In this post, I encourage you to bring authors into your classroom to add a personal dimension to social studies lessons. Autobiographical accounts, for example, can offer first-person perspectives on events under discussion. And authors who research and write about historical and cultural topics often present their interpretations and sources while revealing their methods and processes.

As Father’s Day approaches, I love to think about all the fathers in the world who have had a positive influence on the children in their lives.  In particular, I’m cognizant of several authors/illustrators with adult offspring who are now in the book-making business. Take, for example, Walter Dean Myers.  Walter is well-known for writing [...]

In this post, I invite you to introduce a multimedia dimension to your students’ series reading. Children love series fiction. They enjoy the familiarity of the storylines, become comfortable with the formulas, and delight in the characters’ idiosyncrasies. Educators appreciate that these titles are accessible to all children—from the voracious readers who never put a book down to the English Language Learners who build on the successful completion of one volume to move confidently on to the next.