Article Content Type: Article
Results
Seven Minutes of Listening
Four-year-old Isabele pulled out the large alphabet puzzle, a big 2' by 3' wooden one that so many preschool and primary classrooms have. With her right hand holding the letter...
A Community of Parents: Connecting via Email
Teachers take great care in establishing a "sense of community" among their students at the beginning of each school year. Within a strong community, high expectations are established, children feel...
Mary Lee Hahn – Read Alouds to Build Community Early in the Year (PODCAST)
In this podcast, Franki Sibberson chats with Mary Lee Hahn (author of Reconsidering Read-Aloud) about the best read alouds for building community at the start of the year. A full...
Creating a Coaching Schedule
We have been encouraging the literacy coaches we work with to create a year-long coaching schedule for their school. The main goal of these coaching schedules is to ensure that...
34 Languages
This year they come to me speaking English, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Lao and Chuukese. They come to me from different worlds of experience. Some full of light and sound and...
Undercover Coach: Making Time to Work with Children
Have you ever watched the television show Undercover Boss? Each episode shows what happens when a high ranking official of a company attempts to do an entry level job in the...
Procedural Writing in Math
I'm getting ready to make gluten-free oatmeal cookies, and I'm thinking about what a fifth grader said to me: "We spent all this time working on word choice and voice,...
Assessment Conferences: Listening to and Learning from Our Students
As we work with teachers on conferring during reading workshops, we often rely on Lucy Calkin's instructional model for one-on-one conferences: research, decide and teach. Recently in our coaching, we...
Getting to Know Multilingual Learners at the Start of the Year
As you get ready for the school year, you'll hear this classic and fundamental advice: Get to know your students. What does this mean when it comes to meeting and...
Jennifer Allen on Working with New Teachers (PODCAST)
Franki Sibberson chats with Jennifer Allen about the joys and challenges of working with new teachers. A transcript is below the player. Franki Sibberson: What have you found to be successful...
Our Learning Goals: Planning at the Start of the Year
As educators, we are always learning and growing. We asked colleagues and Choice Literacy contributors to share with us the goals they set this year. Cris Tovani, Author of I Read...
Teaching Students Retelling Strategies
As we meet with teachers around New England to analyze various assessment data (Dynamic Reading Assessments, conference notes, running records, and informal retellings), we notice a pattern -- retelling the...
An Uncommon Place
A mulberry tree came down out back during this latest blizzard. I'm sorry to lose it, even though I won't miss the squashes of berries underfoot and the piling up...
Supporting Successful First-Year Coaches
It's Friday, a little after noon, and Cristina Charney, Heather Sisson, Becky Lee and I are tucked around the small circle table with our lunches in my office. We are...
Make it Personal
I'll admit it; one of my favorite movies is You've Got Mail. I've watched it dozens of times because I'm enchanted with the children's bookstore in the film, the "Little...
Jennifer Allen on Working with Veteran Teachers (PODCAST)
In this podcast, Jennifer Allen talks with Franki Sibberson about mentoring veteran teachers. A transcript is included below the player. Franki Sibberson: What is your role in working with...
Life on the Edge
The nest of my poem is too loosely constructed to hold much hope, all shreds of thistledown and hay on the verge of a ledge under the drainpipe, sunblasted shortly...
Next Steps: Thinking about Retelling During Reading
To demonstrate retelling skills, we model keeping in mind story elements as students determine what will be important for retelling. In a minilesson, we use a book we've already read...
Digital Handouts: An Alternative to More Paper and Meetings
"I want to contribute, I would just rather do something different than a presentation," Jane shared with me after one of her district meetings on English language learners (ELLs). She...
Read Alouds for the Last Days of School
Last month we surveyed readers of our weekly newsletter The Big Freshrequesting suggestions for literacy activities for the final days of school. Hundreds of teachers wrote back. This week we...
Injecting Writing into Everything: Prediction Stories
"What do you think will happen next?" I asked my student Jerome. "I don't know," he said. "If you did know, what would you say?" He paused and looked up,...
