics visible; they allow students to see math. Manipulatives also enrich mathematics discussions and make learning accessible and understandable for students at all levels. In this video, Chris and a year three class learn about comparative size by exploring the dimensions of a variety of insects, animals and birds using tape measures,...

The release of prisoner Harry Canwell horrifies Tolin and reveals the tragedy in his own life. Christine struggles to come to terms with her mother’s death. The search for Daniel Rampton comes to an unexpected conclusion.

Literacy attendance is an alternative to the traditional attendance roll at the start of the day. Students have the option of sharing reading or writing activities from home when their name is called, and teachers gain insight into students' literacy behaviors in the home environment. The daily activity is scheduled for no more than ten minutes, and provides teachers with a wealth of insight into literacy learning beyond the classroom. About the author:...

It's a common dilemma: teachers need time to work in one-on-one conferences and in small groups with students during literacy workshop. And yet assigning 'busy work' to the rest of the class won't help all students to develop the essential reading and writing skills they need. Can we really expect young readers and writers to tackle challenging work on their own without constant support and intervention from teachers? This question led Gail Boushey...

What are the features of a school change model? Can these characteristics be captured and shared with other schools? How can all members of the school community work together to effect change? In this four-part series, teachers and administrators explore specific ideas for implementing an apprenticeship literacy model that includes on-the-job experiences in five critical areas: assessing change over time in reading and writing progress colleague coaching...

While literacy development begins long before children are of school age, the kindergarten classroom marks an important moment as students embark on their lifelong journey as writers. This enlightening video program offers a close up view of a master teacher's writing workshop as she focuses on critical topics associated with young children. She addresses conferring with young writers, teaching skills in context, tools for record-keeping, publishing...

Following on from the success of her book math work stations, Debbie Diller now brings the world of math stations to life, demonstrating how you too can effectively incorporate math stations into your instruction to enhance your students' conceptual understanding and skills. Debbie works with both 1st and 2nd grade teachers and students, demonstrating how to: find the time and space for math stations organize and manage manipulatives move from whole-group...

With the advent of RTI (Response to Intervention), teachers everywhere are spending part of their day teaching in small groups. In Think small!, master teacher and author Debbie Diller plans and teaches various small-group lessons with students at different reading levels while the rest of the class works independently at literacy work stations. Teachers learn how to form groups, organize for small-group instruction, choose books, write lesson plans,...

When Kelly Gallagher learned that his 9th grade students could not name the vice president of the United States, and when two seniors asked him in all seriousness, "Who is this guy, Al Qaeda?", Kelly was shocked into realising he needed to do something outside the standard curriculum to build his students' background knowledge. In response, he developed the Article of the week activity to address the serious gaps in his students' education. Each week,...