Free Resources to Support Remote Learning
Welcome to the Stenhouse Remote Learning Resources page. Here you'll find tools and guidance for virtual teaching from our trusted authors and expert educators. This page will continue to be updated as more helpful resources become available. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or sign up for our biweekly newsletter, Connections, to get updates and alerts as soon as new resources become available.
Literacy
Whether you are teaching face-to-face, remotely, or in a blended learning format, this guide is designed to give you helpful tools and
actionable tips. The goal is to support you in seamlessly planning and implementing the components and structures found in the book in the way that works best for your students.
Authors Gravity Goldberg and Renée Houser share research on why independent reading is more important than ever and then offer 5 ways both teachers and parents can support it at home. The tips are applicable to distance learning contexts and will also transfer over to more typical brick and mortar classroom settings.
When we are staring down unknowns, when we feel confused, helpless, or overwhelmed, we turn to books to give us insight into our experiences and the experiences of others. Dr. Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris provide six titles that may offer you and/or your students some wisdom, some comfort, or some insight.
Your students are spending more time outdoors where they can. You might be looking for ways to suggest meaningful learning activities into their outdoor excursions. Here are three Stenhouse books that are packed with nature-based learning ideas that you can use now and when you get back to school next year. Take a look!
In Schoolyard-Enhanced Learning , author Herbert W. Broda gives readers practical, teacher-tested suggestions for using the most powerful audio-visual tool available—the outdoors. In chapter 6 of this idea-packed book, you'll find ways to turn outdoor activities, such as hiking and camping into meaningful learning opportunities.
In this episode of Teacher's Corner podcast, Gravity Goldberg and Renée Houser, creators of the Teachers Toolkit for Independent Reading, share their experiences helping students access books and teachers, and discuss what’s important as they look to the fall. They will answer questions such as:
- What’s worked for us?
- How can we use these new tools more effectively?
- How can we ensure that education is accessible by every child?

In order to to help your students think about mood and support them as they build those reading comprehension muscles, author Trevor Bryan created these question and answer sheets that are based on the ideas in his popular book, The Art of Comprehension. These sheets can be used to guide teachers or parents through a conversation with students about mood and to record their thinking, or they can be given to students to fill out on their own.
Students will explore and analyze illustrations and artwork using reading comprehension strategies. Created by NJTV in partnership with the NJEA and the NJ Department of Education, NJTV Learning Live remote learning classes are for grades 3-6, taught by NJ public school teachers. One-hour lessons include math, science, English language arts, social studies, physical education and more.
Although back to school will likely take a different format this year, there are a variety of ways students can still access the authentic grammar instruction in Patterns of Power Plus. Watch authors Jeff Anderson and Whitney La Rocca as they share tools and strategies for engaging students in each stage of the Patterns of Power invitational process, whether you’re teaching remotely or in a blended format. Jeff and Whitney are joined by K-5 Literacy Coach, Patricia Gallery from Smithtown, NY who will share her recent remote learning experiences using Patterns of Power Plus.
Learn how to deliver authentic grammar instruction remotely using virtual Patterns of Power lessons created by the co-author of Patterns of Power, Whitney La Rocca. She will also be joined by K–5 ESL instructional coaches, Diana Bishop and Rosemary Martinez, who recently developed Spanish virtual grammar lessons based on the Patterns of Power process.
In this 8-part video series, Gail Boushey teaches students the necessary skills to successfully read by yourself, then she becomes a “reading buddy” by reading quietly with the student to build reading stamina. Share the link with parents to help their child build stamina, and become independent readers.
In this 8-part video series, Gail Boushey teaches students the necessary skills to successfully write by yourself, then she becomes a “writing buddy” by writing quietly with the student to build writing stamina. Share the link with parents to help their child build stamina, and become independent writers.
