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Finding Time for Read Aloud
Read aloud in middle school is a beast. When I taught elementary school, it was a no-brainer. My schedule would often have little 15-minute slots between PE and music, or...
Watching Writers Work
I learned to teach writers by watching students work as writers. I believed Don Graves when he encouraged teachers to watch children write and trust that we would discover everything...
Helping Young Writers Make Plans
When I heard some of my first graders exclaim, “I’m done. What do I do now?” and “I don’t know what to do," or even worse, “What am I supposed...
Ten Ways to Celebrate Writers
Lucy Calkins shared on Twitter [now X], “The power of a reading and writing workshop is having teaching that is predictable, ongoing, consistent, so that we have time and space...
Using Picture Books Podcast
The focus of this week's podcast is using picture books. Cathy Mere and Ruth Ayres join the conversation. Click here for ALL links discussed. Each week Choice Literacy shares the...
Picture Books to Teach Conflict
One of the first units we teach in seventh-grade language arts is on short stories. The unit begins with lessons on story elements that should be review from lessons the...
Picture Books that Help Construct a Wider Definition of Home
One of the topics that is often explored in elementary school is "home." Children naturally like to share about their world: the people in their lives, where they live, how...
No More Learning Target Drudgery
Making learning targets meaningful to first graders was more complicated than I thought. I know the research and understand why kids need to know what they are learning and why...
Making Workshop Work Podcast
The focus of this week's podcast is making workshop work. Cathy Mere and Ruth Ayres join the conversation. Click here for ALL links discussed. Each week Choice Literacy shares the...
Affirm, Acknowledge, Ask: A Simple Protocol for Communicating Feedback
How do we let people know how they might improve if they are not ready to hear it? There are many situations in which the signals are clear that feedback...
Four Keys to Making Workshop Work
“I don’t know what workshop is. We haven’t talked about that in my schooling,” the teachers said to me. We were having a conversation about the upcoming sessions these teachers...
Bring In the School Year Like a Grandma
I was visiting with a friend the other day who had just become a grandmother again. As she proudly showed me pictures of her new little one, I couldn’t help...
Are You Listening to Readers?
The focus of this week's podcast is listening to readers. Tammy Mulligan and Ruth Ayres join the conversation. Click here for ALL links discussed. Each week Choice Literacy shares the...
The Choice Literacy Book Club Discusses Ouch! Moments
Enjoy listening as the Choice Literacy Book Club discusses Ouch! Moments: When Words Are Used in Hurtful Ways by Michael Genhart and Viviana Garofoli. Click here for the Choice Literacy Book Club...
How Do Visuals Strengthen Literacy Instruction? Podcast
The focus of this week's Big Fresh podcast is the way visuals strengthen literacy instruction. Ruth Ayres and Cathy Mere join the conversation. Click here for ALL links discussed. Each...
Finding Reliable Digital Resources
One of the things I love about education is that it is always evolving. When tablets first became the rage all those years ago, I looked for ways to incorporate...
One Instructional Strategy Changes a Reading Community: Status of the Class
Each year there’s a point when independent reading book selection goes on autopilot. Depending on the year and the community of readers, it can happen anytime during the second quarter....
Making Time to Listen to Your Readers
The school schedule: the holy grail of school life. Without the school schedule . . . nothing happens. It is planned to the minute, and following it becomes a teacher’s...
Everything I Need to Know About Teaching Children, I Learned Through Conferring
Have you ever been asked that question, “If you could take only three things to an island, what would they be?” I know my answers change as time evolves and...
A Roving Student Conferrer
It was Sam’s last day in class before his family moved. He had finished writing his series books for our final unit of study the day before. So when it...
Sincerely Positive
If you can’t find anything positive to say, it’s likely you have not fully analyzed what you’ve observed. This is not because there is always necessarily something good going on,...
