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Tips for More Effective Debriefing Sessions
We do a lot of demonstration lessons in our coaching work. Lately we have been reflecting on how we structure these sessions. We find the debriefing of the lesson to...
Professional Development and Then What? How to Keep Learning Alive Long After the Staff Meeting
"Remember when we did that . . . what was it called, you know we talked about ways to help students share their thinking?" "Oh, yeah, I used that a...
Help! Our Grade-Level Team Meetings Are Awful! (Literacy Coach Confidential)
Literacy Coach Confidential is Choice Literacy's forum for answering the toughest questions literacy coaches and teachers face as they work together. Our contributors respond to the questions anonymously, which enables them...
From Teacher to Coach: Building Community in the Early Days
It's late August and next week I start my position as Instructional Coach. I am not new to working with teachers. I spent six years in higher education working with...
Collaborating When the Going Gets Tough
When the going gets tough, turn to inquiry. Courage to Teach Touchstone I don’t know about you, but when the going gets tough, inquiry is not the first thing...
Some Study Group Participants Aren’t Reading the Book
A couple of teachers who participate in our book discussion group don't seem to be reading the book—at all. It makes for awkward moments in the conversation, like last week...
Opinion Exchange: A Workshop Activity for Study Groups
What do new teachers need to keep them going that difficult first year? In our first session with new teachers in October, our room was filled with the stories of...
Personal Conferring Notebooks
How do you effectively and efficiently share formative assessment data between the teachers providing different types of instructional support when the population of students receiving extra instructional support exceeds more...
They Can Sing and Define It, But Can They Use It?
One early fall afternoon, I casually walked into my colleague Linda Karamatic’s second-grade classroom and asked, “What are you working on in reading?” Linda said, “Well, I’m still working on...
Our Favorite Online Reading and Writing Tools Round-Up (Part 1)
In this two-part round-up series, Choice Literacy contributors share some of their new favorite tools for integrating technology into their literacy instruction. A 20-year veteran teacher, author, and popular blogger...
Do You Have Any Questions? Conferring with Families
“Do you have any questions?” I asked. “Yeah,” Logan's mom replied. “So, how is Logan doing?” What?! This is what I thought I had been explaining for the past 20...
Cooking Up Interest in Words with Fifth Graders
All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. Ernest Hemingway I became fascinated with words from my grandmother, and my mother...
Slice of Life: Challenging Student Writers
In November of 2011 I began my blog. It was something I had thought about for quite some time, but I was nervous to take the leap. Yet once I...
Keeping Track of Questions
Questions fill my journals. When my 14-year-old daughter regularly tells me I ask too many questions, my partner nods knowingly. My treks out-of-doors always start with a small spiral notebook...
Three Ways to Build Purpose in a Preschool Reading Workshop
For the past four months I have been sending my Head Start children off after our daily meal for “reading time” on the carpet while we complete our daily toothbrushing...
Shared Reading in the Intermediate Grades
I know what you’re thinking when you hear the words shared reading. Kindergartners are sitting “criss-cross applesauce” on a colorful ABC rug in front of a big book version of...
Symbiosis: Choice and Structure in Writing Workshops
In symbiosis, two organisms interact, often benefiting both. In the movie Finding Nemo, we watch the clownfish and sea anemone live together in harmony. The clownfish eats harmful invertebrates for...
Between the Brain and Page: Working with Gifted Student Writers
Students who are identified as highly capable, gifted, and/or talented make special contributions to our classrooms. They also bring challenges, some of which are unexpected given their natural cognitive aptitude....
Assessing Learning During Student-Led Book Clubs
My most important job during book clubs is to know what my sixth-grade students are thinking. The point is to increase the rigor and accountability of each student through the...
10 Principles for Planning Reading Minilessons
For a while, minilessons didn’t seem to fit into my bigger goals of the reading workshop. I realized a few years ago that I was often going through the motions...
Understanding the Middle East Through Children’s Literature (BOOKLIST)
As educators of kids, as well as literacy coaches who work with adults, we have been searching for quality children’s literature about the Middle East. Countries from the Middle East...