In the traditional classroom, Patterns of Power Plus builds the reading and writing connection through conversation. But how do we create conversation in a remote setting and build the sense of interaction and community that is such an important thread in Patterns of Power Plus? Here are a few tips shared by Jeff Anderson and Whitney La Rocca during a recent webinar on remote learning.
Math
As a literacy coach at her school, Christy has taken on several roles during this time of distance learning, including teaching whole classes, small groups, and one-on-one lessons. Simultaneously, she's served as teacher-parent to her own pre-kindergartener and first grader (who have also been on the receiving end of virtual learning experiences from their own hard-working schools). Her experiences on both sides of the lens have left her reflecting a lot about this world of virtual and distance learning for our PreK through second graders, and how we can, in the words of Kelsey Sorum at Two Writing Teachers, “do the most good, and do the least harm.”
In this episode of Teacher's Corner podcast, we checked in with math educators Amanda (Mandy) Jansen, author of Rough Draft Math, and Chris Luzniak, author of Up for Debate! and we asked them to share their experiences teaching during the pandemic. Listen to hear their thoughts on how communication with students and colleagues has changed, and the challenges and opportunities presented in moving math discussion from the classroom to Zoom sessions.
Toni Cameron’s new book Early Childhood Routines: Empowering Young Minds to Think introduces readers to a set of short whole-group and partner routines designed to engage young children in meaningful math thinking and build problem-solving communities. The Is it Fair? routine is one of those routines and we want to share it with you so you can practice it with your students online or in the classroom next year.
Now that so many of us are shifting our mathematics instruction online, Amanda Jansen consulted with two colleagues who have been using rough drafts in their online mathematics courses. Megan Wickstrom and Derek Williams are professors in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Montana State University. They both teach courses about mathematics online; these courses are professional learning experiences for future and current teachers. They have had success integrating rough drafts into their online mathematics courses. In this post, Amanda shares what she learned from them in hopes that K-12 mathematics teachers would find their teaching practices to be useful in an online setting.
Rich math tasks are designed to promote student discourse and sense-making in the classroom. In this time of remote learning, how can we adapt our facilitation of rich tasks so students have access to interesting mathematics from home? During this 45-minute free webinar, Graham Fletcher will talk about remote ways to facilitate 3-Act Math Tasks, which are rich tasks that are always freely available on his website. Whether you're able to have real-time virtual conversations or are limited to asynchronous options, Graham will share ways you can connect with your students, create spaces for them to share their ideas, and engage students in productive math thinking from home.
Follow #countingcollectionsathome on Twitter to discover engaging math activities inspired by the book Choral Counting & Counting Collections
Building Fact Fluency is designed to foster robust conversation among students in a classroom and encourage teachers to listen in as students think and talk about mathematics. Given the realities of COVID-19, however, in-person teaching with students huddled around game boards and teachers crouching down to eavesdrop on students’ turn-and-talks on the rug may have to wait for a while. While these realities break our hearts—we live for joyful communities of children learning together in person—we are buoyed by what we’ve learned working with our field-testing teachers and in experiments with students online to figure out how to adapt this resource for distance learning, both synchronously and asynchronously. Our guiding principles remain the same for distance learning as for in-person learning. We want to provide robust opportunities for students to make sense of the operations and become fluent, build mathematical communities in which teachers and students learn together, and grow confident mathematicians.
Teacher Wellness
The following is a guest blog post from Carl Oliver. Carl wants justice for Breonna Taylor. He is an assistant principal at a City-As-School High School in New York City, and a Math For America Master Teacher Emeritus who is working on an upcoming Stenhouse book about teaching secondary math for a more empathetic and just world.
We know how important it is for you to keep your instruction fresh each year through regular professional learning events. We also know that knowing which virtual events to attend, and how to get the money to attend them isn’t so clear. So we want to offer some ideas on how you might raise the funds to get access to those events, and let you know about some of the affordable, high-quality, digital PD options we have available.
