Stellar Teacher Podcast with Sara Marye

As we head into Thanksgiving week, I know things can start to feel a little chaotic. Schedules are disjointed, students are distracted, and you’re probably juggling classroom responsibilities with holiday prep, travel plans, or hosting duties. It’s a lot—and it’s easy to feel the pressure to keep pushing through. But this week’s episode is your gentle reminder that it’s okay to pause, slow down, and give yourself permission to do less.

Student engagement isn’t something that happens automatically, even with a great lesson plan. In this episode, I’m unpacking what it really means to plan for engagement and why it’s essential to build intentional opportunities for students to think, respond, and connect throughout every lesson. I share a handful of simple engagement routines that can transform the way your students interact with your lessons.

Scaffolding is about slowing down the learning process just enough so that all students have the chance to succeed. When we give them the right amount of support—and remove it at the right time—we set them up for meaningful growth and long-term learning. This episode will help you reflect on your own scaffolding practices and feel confident making small, intentional shifts that lead to big results.

In this episode, I’m diving into one of the most important and challenging comprehension skills we can teach our students—summarizing. If you’ve ever had students freeze when asked to write a summary or retell every single detail of a story, you’re not alone. Summarizing requires students to synthesize, prioritize, and organize information while expressing it in their own words. It’s a higher-level skill that takes time to develop, but it’s also one of the most powerful ways to boost reading comprehension.