Library

Idealism Fades to Reality: Thinking Back to My Days as a New Teacher

Jennifer Allen makes connections between her new professional life as a literacy coach and her beginning as a classroom teacher.

Conferring with a Child in the “Silent Period”

Larisa is a six-year-old who speaks Russian at home, and is in the “silent period” in school. In this conference, Ruth Shagoury demonstrates different strategies for eliciting responses from Larisa.

Writing About a War-Torn Home: Zerina Talks About Finding Her Writer’s Voice

In this interview with Ruth Shagoury, English language learner Zerina talks about her growing confidence as a writer as she shares her writing with high school classmates. She also talks about how her father encouraged her to write down her most poignant memory of war in their homeland, Bosnia.

Conferring with Anna

Anna is a five-year-old student in an Oregon kindergarten classroom who speaks Vietnamese at home. In this conference with Ruth Shagoury, she shares writing about her classmates and a snake, testing out her growing knowledge of the alphabet, sounds, and the purposes of writing.

Every Language Counts: Adding Multilingual Counting Activities to Morning Meeting

Every year kindergarten teacher Andie Cunningham has children who come from homes with many different first languages. She helps welcome these different languages and cultures into the classroom community by counting in different languages during the morning meeting.

Spacing Words: A Minilesson with Young Writers

In this two-minute video, Andie Cunningham reinforces the concept of spacing words with her kindergartners using her own writing and a brainstorming web.

Layered Support: Meeting the Needs of Beginning Teachers

Jennifer Allen reflects on essential layers that provide a safety net for the challenges facing beginning teachers.

Digging Deep: The Power of Rereading

Max Brand considers how rereading helps students understand and enjoy texts.

Let’s Get Some Attitude

Shirl McPhillips recalls a junior high experience that promoted serious "attitude" and an uproar among her peers.

Power Tools

Aimee Buckner shares three essential "power tools" for writers.

Coaching Moment: Reorganizing a Classroom Library

Gayle Gentry reflects on how a colleague’s simple request to reorganize a classroom library turned into coaching opportunities that had a direct impact on student learning.

Listen In: Jeffry’s Ocean Story

Moving a child from simple to complex sentences is the goal in this second-grade writing conference.

Boys’ Book Club in Second Grade

In this video from Linda Karamatic’s second-grade classroom, boys discuss the book Fudge using the protocol provided by Linda.

Tracking Young Children’s Writing and Development

Andie Cunningham and Ruth Shagoury share the assessment tools they use to track Andie’s kindergarten writers.

Mentor Texts and Teacher Modeling: The Listing Strategy

In this video from her fourth-grade classroom, Aimee Buckner teaches the “listing” strategy, using the book This Is the Tree: A Story of the Baobab as a mentor text. Aimee talks about mentor texts, using her own writing as a model, and the needs of intermediate readers and writers during the lesson and interview.

Common Core Conversations: Increasing Argumentative Writing

Teachers continue to puzzle over and sort through the terminology in the Common Core related to opinion and persuasive writing. Amanda Adrian and Heather Rader consider terms and teaching strategies.

The Difference Between Conferring and “Touching Base”

Debbie Miller goes against the grain, advocating for “the luscious feeling of endless time” as we slow down to confer with children.

“I Am the Book”: Helping Emergent Bilingual Learners Connect with Books

Jesabel Centeno helps her emergent bilingual learners respond orally to texts and share favorite books with classmates.

Whole Class Interviews: Building Community in Writing Workshop (TEMPLATE)

Interviews early in the year are a potent tool for building a class community.

Word Study is More Than Spelling

Franki Sibberson works to expand her views of spelling and word work, redefining routines in her grades 3 and 4 classroom.

Important Book, Important Notes: Guiding Young Students Through Notetaking

Suzy Kaback catches a young learner near and dear to her in the process of plagiarizing. She uses the experience to develop a template to help students and colleagues with notetaking.

A Strategy Lesson for “Drive-Thru” Readers

Who is a “drive-thru” reader? One who zips through the start of a book and discards it before finishing, moving  ever more quickly through random books.  Aimee Buckner has some minilesson suggestions for dealing with those students who can’t or won’t finish any books they start.

Teaching About Words, Grammar, and Mechanics Through Children’s Literature (BOOKLIST)

Franki Sibberson wants her students to be more than just good spellers — she wants them to understand words in sophisticated ways, from many different angles. Children's books are a tool for reaching that goal.

Company-Ready Teaching

Mary Lee Hahn prepares for classroom visitors, and the process of viewing her room with fresh eyes makes her question routines and wall displays.

Breathing New Life into the Writer’s Notebook

Tara Smith finds her sixth graders have years of experience with writer's notebooks by the time they reach her classroom. How to inspire enthusiasm for a familiar tool? Mix old favorite tasks and lessons with fresh texts and tech-savvy options.

Choosing Books in Verse

Tara Barnett and Kate Mills offer tips and a booklist to position students to read novels in verse.

Panels and Pages: Using Graphic Novels in the High School Classroom

Gretchen Schroeder bolsters her students’ reading lives and deepens discussion about theme by using the rich graphic novel They Called Us Enemy as a whole-class read with her high school students. Gretchen shows how teachers can support students in deep literary analysis.

Twitter Chats and Professional Development

Tweeting an Author

Conferring in Kindergarten: Drawing to Learn

Hayley Whitaker confers with a kindergartner and helps him make meaning through drawings.