5th
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Writing Conference: Brainstorming Ideas
Katherine Sokolowski helps fifth grader Sidney brainstorm ideas for a story. She uses her own experiences with writing to instruct.
Honoring Student Identity
Christy Rush-Levine considers how to communicate to all students that their presence and their identities are valued and appreciated.
Writing Conference: Establishing Setting
Melanie Meehan uses A Day’s Work as a mentor text to help fifth grader Emily develop setting in her writing.
Building Writer Relationships with Author Studies
Matt Renwick shares creative ways teachers in his school celebrate authors.
Making Something Together: Shared Writing Online
Tammy Mulligan finds shared writing is her go-to strategy for teaching young learners online.
Changing How I Teach Small Groups
Tammy Mulligan listens to students and adapts her small-group instruction as they share how they learn.
Fifth-Grade Reading Conference: Harry Potter
Katherine Sokolowski confers with fifth grader Tucker about his Harry Potter book. This brief conference includes connections to the movies, recommendations for a classmate, and suggestions for using an audiobook on a trip so that the whole family can enjoy it.
Reading Minilesson: Theme
Dana Murphy leads a reading minilesson on theme in fifth grade, explaining how students might think more deeply about themes through characters’ problems.
Balancing Conferences and Small Groups
Balancing small groups and conferences is essential for transferring learning from lessons and units, and it’s one of the trickiest tasks for teachers. Dana Murphy explains how she works toward balance in her classroom, weighing everything from the timeline of the unit to the intensity of the minilesson.
Navigating the Interpretation Process
Tammy Mulligan shares how she introduces students to the process of interpreting literature at different grade and developmental levels.
Fifth-Grade Reading Conference: Previewing
Dana Murphy confers with Krisha over her reading, talking about the value of using a book’s back cover for previewing.
Studying Craft and Punctuation in Sentences from Read Alouds
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share the power of teaching writer’s craft in bite-sized chunks, through careful study of mentor sentences in read alouds.
Interpretation and Comprehension
Teaching comprehension skills can be a complex and overwhelming task. Tammy Mulligan shares a process for expanding and deepening student interpretations of text.
Fifth-Grade Group: Understanding Characters
Dana Murphy meets with a group of fifth graders to explore character development in their reading.
Making Learning Stick: Learning Progressions and Student-Created Exemplars
Tammy Mulligan explains the process of having students analyze and create models of good writing and analysis for assessing themselves and peers.
Teaching Constructed Response Before Exams
Teaching the genre of tests can seem far removed from writing workshop. Matt Renwick explores how to teach constructed response in a way that is integrated with the tenets of good workshop instruction.
Minilesson: Revising Writing
Dana Murphy leads a minilesson in fifth grade on revising narrative writing.
Poetry and Pastiche
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills introduce their middle school students to pastiche, a technique of mimicking the craft of favorite poems and poets.
Fifth-Grade Vocabulary Group
Dana Murphy meets with a group of fifth graders to work on strategies for understanding unknown words.
Writing Partners
Partner work is an essential component of many literacy workshops. Dana Murphy explains how she is intentional in building thoughtful routines and expectations for partner work in her fifth-grade classroom.
Writing Partner Feedback in Fifth Grade
Fifth-grade writers in Franki Sibberson’s classroom encourage each other and suggest revisions to their opinion-writing drafts in partner teams.
Building Conversation Skills in Book Clubs
Fifth graders use a visual tool to help them build on each other’s ideas in book clubs. They are applying a strategy demonstrated in an earlier minilesson.
Minilesson: Building Conversations in Book Clubs
Dana Murphy leads a minilesson on book club conversations, using a fishbowl strategy and building blocks to support more sophisticated conversations.
When Learning Gets Tricky, Go Back to the Pigs
Whenever a tricky literary concept comes up, Tammy Mulligan finds herself returning to a favorite mentor text to guide students. She explains the value of shared simple stories for understanding complicated literary elements.
Writing Endings Minilesson in Fifth Grade
A classic anchor text for many teachers is Charlotte’s Web. In this week’s video, Dana Murphy seamlessly integrates a brief excerpt from it into a writing minilesson on endings in her fifth-grade classroom.
Reinforcing Workshop Norms
In this quick video, Dana Murphy shows how she leads her fifth graders with a kinesthetic reminder of workshop norms before beginning independent work.
Fifth-Grade Small Group: Paragraphs
Dana Murphy meets with a group of fifth graders to help students develop paragraphing skills, using a peer’s mentor text.
Teaching Conventions in Small Groups
Dana Murphy finds it is best to teach conventions in small, targeted groups in her fifth-grade classroom. She explains how she designs and leads these groups.
Building Reading Identities Across the Year
The start of the school year is often all about building reader identities in classrooms. And then October comes, and many of the activities that help students celebrate their reading histories and preferences are forgotten. Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share ways teachers can continue to help students define, refine, and expand their reading identities all year long.
Text Sets: Reading Beyond Just Facts
Franki Sibberson explains how carefully curated text sets can help students move beyond a “just the facts” exploration of nonfiction topics.
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