Anchors are incredibly useful tools.  

I haven’t been boating on the ocean many times in my life, but on the occasions where I was lucky enough, the anchor has been immensely important.  On our honeymoon, my husband and I took a catamaran on a snorkeling trip. The boat soared over the sea, rocking with amazing speed.  It felt like we were flying.   

When we finally stopped, the captain released the anchor down into the turquoise abyss.  

And it held us in place.  

In the middle of this giant expanse of untamed ocean, it held us in place.  The waves rocked, the wildlife teemed below the surface, the colors exploded in our view as we snorkeled, and the entire time the anchor held the boat in place.  

It’s incredibly simple and powerful: an anchor.  It’s a tool as old as the ages.  And it’s power and simplicity doesn’t need to change in order for it to hold an entire boat in place.  Hold it despite rough waters, an entire world of species below, an unpredictable sky above.  

Anchors are incredibly powerful tools in the classroom too. “What?” you say.  But it’s true. I talk with teachers about anchors all of the time. 

To create an anchor in the classroom is very simple.  There is no forging of metal needed.  Anchoring a child’s thinking simply takes a chart, sometimes a text and a clear focus.  A classroom anchor doesn’t need to hold an entire boat in place.  It simply needs to hold a child’s thinking in place. 

A mental anchor holds a child’s thinking in place.  

It takes the thinking back to the place where the child first learned something and allows him to connect new thinking to that old experience. Anchors also help children transfer any disconnected learning to an appropriate context.  


A classroom anchor, whether a chart, an experience, or a text, helps children connect new learning to old thinking despite distractions, rough days, time spent away from school.  

Anchors are immensely important on boats.  If you don’t anchor a boat it may float off in any direction and completely lose track of where it started and where it is going.   You may even lose the entire boat. 

Anchors are even more important in teaching a child to think and learn.  If you don’t anchor thinking it will float off in any direction and completely lose track of where it started and where it is going.  It will get lost.  And the thinker may be lost as well.  

But, we can create classrooms where mental anchors hold the thinking in place and help children grow and expand their thinking in meaningful ways.  

Expand it in ways that are bigger and broader than an entire ocean.  

And yet keep it anchored in place and connected to prior learning so that it all makes sense.  And it all adds up to bigger thinking than ever before.  

Anchors can help us do that.  Simple, powerful anchors for small, powerful thinkers.  

We can do it together.  Joyfully.  

Pure Imagination

My six-year old daughter just had the opportunity to be a part of a wonderful local theater production of Willy Wonka Jr.  She was an Oompa Loompa. 

Roald Dahl, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the story that this production is based on) was an amazingly creative and quirky writer.  His stories defy the imagination.  Yet, he is able to take fantastic situations and make us believe them and want to be a part of them. We can imagine how the characters feel. We can imagine what it might be like to join Willy Wonka in his chocolate factory.  To be an Oompa Loompa.  We bring our own imagination to the story and we make the whole crazy story meaningful. We can make meaning from something amazingly fantastic and unreal.

As a longtime teacher of reading, the words “make meaning” have come out of my mouth more times than I even realize.  For those of you who are not teachers, this phrase essentially means that reading has to make sense.  Reading is all about making sense.  Even when the story is comes purely from the imagination of a well-loved writer like Roald Dahl.  

Making meaning is something we do all day long from the moment we are able to comprehend our world as small, small children.  We don’t just start as readers.  We begin as young thinkers.  

This behavior is very human, very important to our social development as we learn to think deeply about the people in our world.  Peter Johnston, of Opening Minds, refers to one aspect of this ability as social imagination.  I love this because the word imagination goes so nicely with play.  

Children play to learn how to learn and how to imagine. Imagining what others are thinking is exactly what play is all about.  Dressing up like Mommy helps children to become Mommy, to think like Mommy, to use their social imagination to be Mommy.  Dressing up like an Oompa Loompa helps children imagine they are a part of Willy’s fantastic chocolate factory.  They can think like one of the characters.  It’s pure imagination.

Children make meaning in giant ways even as small, small people.  They use play and their imagination to make meaning. Eventually they use this kind of thinking to make meaning in the books that they hear, the books that they read.  Reading cannot be truly taught in the absence of meaning.  Reading is all about meaning.  

The letters and words just get us there.  To the meaning.  Through imagination.

And the experiences with play, with imagining what other people think, eventually can help us think deeply about the books that we read.  About the characters and situations that draw us in.  Like Willy, a chocolate factory, and the very imaginary and incredibly fun Oompa Loompas.  

We can teach reading in meaningful ways.  Fantastic, unreal ways.  Children can use the amazing thinking that comes so naturally to think deeply about all kinds of text. We can help them do this.  With joy.  And, sometimes, with a chocolate factory.  

We can do it together.  Thanks, Roald Dahl.

Ah… the reality of a teacher’s life.  Too much work, too little time, too many Institute Days.  

Recently, I was invited to attend a district-wide Institute Day.  After arriving at the school I was unable to find parking and ended up entering first my session a few minutes late.  After finding a seat, I set my attention to the front of the room.

The presenter was very animated. His hands were active and his voice carried a lot of inflection.  He was excited about his topic.  He was an engaging individual... but, unfortunately, I had no idea what he was talking about.  So, I desperately looked to his projected slides.

Alas, they did not help much.   I am always intrigued by presenters who fill their slides with lines and lines of text.  In this case, it was all in capitals.  

I NEED YOU TO HEAR WHAT I AM SAYING.

THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT.  

ARE YOU LISTENING?

Why are you yelling at us?  Each slide was the same.  And, honestly, I couldn’t figure out exactly what his workshop was all about. 

But I remember one detail very clearly.  He indicated in one of his slides that:

STUDENTS DO NOT NEED TO HEAR LECTURES.

THEY NEED TO BE ENGAGED IN LEARNING.

And then he proceeded to lecture for full hour.  

I was not engaged.  And by the number of people looking at laptop screens and phones, I suspect others were not as well.  

So here’s what I think:   teachers need the same things their students need.  A clear reason for listening.  A high level of engagement.  To understand the need for the professional development.  To want it.  And to use it to work toward becoming more knowledgeable.

JUST LIKE THEIR STUDENTS.  

I am here to tell you that all of this is possible.  We can link professional development to the needs of teachers and their students based on real classroom data.  We can engage teachers in learning and thinking at high levels through a variety of professional development opportunities embedded in their day to day world.  We can create learning communities that really learn.  And teachers who really think.  We can do this with joy.  We can do all of this together. 

AND THERE’S NO NEED FOR YELLING.

Suzanne Hostrawser is available to create engaging professional development for teachers or parent groups.  
 Contact her at [email protected].

I like big books.  

Really.  I cannot lie.  The bigger, the better.  When I find a book I might like to read, I immediately judge it for its size.  I want a book that will last a long, long time.   Usually, I want to find one that will never end.  Because, remember,  I love to read.  I am so, so sad when the reading ends.  

As a person who supports teachers, I often am perplexed by the mini-ness of so much of our work with students.  

We have mini-lessons, short texts, one-page articles, short blocks of time.  We have quick-writes and short centers (that often last for 11 minutes or less).  Even guided reading lessons are often reduced to 10 minute blocks.  Independent reading has shrunk down to something barely visible in most classrooms.  There is often very little actual reading happening in classrooms.  Miniature times.  Miniature lessons. 

Our time and lessons are shrinking while books continue to be big, bigger or biggest.  Text is still complex and requires time to think.  The ideas are big.  Vocabulary is big and sophisticated.  Authors continue to amaze me with the complexity and beauty of the texts they create.   Big, beautiful books.  We need time to read them, think about them, become residents in their language and soak it in for a while.  We need lots of time for the work of becoming real readers. 

But even basic texts require time for students to practice solving words, thinking about what to try next, developing capacity to use strategies as a real reader.  It all takes time.  It is big work in a very small world.  

I understand, from a daily schedule perspective, that we, as educators, struggle with never having enough time.  So, we devise ways to fit many many instructional opportunities into smaller and smaller spaces.  

But when it comes to teaching a child to read, we should not minimize the importance of big.  Big ideas, big thinking, big words, big books.  Does all this fit into mini?  

All students need time to process and practice.  Sometimes, a small lesson is just what they need to push them to the next place in their development as a reader.  Sometimes, a few minutes is enough.

But other times, they may need a lesson that gives them the time and space to think deeply over time.  They may need guided reading that supports them through the reading of a very, very big book.  They may need days and weeks of time to build stamina for reading those texts as they become a real reader of longer, more sophisticated text.  

A reader who looks for the biggest book on shelf and thinks, I wish it were longer.  I don’t ever want the reading to end.  

It is possible.  In a world of mini-teaching we can create the space and time to teach our students how to dive into complex text and become readers of big beautiful books that last a long time.  We must do this.  

We can do it.  We can, together. 
Suzanne Hostrawser is a literacy consultant that can help make sure you have time for the big thinking that books require.  
Contact her today at [email protected].

This week was my son’s 4th grade show. I love to hear young children sing in a chorus! What a privilege and a joy.  I don’t know what it is about children’s voices coming together in song, but it almost always gives me chills and puts tears in my eyes.  There is just something about those young voices coming together to make something beautiful.  It’s truly awesome and special.

Having music in an elementary school is, hopefully, like having lunch.  It’s a regular part of every child’s experience as a student.  We, as a nation, seem to value its importance because we love music and inherently know that we also need music.  Learning music is important.  The experience of coming together as one musical voice is important. 

Bringing children’s voices together is vitally important.  Song is one way.  Another way is through conversation.  Yet, conversation is not a regular part of children’s experience as students.  And I always wonder why.  

The sheer power and emotion of hearing children’s voices in one chorus is amazing;  hearing children’s voices converse with power and emotion is also amazing.  And, I would argue, just as vital to brain development.  

Peter H. Johnson, author of Opening Minds,  advocates for the creation of dialogic classrooms, where children’s voices are engaged in conversation on a daily basis.  Their voices and ideas are the star of the show.  They read and engage in conversations about the perspectives of the characters.  They think about how those perspectives can change their perspective and, ultimately, change the way they act and react in their lives.  

Voices coming together for a purpose: to change minds.  Literally.  

Children need to sing.  There’s something just simply heavenly about a choir of children’s voices.  You just know it’s meant to be.  There’s power in it.

But children also need to bring their voices together in discussions.  And arguments.  And debates.  If you’ve ever been witness to children passionately engaged in a conversation about text, about anything, you will agree that it is just as heavenly.  Just as meant to be.  Just as powerful.  

We can bring children’s voices together in dialogue every single day in our classrooms.  We can make their voices the star of the show.  We can do it confidently because it changes who children are and how they think.  It helps them realize who they are and who they want to be.   

We can really listen to each child’s voice, their song.  

We can do it with joy. 

Together.