Articles

Reading Preferences: Social, Pleasurable, and Sometimes Awkward

Karen Terlecky connects an honest appraisal of her reading habits with an unvarnished look at her 5th grade students.

Beginning with the End in Mind: Planning Ahead for Closing Activities

Choice Literacy readers share their favorite end-of-year activities that circle back to events from the start of the school year.

Choosing 5th Grade Read Alouds for the New Year

So many wonderful choices, so little time! Karen Terlecky makes her selections for a year of 5th grade read alouds.

You Never Know What You’re Going To Get

When students help us organize materials, we are often pleasantly surprised at the results.

Pamphlets on Books (Part 2 of the Persuasive Pamphlets Series)

Erin Ocon finds pamphlets are a terrific format for teaching her middle-school students persuasive writing and summary skills.  In this essay she explains how to use pamphlets for book recommendations.  This is the second installment in a two-part series.

Coaching Beyond the Curriculum: Reframing Our Talk and Attitude Toward Difficult Students

What role should literacy coaches have in helping teachers manage unruly students? Melanie Quinn settles into a morning of poring over assessment data, only to have it interrupted by a child who has been disrupting his class. Her interactions with Darren and his teacher lead to strategies for helping colleagues take an inquiry stance with challenging children.

Closing Out the Library: Cleaning Up and Thinking Ahead

Franki Sibberson provides a series of questions to help you focus on what students need in classroom and school libraries, as well as how those needs might be changing.

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 first-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.