Articles

Tips for Conducting Demonstration Lessons, or How to Avoid the “Am I Doing This Right?” Question

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan have advice for teachers and literacy coaches leading demonstration lessons.

Parent Contributions Beyond Instructional Support

Parents want to contribute, but not all contributions are welcome or even helpful when it comes to teaching children how to read and write. Trish Prentice has suggestions for making the most of family skills and willingness to help.

“To Teach is to Learn Twice”: Creating Professional Communities in Schools

What are the hallmarks of professional learning communities that work well in schools?

Helping Children Build Notetaking Skills

Whose job is it to teach notetaking skills?  Heather Rader finds teachers often expect colleagues in previous or subsequent grades to teach these skills, as well as a lot of hesitancy about how best to instruct students.  She presents a simple notetaking template and describes how she uses it to help students learn how to list important details with words and images.

“What Will You Do with This Mess?”: Helping Students Learn to Collaborate

Sometimes classroom disruptions are rooted in different learning and work styles among children.  Andrea Smith finds her attempt to settle a dispute between students about project collaboration helps her face some truths about her own work style.

Ending the Year with Literacy Gifts

Keeping “House” in a Literacy-Rich Classroom

Ann Williams has a terrific idea for keeping materials organized in literacy workshops and building student independence at the same time.

Redesigning a Classroom: Putting Students First (and Technology in Its Place)

Mandy Robek faces the challenge of creating a warm and inviting classroom environment that still includes some cold, hard computers for student use.

Using Picture Books to Spice Up Vocabulary Instruction (BOOKLIST)

Picture books are a terrific tool for vocabulary instruction – students have so much fun reading them they are hardly aware of all the new words they are picking up.  Franki Sibberson shares her top picks for spicing up vocabulary instruction in this booklist.

Family History Inquiry Project: Integrating Technology with Social Studies in First Grade

Julie Johnson explains how a family history inquiry project in her 1st grade classroom built technology, literacy, and research skills as students explored many cultures.

Now is Our Season

Shirl McPhillips so eloquently captures the spirit of the light and dark, hopeful and ambivalent, quiet and purposeful time after the holidays in this poem.

What Velcro Can Do: Science, Literacy and Coaching Connections

No time for science? Don’t like messes? Heather Rader works with a teacher and helps her find a way to fit science neatly into her full teaching day.

Injecting Writing into . . . Everything: Ellipsis Stories

"DOT DOT DOT" – a phrase made famous in Mama Mia, it's also the spark for some writing instruction linked to read alouds from Heather Rader.

From Teacher to Coach: Building Community in the Early Days

The transition from teacher to coach is tricky. Melanie Quinn has advice for building relationships with colleagues in the first weeks of school.

Reorganizing Books in the Reading Support Classroom

Katie DiCesare helps her mom, a reading support teacher, reorganize her materials to better serve students.

The Nuts and Bolts of the Family Inquiry Project

Julie Johnson explains how a family history inquiry project in her first-grade classroom builds technology, literacy, and research skills as students explored many cultures.  This article is the second in a two-part series.

Coaching Codes

A code of conduct is created to outline the standards and rules of behavior that guide an organization. Effective codes spell out “unspoken rules” as well, so that everyone can be successful. Heather Rader thinks through what a useful code for coaches might look like.

Ready-to-Go Readers’ Theater Books

If you want to do more with readers’ theater to promote fluency, but can’t afford one of those expensive kits, you’ll enjoy this booklist.  Shari Frost has compiled her favorite  readers’ theater books with texts and illustrations students love.

Giving Up the Whole-Class Novel

When teachers shift to a reading workshop model, sometimes they struggle most with the move from whole-class novels to more individualized reading. Shari Frost has advice for helping teachers work through the transition, as well as ways to ensure students still have some shared reading experiences with their classmates.

What Messages Do We Give Students with Our Classroom Library Design?

Franki Sibberson describes how the topics and arrangements of  baskets in the classroom library give strong messages about reading to students.

When Does Level Matter? Being Efficient with Small Group Instruction

When does level matter in grouping students for reading instruction?   Franki Sibberson shares her latest thinking and a template to use in organizing groups.

I Need a Hero: Finding a Place for Comics and Graphic Novels in Our Classrooms

Terry Thompson provides five easy steps for incorporating the use of more graphica and comics in your teaching:

Assessment Beyond Levels: The Reading Grid

Is there a great divide in your classroom between numerical data from assessments and your anecdotal notes? Cathy Mere bridges the gap with her class reading grid, a nifty tool for recording and analyzing a whole classroom’s worth of student assessment data on one page.  A template is included.

Teaching Revision to Struggling Writers

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan offer three strategies to use during writing conferences with struggling students.

Using Student Conferences to Build Book Choice Skills

Franki Sibberson provides focus questions and a template to help choose books with students for independent reading.

Help! Our Grade-Level Team Meetings Are Awful! (LITERACY COACH CONFIDENTIAL)

Here’s some advice for dealing with disastrous team meetings.

Assessing Professional Development: Focus on Feedback

Jennifer Allen details her professional development formats, and the crucial role feedback plays in their success.

Rethinking the Study of Nonfiction in the 21st Century

Franki Sibberson reflects on her nonfiction writing unit, and realizes she emphasizes research skills at the expense of the craft of nonfiction writing. She explains how she revamps the unit to help students focus more on writer's craft in nonfiction texts, including some new mentor texts and different ways of using writer's notebooks.

Book Boxes – Voices from the Classroom

How do you organize and use book boxes?  Every teacher has their own twist on the answer to this question. Choice Literacy contributors give examples from grades 1-5 of how they use book boxes and bags with their students.

Relevant Support for New Teachers

Jennifer Allen finds she only learns what new teachers really need when she builds a relationship and rapport with them.