Latest Content
Group Meeting: Sharing Resources for Animal Study

Katherine Sokolowski helps her fifth-grade students expand their territory for their animal research projects by sharing information sources and peer connections.

First-Grade Conference: Reading with Feeling

In this week's video, Katrina Edwards confers with first grader Ellie. She helps Ellie read more fluently and with expression by transferring her feelings to those of characters.

Book Talk: “The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary”

Katherine Sokolowski demonstrates her book talk skills when she presents The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary to her students late in the school year.

Building a Next-Read Nonfiction Stack

Katherine Sokolowski helps fifth grader Jack build a next-read stack of nonfiction, highlighting a variety of text features and historical references.

Peer Support in Writing Workshop: Conferring with Jaden

Christy Rush-Levine meets with eighth grader Jaden, who talks through his struggles in writing a conclusion to his literary analysis, and how his peers helped him improve the writing.
 

Object Poetry Lesson in Second Grade

Linda Karamatic explores poetry with her second graders. She displays poems students have written and teaches them about fresh language using a poem about a pencil sharpener.

Grammar Instruction in Fourth Grade

Melanie Meehan coaches a fourth-grade teacher who is trying to improve his grammar instruction.

Writing Minilesson: Feelings

Katrina Edwards uses read alouds as mentor texts for writing minilessons in her first-grade classroom. In this example she focuses on character feelings.

Conferring in First Grade: Focus on Goals and Strengths

Katrina Edwards confers with first grader Wyatt about his goal of increasing the volume of his reading, helping him self-assess what's going well and what lies ahead.

Big Question Minilesson

Katherine Sokolowski models how readers make choices as questions arise while reading independently. She also demonstrates how she moves between a novel and web resources.

The Importance of Context Minilesson

Christy Rush-Levine uses a vivid anecdote from her youth to teach her middle school students about the importance of context in literary analysis.

Close Attention and Reading Response: Conferring with Tori

Christy Rush-Levine confers with eighth grader Tori about her reading response to Why We Broke Up. She encourages Tori to make connections between the characters in her current book and her previous reading by paying close attention to surprising action.

Minilesson: How to Retell a Story

Katrina Edwards uses the children’s books They All Saw a Cat and Be a Friend for a minilesson with her first-grade students on how to retell stories with a partner during reading workshop.

Quick-Write with a Video Prompt

Katherine Sokolowski refreshes the quick-write routine in her fifth-grade classroom by using a video as a prompt.

First-Grade Conference: Stretching Writing

Katrina Edwards helps her adorable first-grade student Dylan stretch out his writing. He adds details by first talking about playing with friends near his home.

Teaching Fifth Graders to Make Peer Recommendations

Katherine Sokolowski confers with her son Liam and his friend Caden, helping them learn how to make peer book recommendations.

“If You Like” Reading Recommendations Conference

Building "next-read" stacks with students before holidays is a great way to ensure they have books in hand that they will be excited to read over break. Katherine Sokolowski helps Taryn finds books that are similar to those written by Rick Riordan (Taryn's favorite author).

First-Grade Minilesson: Repeated Phrases

Bitsy Parks uses mentor texts and her own writing in a minilesson on how her first graders might use repeated phrases in their writing for more impact.

Writers and Themes: Fifth-Grade Discussion

Acclaimed children’s book author and teacher Jennifer Richard Jacobson talks with a group of fifth graders about how writers establish a theme early in stories and then braid elements of the theme throughout the text.

Writing a Strong Conclusion to a Literary Analysis Essay

Christy Rush-Levine helps eighth grader Katherine sort through tools and strategies for writing a strong conclusion to her literary analysis essay.

Girls’ Book Share in Fifth Grade

Katherine Sokolowski demonstrates how she helps a group of girls in her fifth-grade classroom learn to help each other select books based on previous experiences and tastes.

Big Picture to Close-Up Lens: Conferring with Kellan

Katrina Edwards confers with first grader Kellan about her love of the Danny book series, moving from a "big picture" discussion of patterns in the book and Kellan's reading strategies, to close-up decoding of individual words.

First-Grade Minilesson: Emotions in Writing

Katrina Edwards reads aloud a Kate Messner mentor text to build an anchor chart on emotions with her first graders.

First-Grade Reading Share: Connections

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.

Eighth-Grade Conference: Empathetic Reading

Christy Rush-Levine confers with eighth grader Julian about his strengths as an empathetic reader.

Exploring Text Features

Melanie Meehan works with a small group to talk through how nonfiction text features might enhance their informational writing.

Talk Expectations in Reading Groups

Gigi McAllister assists a group of students who are trying out bookmarks of discussion prompts for literature groups.

First-Grade Minilesson: Tricky Words

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.

Better Reading Partner Shares

Katrina Edwards leads a whole-class reading share session where the focus is on how reading partners work together to teach and not tell.

Fourth-Grade Lunch Fan Club

Gigi facilitates one of her lunchtime author fan clubs, where everyone gets organized and brainstorms what they might explore in the group during this first meeting.

Choice Literacy Membership


Articles

Get full access to all Choice Literacy article content

Videos

Get full access to all Choice Literacy video content

Courses

Access Choice Literacy course curriculum and training


Membership Options

Loading...