Choice Literacy Articles & Videos
The Choice Literacy library contains over 3,000 articles and 900 videos from 150+ contributors. Classic Classroom and Literacy Leadership subscribers have access to the entire library. Content is updated continuously, with five to six new features published each week.
Giving feedback online is the focus of this week’s newsletter.
Leigh Anne Eck lists critical questions teachers might ask themselves as they build online writing communities where everyone is comfortable giving and receiving feedback.
Bitsy Parks shares how she and her first-grade students used photography to bridge the distance between home and school this spring, learning lessons she is using this fall in remote learning contexts.
Christy Rush-Levine discovers that a move to digital feedback reveals many important truths about her middle school students, including insights about the effect of grades on how learners view response to their work.
This week we look at how to build and sustain remote learning communities.
Gigi McAllister has two reading partners in her fourth-grade classroom do a quick practice of retelling their stories.
We look at how to help students differentiate between fact and fiction in this week’s newsletter.
Poetry can be the glue that holds many virtual classroom communities together. It works for quick morning meeting openings, transitions, or even a bit of laughter when energy is flagging. Cathy Mere shares her favorite poetry resources for remote learning.
Suzy Kaback works with students to create a “fact or fiction” class book to explore the boundaries between truth and fantasy.
Stella Villalba confers with Esmeralda about her information writing on blue jays.
Mandy Robek is a little nervous about setting her students loose to organize informational texts, but she couldn’t be more pleased by what they learn in the process.
We look at building kindness and community in this week’s newsletter.
Dana Murphy leads a reading minilesson on theme in fifth grade, explaining how students might think more deeply about themes through characters’ problems.
Bitsy Parks finds even the dreariest days in her first-grade classroom are infinitely more enjoyable because she’s built in routines for expressing gratitude.
Christy Rush-Levine lowers the tension level in her class over management issues by moving from irritation to curiosity, using her “inner chimpanzee” voice.
We look at routines and structures for learning in this week’s newsletter.
What’s the difference between a lesson and a minilesson? Christy Rush-Levine finds that flexibility is just as important as length in making minilessons work well.
Hayley Whitaker leads a minilesson in kindergarten on how to plan a narrative writing draft.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills give guidance and support for varying the structures and routines in literacy workshops.
We look at ways to learn student names and honor their history early in the year in this week’s newsletter.
Melissa Atwood leads her first-grade class with a minilesson early in the school year on making connections to text.
Gretchen Schroeder uses picture books to help her high school students understand and write persona poems.
Suzy Kaback reminds us that the language we use to talk about challenging students shapes our perceptions of them. That’s why she has moved to calling students “small teachers.”
We look at ways to teach realistic and historical fiction in this week’s newsletter.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills explain how they use examples from YA authors of how to mine everyday life for powerful ideas. They then help students move from ideas to blurbs as they start their realistic fiction drafts.
Christy Rush-Levine confers with Griffin over his reading responses. They consider the differences between dystopian literature and realistic fiction, as well as what motivates characters.
Mark Levine has many students who haven’t traveled much more than 100 miles from home. He makes history come to life for them by bringing artifacts into his middle school classroom.
Tara Smith finds that students in book clubs reading historical fiction are often confused because they lack background knowledge. Her solution is to create background folders that include key documents to support the history in the texts.
We look at ways to reinforce learning after minilessons in this week’s newsletter.
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