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Celebration Charts
Ruth Ayres, a Choice Literacy contributor, hosts a weekly meme on the web called Celebrate. We have been trying to share the spirit of celebration in our staff development sessions....
When Is Coaching a Waste of Time?
I met Lisa, a new literacy coach, for dinner early in the fall. She’d just come from an afternoon meeting with Mary, a fifth-grade teacher. They had discussed designing a...
The Silent Period
He has been listening. He has been listening all day long, but he hasn’t said a word to me or to friends. It looks like he is imitating behaviors like...
Courage to Change: A Professional Development Activity
We love to use picture books to inspire conversation around change in our leadership meetings. Recently we tried a new book and loved how it worked. We used Courage...
Inform, Inspire, Instruct: Essays as Mentor Texts in High School
“We are really quite concerned,” stressed the school counselor as she handed me the essay a student of mine had submitted for the state writing test. I smiled and even...
Just Tell Me! Evaluation and the Coach’s Dilemma
Coaches are not evaluators. We are a teacher's side-by-side partner; a confidential listener, encouraging teachers to take risks, helping them to hone their skills to become the best teacher for...
Infusing Informational Texts into Morning Meetings: Fact of the Day and Daily News Routines
Children thrive when they belong to a community that is welcoming, full of new learning, and built around consistent structures and expectations. Classroom rituals and routines reassure each child entering...
Shorter Research Projects: Rethinking Notetaking Strategies
Research in fifth grade can be mind-numbing. Add notetaking into that equation, and you are in for an exhausting unit. Notetaking in the world of fifth graders is always tricky....
The Weight of Stories
I walk into the house at the end of the day and set down my bag, releasing the weight of my laptop, books, and stacks of paper, but my shoulders...
Drop the Rope
Change is hard. Coaching change is even harder. Those moments of tension we experience can be brutal. We feel defensive, hurt, or even useless. How do we find the strength...
Rethinking Technology: The Power of Student Experts
I am not a tech native as my students are. I grew up in a time when typewriters were common and computers were the size of a bedroom. I still...
Above the Clouds
The few days before my trip to Boston had been stormy, dreary, and overcast. I knew the forecast predicted rain at my destination, but as I was leaving for the...
Peer Evaluation of Student Writing
We all know we need to incorporate writing into every aspect of what we teach. We love writing ourselves. We love getting out the thoughts and tweaking them and rearranging...
Using Writing Notebooks Authentically with My Fifth-Grade Students
When I first began teaching writing workshop, I was told that my students needed to keep a writer's notebook. Back then, I was the kind of teacher who liked to...
My Middle Schoolers Still Can’t Spell!: Focusing on Individual Students
It had become my stubborn mission to get a handle on spelling while we had had a small taste of success. After a month of thoughtfully planned small-group intervention, students...
Rethinking Grammar Instruction in High School
It’s easy for an English teacher to get overwhelmed by the grammatical errors that turn up in student writing. Something about the nature of English teachers makes us want to...
Coaching Conversations: Easing Your Way into Positive Relationships
In this conversation, Sharon Thompson chats with Brenda Power about how important it is for new coaches to listen, and the hazards of going where you aren't wanted. A full...
Leadership 101: Knowing When to Step Back
My school literacy team met last week. The literacy team includes specialists and grade-level team leaders. The agenda was a typical one: Our media specialist shared new books available in...
Writing Homework
Five years ago, I began using the workshop method in my reading and writing classes. Since that time, my nightly reading homework has been the same: read a book of...
Is the Pain Worth the Gain?
As any teacher knows, the way to internalize standards is to use them in the classroom. We can read, unpack, dig into, compare, and “essentialize” the new Common Core standards...
The Power of Reading Habits
This year, for the first time in my career, I taught teenagers—seventh graders whose reading, thanks to a looping arrangement, I’d been able to nurture the previous year. The heart...
