Community Building
It's one of the big paradoxes of literacy instruction - students best learn how to read and write independently when they have a strong community of support in classrooms. How teachers build those thoughtful, kind, and challenging classroom communities is explained in these resources.
Latest Content
Opinion Exchange: A Workshop Activity for Study Groups
New teachers need so much their first year and having the ability to be heard and have their opinions valued is right up there. Ruth Shagoury offers a respectful exchange to meet that need.
Helping Young Readers Understand the Middle East: A Booklist of the Best Fiction Picture Books
Do your books reflect the images of your learners' families and culture? Ruth Shagoury offers a booklist to explore the Arab and Persian world.
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.
Let’s Get Some Attitude
Shirl McPhillips recalls a junior high experience that promoted serious "attitude" and an uproar among her peers.
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.
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.
Whole Class Interviews: Building Community in Writing Workshop (TEMPLATE)
Interviews early in the year are a potent tool for building a class community.
Book Matchmaker: Read Alouds That Invite Young Readers to Participate
Franki Sibberson shares her latest suggestions for read alouds that invite participation from young readers.
Using 9/11 Research to Build Community and Writing Process
Katherine Sokolowski gives space for students to research and share their learning about 9/11 in order to build a community of writers, as well as nourish the research and writing process.
Building Community Access to Texts Through a Lending Library
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share the way a lending library can provide an additional resource for teachers and community members to quickly get the books they need. They offer practical steps to make the lending library a go-to resource as well as a template to track the monthly book highlights.
Trusting the Letting-Go Moments
Mandy Robek writes a powerful essay about giving her students more decision-making power in sharing their learning. In the release of letting go, she found ease in the joy of learning.
Lifting the Quality of Peer Response
Tony Keefer discovers that his fourth-grade students need focused instruction and support to strengthen their peer conferring skills. Tony shares tips and two video examples from his classroom.
Connecting with Students at Home
Julie Johnson learns some important lessons about connecting with students remotely, and few of them are about technology.
Overcoming: Helping Students Process Covid Feelings
Julie Cox reminds us that for many students, the loneliness and fear of COVID years clings like smoke, and they don’t always have the language to talk about it. While we have worked hard at helping students reclaim content knowledge, we must also help them express and process feelings they might not know how to recognize.
Word Study Literacy Team Meeting
An elementary literacy team discusses word learning in the context of student assessment results as part of a yearlong inquiry into word study.
Classroom Tours: Learning from Colleagues
Barbara Coleman finds classroom tours are a terrific professional development activity early in the year, fostering unexpected collaboration among colleagues.
In Praise of Handwritten Notes
Handwritten notes have timeless appeal, and great value for teachers and literacy leaders.
A Hand to Hold: Crying and Community in Preschool
Sometimes it takes a village to help a preschooler feel a part of the group, especially one who cries almost all the time. Kelly Petrin finds her young students have more empathy and resiliency than she imagined when she enlists their support.
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