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Designing Comprehension Constructors: Helping Adolescent Learners Develop Reading Strategies (E-GUIDE)
Comprehension instruction has value and lasting impact when teachers know how to design lessons, activities, and materials that match the needs of their students. Prefab worksheets or generic activities and...
Mix It Up: Helping Young Writers Learn to Confer with Peers and Teachers
When writers put words to paper, they are writing to an imagined audience. The audience might be themselves at another point in time; it might be a specific friend; it...
Literacy Coach Confidential: Some Study Group Participants Aren’t Reading the Book
A couple 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...
Up Gross and Personal: Dealing with Dicey Topics in Writing Workshops
Teachers have a high tolerance for the disgusting. We scrub down the mysterious puddle on the rug after a literature discussion, we endure the dead mouse passed around during recess,...
My Son Clark Kent
The day my son Alec was born I read him Jules Feiffer's Bark, George in the hospital. It was a gift from my cousin, who taught me the importance of daily reading...
Three Little Phrases No Literacy Coach Can Live Without
If there are three skills any literacy coach needs, they are the ability to engage with colleagues, diffuse hostile situations, and connect with people who have a different world view....
Viewing Guides for DVDs
Here is where you will find full guides for all the Choice Literacy DVD Workshop Kits. These guides include focus questions, workshop suggestions, templates, and further readings on the topics...
Four Essentials in Designing Professional Development for Literacy Leaders
I never imagined years ago when I was a first-grade teacher that I would one day be responsible for designing professional development for literacy leaders in a highly successful school...
Starting Points: Easy Beginnings for Writing Better Narrative Assessments and Report Card Comments
Teachers despise cheaters. We want students to do their own work, take pride in it, and stand on their personal accomplishments as learners. We expect the same of ourselves as...
Helping Young Readers Understand the Middle East: A Booklist of the Best Fiction Picture Books
I still remember the first time I read Day of Ahmed's Secret. I showed the book to colleagues and friends, telling them, "He looks just like my uncle Girgi! " or...
Writing Conference Principles
When we were first learning to confer with students of all ages, we devoured books written by Nancie Atwell, Donald Graves, and Lucy Calkins. Each of these teachers had their...
Planning a New Teachers’ Professional Development Program
It's the beginning of July and I am already sketching out plans for the first day of Charting the Course, the monthly professional development group for new teachers in our school....
Minilessons to Start Conversations with Students About Books
In my work as a curricular support teacher, I find myself thinking about people who have been important to me in my role as classroom teacher. When I think about...
Family Survey: Report Cards and Evaluations (SURVEY)
Before you begin the arduous process of writing report card comments and evaluation narratives for your students, it helps to know a little bit about the audience for your words...
The “All About Us” Board: Linking Literacy and Community Building All Year Long
One activity that supports our community building and literacy development all year is the "All About Us" bulletin board. In preparation I divide my largest bulletin board into as many...
Understanding the “Silent Period” with English Language Learners
If you have a new English language learner in your class who is not speaking, don't worry. According to language researcher Stephen Krashen, most new learners of English will go...
The Lines are to Write My Words: Phonics in Context
New journals. The excitement of a whole blank book of pages waiting for words and drawings to fill them. The kindergarten children seem eager to have their own new journals...
On Kidney Tables: Small Changes for Big Effects
Our staff is opening a new elementary school this fall, and we have been buried beneath the many decisions required to establish a new place for learning. When you start...
Enlisting Students as Observers
If you are trying to build more observation into your assessment of students, enlisting students as class observers is a wonderful way to gather more notes daily. The activity has...
Keeping It Simple: Reflections on the December New Teachers Study Group
Written on a sticky note stuck to the edge of my laptop are three phrases: Listen first; teach by example; be patient. These are three things I've learned as a...
Chapter Book Read Alouds in the Primary Classroom
"It will never work," said Leela, a veteran kindergarten teacher with 25 years of experience. "They love the pictures. They all get up on their knees to see the pictures...