In 2018, we talked with Dr. Lisa Lucas about her then-new book, Practicing Presence: Simple Self-Care Strategies for Teachers. At the time, we talked about how to work with the sometimes overwhelming level of stress that educators face. Today, that seems an even bigger challenge and Lisa’s work is even more needed than it was before, so we're revisiting Lisa's original 2018 episode.
It's more important than ever to give yourself time to practice self-care. Here's a chapter from Lisa Lucas's Practicing Presence that includes a Work Stress Self-Assessment and ideas on how to lower that stress.
Patterns of Power
Although back to school will likely take a different format this year, there are a variety of ways students can still access the authentic grammar instruction in Patterns of Power Plus. Watch authors Jeff Anderson and Whitney La Rocca as they share tools and strategies for engaging students in each stage of the Patterns of Power invitational process, whether you’re teaching remotely or in a blended format. Jeff and Whitney are joined by K-5 Literacy Coach, Patricia Gallery from Smithtown, NY who will share her recent remote learning experiences using Patterns of Power Plus.
Learn how to deliver authentic grammar instruction remotely using virtual Patterns of Power lessons created by the co-author of Patterns of Power, Whitney La Rocca. She will also be joined by K–5 ESL instructional coaches, Diana Bishop and Rosemary Martinez, who recently developed Spanish virtual grammar lessons based on the Patterns of Power process.
In the traditional classroom, Patterns of Power Plus builds the reading and writing connection through conversation. But how do we create conversation in a remote setting and build the sense of interaction and community that is such an important thread in Patterns of Power Plus? Here are a few tips shared by Jeff Anderson and Whitney La Rocca during a recent webinar on remote learning.
Teacher's Toolkit for Independent Reading
Authors Gravity Goldberg and Renée Houser share research on why independent reading is more important than ever and then offer 5 ways both teachers and parents can support it at home. The tips are applicable to distance learning contexts and will also transfer over to more typical brick and mortar classroom settings.
Building Fact Fluency
Rich math tasks are designed to promote student discourse and sense-making in the classroom. In this time of remote learning, how can we adapt our facilitation of rich tasks so students have access to interesting mathematics from home? During this 45-minute free webinar, Graham Fletcher will talk about remote ways to facilitate 3-Act Math Tasks, which are rich tasks that are always freely available on his website. Whether you're able to have real-time virtual conversations or are limited to asynchronous options, Graham will share ways you can connect with your students, create spaces for them to share their ideas, and engage students in productive math thinking from home.
Building Fact Fluency is designed to foster robust conversation among students in a classroom and encourage teachers to listen in as students think and talk about mathematics. Given the realities of COVID-19, however, in-person teaching with students huddled around game boards and teachers crouching down to eavesdrop on students’ turn-and-talks on the rug may have to wait for a while. While these realities break our hearts—we live for joyful communities of children learning together in person—we are buoyed by what we’ve learned working with our field-testing teachers and in experiments with students online to figure out how to adapt this resource for distance learning, both synchronously and asynchronously. Our guiding principles remain the same for distance learning as for in-person learning. We want to provide robust opportunities for students to make sense of the operations and become fluent, build mathematical communities in which teachers and students learn together, and grow confident mathematicians.
Who's Doing the Work Lesson Sets
When we are staring down unknowns, when we feel confused, helpless, or overwhelmed, we turn to books to give us insight into our experiences and the experiences of others. Dr. Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris provide six titles that may offer you and/or your students some wisdom, some comfort, or some insight.
The Daily CAFE
In this 8-part video series, Gail Boushey teaches students the necessary skills to successfully read by yourself, then she becomes a “reading buddy” by reading quietly with the student to build reading stamina. Share the link with parents to help their child build stamina, and become independent readers.
In this 8-part video series, Gail Boushey teaches students the necessary skills to successfully write by yourself, then she becomes a “writing buddy” by writing quietly with the student to build writing stamina. Share the link with parents to help their child build stamina, and become independent writers.