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Supporting Talk Around Writer’s Craft
We believe that immersing our students in reading texts like writers will help them innately develop the knowledge and language to talk well about writing. This type of immersion work...
Coaching Tool: Digital Books
Responsive is the first word that comes to mind when we think about what it means to be an effective coach. We want to listen and be responsive to what...
May’s Menu
We’ve spent 160 days together discussing books, writing narratives, solving word problems, debating governments, and collecting amazing vocabulary. How do I just step back and think about how this school...
Picture It: Student Mentor Text Bulletin Board
Inspiration is at the heart of writing. Whether it be a well-known author from an author study or a classmate, students become inspired by other writers when the abstract becomes...
Strategies for Elaboration in Opinion Writing
I was in a fifth-grade classroom today, and the teacher handed me an essay a student had written. The essay was well structured, but it was definitely short. Given the...
Autobiographical Listening
I recently attended an excellent three-day leadership conference that was by all measures a success: I met some great people, got some much-needed inspiration, and came back with a notebook...
Improving My Feedback
I’ve spent most of my career dreading the feedback portion of my relationships. It felt as though my actions were just being checked off of a list. The feedback always...
Weaving in Poetry
“They don’t really seem to understand how to read poetry yet,” my administrator says in September. “Well, not yet. It’s only September, and we are just starting to closely read...
The Case for the Sonnet
Upon hearing mention of a sonnet, I imagine many people’s train of thought goes something like this: sonnet = Shakespeare = old = boring. Sonnets, by their very nature, are...
Transcribing Conversations During Instructional Walks
As a principal in a high-poverty, low-resource elementary school, I do not have access to an instructional coach to work with our teachers or with me on our schoolwide literacy...
Unintended Benefits of Recording Minilessons
During a coaching cycle with one of our second-grade teachers, I worked on teaching students how to access prerecorded minilessons on iPads. We planned out upcoming lessons, and either she...
Message from Old Crow
In a slipstream of winter light I wait along time’s trail—freed from the urgencies of earlier days, still feasting on what remains. Mountain spirits roar through the pines, stir...
Don’t Confuse the Already Confused
Bill had asked me to come in and think with him about his seventh graders’ understanding of theme development. He’d recently upped the complexity of the shared texts he was...
Inclusion: What Does It Mean?
It’s been five years since all of our reading specialists, special education support, and ELL teachers starting servicing kids in the classroom, and this year, we finally stopped and took...
Character Traits Through Word Sorts
Identifying character traits is an important skill for readers, and the need for precise word choice rises in third and fourth grade. Students are expected to pay close attention to...
Building Word Learning Routines
When working with readers who need extra support, it's not uncommon to need to do some work with letters, sounds, and words. Some students, for a variety of reasons, seem...
Vocabulary Instruction: Where to Start?
I have a confession to make: I’ve always struggled with incorporating vocabulary study into my high school English class. I’ve tried lots of different things over the years, but never...
Persevere
When farmers dig trenches, they always have a spotter outside of the trench. This person is watching the dirt, in case it shifts. If they see the dirt move, they...
What Are You Working on Today?
Conferring with readers is the heart of reading workshop. Conferring is where you meet kids right where they are and teach them exactly what they need to know to move...
Holding a Dictionary
As a little girl, I loved reading the dictionary. Actually reading it. My parents had a gigantic Random House dictionary that was likely bigger than me in height, weight, and...
Learning Vocabulary in Context with English Language Learners
Student 1: I think Frog is really nice. Me: What makes you say that? Student 1: Because he helped Toad find the list. Student 2: Yeah . . . because...
