4th
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Conferring, Rereading, and Comprehension
Aimee Buckner confers with Brendan, who is rereading Hoot and needs some strategies for holding his thinking.
Writing Workshop: Preparing for Publication
Beth Lawson helps her fourth-grade students work through a checklist of items to prepare for publishing early in the fall.
Chronology in Nonfiction (Common Core Booklist)
Franki Sibberson's latest Common Core booklist includes texts to help students master chronology in nonfiction.
The Blank Page and Better Teaching
Aimee Buckner learns some important lessons about how images and words work together for student writers when she moves between second- and fifth-grade classrooms.
Appealing Book Displays for Boys
Are your book displays enticing to the boys in your classroom? Tony Keefer has suggestions for making classroom libraries more appealing.
Enhancing Read Aloud and Eliminating Notebook Clutter
Melissa Styger has some simple suggestions for streamlining and improving student-written responses to read alouds.
Field Experience: Writers’ Notebooks
Writers’ Notebooks are an important tool for writers. Ruth Ayres designed a field experience to showcase how elementary teachers use notebooks with young writers.
Field Experience: Social-Emotional Learning in Workshop
Compassion and understanding are as important to workshop instruction as strategies and routines. Ruth Ayres compiled a field experience to highlight the way understanding the social-emotional needs of students (and ourselves) allows for safe learning environments.
Field Experience: Craft Moves for Elementary Writers
This field experience invites us to consider a handful of craft moves to teach young writers in minilessons, conferences and share sessions.
Field Experience: Classroom Tours
Spend time noticing the details that reflect beliefs and influence instruction. Ruth Ayres set up room tours for a field experience focused on more than trendy spaces.
Field Experience: Small Group Reading Instruction
Small group reading instruction is an important part of elementary literacy. This field experience is a sampling of a variety of examples.
Field Experience: Picture Books and Older Students
The value of picture books with older students is often questioned. Ruth Ayres assembled this field experience to allow insight into the depth and power of picture books for older students.
Field Experience: General Workshop Routines
This field experience invites us to consider the routines of opening the day, workshop norms, meeting areas and transitions to make workshop run smoothly.
Walls, Displays, and Invitations Early in the School Year
Franki Sibberson turns to museums for inspiration as she designs wall displays for the start of the school year.
Conferring for Engagement: First Steps
Aimee Buckner confers with a fourth grader who is learning how to choose books for independent reading. In this video, she gives advice in the first conference and then returns 10 minutes later for a follow-up meeting.
Engaging Boy Readers: Beginning with Teacher Behaviors
Tony Keefer considers some of those awkward early conferences with male readers in his classroom, and shares advice on how to get the year off to a comfortable start with minilesson and conferring suggestions.
Never Say Never: Motivation to Read from an Unlikely Source
Knock knock. Who’s there? A boy who loves sports and has no motivation for reading. Barclay Marcell discovers an unlikely source of engaging text for a child who just doesn’t enjoy books.
Conferring About Tracking Characters
In this video from a 4th grade classroom, Aimee Buckner confers with a student who is reading The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson.
One Book, One School: Building Community with Shared Text
"When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind." These words from the book Wonder set Katherine Sokolowski on the path of designing a shared reading experience at her school that will build community and empathy across the grades.
Finding a Place for Graphic Novels in My Classroom
Katherine Sokolowski listens to her husband’s sage advice and develops a new relationship with graphic novels that disappear off her classroom shelves.
The Quest for the Perfect First Read Aloud of the Year
Franki Sibberson is on a quest to find the perfect first read aloud of the year, and the search helps her consider the goals and purpose of read alouds during the first days of school.
Rethinking My Nonfiction Library in Response to the Common Core
Franki Sibberson finds a new classroom, the Common Core, and tech considerations are changing the ways she organizes the nonfiction sections of her classroom library.
Grades 3&4 Room Tour
In this video tour, Franki Sibberson narrates a description of the grades 3&4 multiage classroom she shares with a colleague. The space is small, so Franki explains how storage areas are carefully arranged and seating is creatively designed to make the most of limited space.
Matching Students to Nonfiction Texts in Grades 3-6 (BOOKLIST)
In this booklist, Mary Lee Hahn offers creative categories for considering readers in new ways.
Next-Read Stack: Conferring for Independence
Franki Sibberson explains the value of "Next-Read Stack" conferences for fostering independence, and includes a video example.
Extreme Makeover: Revision Edition
Heather Rader finds short text and shared modeling of revision strategies are just the scaffolds students need to see the power of revision for improving writing.
The Five-Minute Solution: Mini-Groups after Minilessons to Maximize Conferring Time
Aimee’ Buckner’s mini-groups are an easy and simple way to differentiate instruction in workshops, and save time when conferring.
Over the Top: Mystery Writing with Fourth Graders
Helping students navigate the boundaries between realistic fiction and fantasy can be tricky, especially when it comes to mystery writing. In this lesson from Beth Lawson’s fourth-grade classroom, Beth uses a top hat graphic to help students think through when writing is “over the top” in mysteries.
Getting Started with Sentence Observations
Karen Terlecky details the assessments and preparation that goes into the design of her sentence observation program.
Frogs as Learning Ambassadors Part 1: Literary Nonfiction in 4th Grade
Andrea Smith gets creative in teaching literary nonfiction to her 4th graders in this video series.
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