Tag Archives: teaching reading

Motivated Literacy: Mrs. O’Donnell’s Magic Pencils

Spencer Salas
Spencer Salas

Greetings from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte! For this month’s post, I’d like to write about a memory of magic pencils and a Latin classroom. It goes like this: In the 1980s in high schools across the state … Continue reading

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Reading Barefoot

Spencer Salas
Spencer Salas

Happy winter holidays from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte! Last month, I wrote about literacies of vulnerability and how my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Dahlstrom, cried when she turned to the final page of Where the Red Fern … Continue reading

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Celebrating World Teachers’ Day: Literacies of Vulnerability

Spencer Salas
Spencer Salas

On October 5th, UNESCO celebrated World Teachers’ Day 2022 with the theme of teachers transforming education around the globe! In honor of the celebration, I want to share a memory of my fourth-grade year at Old Creek Elementary School in … Continue reading

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Reading the Sun, Moon, and Stars: Intergenerational Literacy

Spencer Salas
Spencer Salas

Happy October from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte! This month, my Dad’s turning 90 and for this blog post I’d like to share one of the stories he’s told us about growing up on the island of Guam … Continue reading

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Reading With Purpose This School Year

Spencer Salas
Spencer Salas

Hello again from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte! In July, I kicked off this teaching reading blog with some thoughts about the categories of “reading” and “literacy” and why they matter for a new school year. For this … Continue reading

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“Literacy” vs. “Reading”: 3 Questions to Consider This Fall

Spencer Salas
Spencer Salas

Greetings from The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where I’ll be writing this “teaching reading” blog for these next 12 months! To kick things off, I want to look a little at the categories of “reading” and “literacy.” To … Continue reading

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How to Improve Reading Comprehension? Team With a Theme

Barbara Gottschalk
Barbara Gottschalk

“We don’t read that much at school. Mostly we do our work,” observed Selena, a third grade multilingual learner (MLL). I knew the “work” she was referring to involved reading, but obviously she didn’t think it was real reading. I … Continue reading

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Checking Reading Comprehension? Ask Better Questions!

Barbara Gottschalk
Barbara Gottschalk

“Ms. Gottschalk, don’t you get it?” The young English learner (EL) asking me this question was genuinely concerned. He was perplexed because I kept asking him and his classmates questions about a picture—questions whose answers I obviously already knew. In … Continue reading

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