Every child is a cultural being with a unique history and rich cultural practices; a member of communities in and outside of school. Yet too many children spend their days inside classrooms where they rarely find their voices, values, and cultural practices reflected in curriculum materials, much less embraced and celebrated through instructional practices.

Culturally... more

Teachers know the importance of strong relationships with their students, but sometimes connecting with them feels challenging. No More Teaching Without Positive Relationships reviews the teacher-student relationship research and provides practices for building relationships that make a difference.

To learn, students need positive relationships with their... more

Congratulations to Cris Tovani, recipient of ILA's Adolescent Literacy Thought Leader Award 2017!

The truth is, when we rely on lecture in an effort to cover content, we’re doing students a disservice.  Although lecture can be engaging and even useful, lecture alone cannot give kids real opportunities to learn, retain, and transfer the disciplinary... more

“Letter-a-week” may be a ubiquitous approach to teaching alphabet knowledge,  but that doesn’t mean it’s an effective one. In No More Teaching a Letter a Week, early literacy researcher Dr. William Teale helps us understand that alphabet knowledge is more than letter recognition, and identifies research-based principles of effective alphabet instruction, which constitutes... more

Teacher-coach collaboration is critical to teacher effectiveness and student learning, but sometimes the in-the-moment response rate required when supporting several teacher requests at once can make literacy coaching appear to be, well, rather random. 

No More Random Acts of Literacy Coaching looks at the common obstacles and misconceptions that can prevent... more

It is common to engage students in the process of science, using mostly hands-on activities, and equally common to provide students with only science knowledge through mostly text-based experiences. Neither of these approaches is authentic to how scientists make sense of the world. Both fail to connect those experiences to the larger purpose of... more

“We need to evaluate how we spend time in our classroom by asking whether it is proportional to how valuable the activity is in fostering students’ independence and growth.”
—Elizabeth Brinkerhoff and Alysia Roehrig

Time is precious, and every teacher needs more. No More Sharpening Pencils During Work Time and Other... more

“Be prepared to be embraced with words, images, stories, examples, experiences, and a love for teaching in community with young people toward social and cultural justice.”—Django Paris

As middle and high school teachers, we know that students begin to develop racial identities and ideologies as early as preschool.  By the time they reach us, there is much... more