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.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills find an ingenious way in the upper elementary grades to help their struggling readers develop fluency through read alouds.
Andrea Smith uses the Color-Symbol-Image thinking routine during read alouds to promote deeper reflection among students.
Franki Sibberson shares strategies for incorporating more nonfiction into read-aloud times throughout the day.
Katrina Edwards reads aloud a Kate Messner mentor text to build an anchor chart on emotions with her first graders.
Mark Levine always has a few students each year in his middle school classroom who are stunned by their poor grades, even when they clearly aren't meeting expectations. He develops a rubric to enable students to monitor and reflect on their learning behaviors daily.
We look at self-assessment and reflection in this week’s Big Fresh.
Stephanie Affinito explains how to use student checklists in literacy intervention.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills combine an engagement inventory and an on-demand writing assessment to get a full picture of skills and habits in their classroom community.
Bitsy Parks helps her first-grade students complete “thumb reflections” on making connections in reading early in the year by modeling connections from three conferences in a whole-class share session.
We look at learning from failure in this week’s Big Fresh.
Christy Rush-Levine confers with eighth grader Julian about his strengths as an empathetic reader.
Shari Frost deals with the failure of a classic read-aloud text to reach young African American boys by finding more engaging books for them.
Mark Levine wonders if his middle school students are spending enough time reflecting on the L in K-W-L, so he creates a form to help.
We explore visual literacy in this week’s Big Fresh.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills work with eighth graders who struggle to articulate big themes in literature. A breakthrough comes when they have the option of sketching their thoughts.
Melanie Meehan works with a small group to talk through how nonfiction text features might enhance their informational writing.
Heather Fisher finds the key to independence for many first graders is lots of visual reminders in classrooms.
Mary Lee Hahn is skeptical about how her fifth-grade students might use graphic organizers. But once she tries them alongside students, she begins to see their utility.
We look at ways to improve student groups in this week’s Big Fresh.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills develop a process of pre-assessment, careful planning, and systematic recordkeeping to up the value of their small groups.
Gigi McAllister assists a group of students who are trying out bookmarks of discussion prompts for literature groups.
Gigi McAllister tries student-led discussion groups in her fourth-grade classroom, with disastrous results. She regroups the following year with multiple lessons, anchor charts, and preparation to ensure success.
We look at learning words in this week’s Big Fresh.
Gretchen Schroeder finds that any vocabulary routine eventually gets stale in her high school classroom. She shares a couple of favorite options for reinvigorating word learning.
Bitsy Parks presents a minilesson on figuring out tricky words by recounting a student's strategy from a recent reading conference, using it to begin an anchor chart.
Christy Rush-Levine discovers it’s important to “push pause” to deal with failure in the midst of teaching.
Mary Lee Hahn tries to be super teacher while she confers — juggling goals, assessments, notices and notes . . . and then it all comes crashing down. She shares what she learns from trying to do too much at once and failing.
We look at whole-class discussions in this week’s Big Fresh.
Katrina Edwards leads a whole-class reading share session where the focus is on how reading partners work together to teach and not tell.
Mark Levine finds that the best way to deal with controversial topics like slavery in his middle school classroom is with open and focused whole-class discussions.
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