Choice Lit Topic: Community Building
It’s one of the big paradoxes of literacy instruction – students best learn how to read and write independently when they have a strong community of support in classrooms. How teachers build those thoughtful, kind, and challenging classroom communities is explained in these resources.
Results
How to Begin a Community Circle
Bitsy Parks gives direction in beginning a community circle with primary learners.
Holidays: Where Do They Fit in the Classroom?
“I’ve never had someone acknowledge and recognize the Moon Festival," a parent said to me at parent pickup during one of the first weeks of school. "I didn’t know that...
QuickTake: Chronicling Learning All Year
Tammy Mulligan shares a beginning-of-the-year routine where second graders create an identity frame. This becomes a place to highlight photographs of their learning each week throughout the school year.
QuickTake: Leave Space for Personalization
Melissa Quimby advises leaving space for students to personalize the classroom when they arrive to start the new school year.
Quick Take: Listen to Create a Sense of Belonging
Stella Villalba encourages all educators to listen to students to understand how to create a culture of belonging.
Using Daily Attendance Questions to Build Community and Communication Skills
A typical beginning to one of my high school class periods might go as follows: "Do you prefer pancakes, waffles, or french toast? I’m definitely a pancake person; the fluffier...
What I Am Reading the First Week of School
Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. —Dr....
Poems to Start the Year
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. —Robert Frost Last year I had a student who had such anxiety about being called...
Honoring Student Identity (Download a Survey)
At our first faculty meeting this year, our principal shared that two of our middle school families had contacted the school to say that their children identify as nonbinary. Both...
Creating a Classroom Emotional Intelligence Charter
Happy. Sad. Frustrated. Overwhelmed. Joyful. Our classrooms are filled with many emotions, and at any moment a different emotion can surface and affect our learning and community. Over the years...
Join a Reading Community
I started blogging to document life-fun in 2007 after my first son was born. I was always taking pictures, so a friend suggested I’d like blogging. I jumped right in,...
Bedtime Stories with a Mystery Reader
For the past year, if it’s 6:50 on a Wednesday evening, I can be found opening my computer and logging on to Zoom. The waiting room most likely already has...
Take a Chance
In education, there is nothing as exciting as trying something new. There is also nothing as frightening. The idea that a new idea may captivate, inspire, and motivate 30 young...
Student-Planned End-of-Year Celebration
We look around the classroom and see students reading independently, some partner reading, others sharing exciting or surprising events in their reading. Writers conferring with one another, others co-authoring pieces....
Presence Required
Years ago at a professional development workshop, I heard Nancie Atwell speak about a time Don Graves (another original leader in workshop instruction) visited her classroom. He said something to...
Keeping Unity
It was the last period of the day, and I was feeling frazzled. My sophomore English class was engaged in a fun group project, but I had not anticipated the...
What Is Communication? A Mini-Inquiry Project and Booklist
“Oh,” I said, “Blake’s favorite weekend activity was riding his bike.” I looked at the socially distanced standing circle around the room and tried to muster engagement with Blake’s share,...
Creating a Community of Care: Beyond the Classroom Walls
Dear Ms. Villalba, My class is having a lunch picnic next Thursday. Can you come and join us? Love, M Every time I get a note like this, my heart...
The Classroom Library: Building Bridges
Brandon was twice as tall as he was when he first stepped into my classroom all those years ago. It was a nice surprise to see him. Every once in...
See Your Students
Nerd Camp 2019 featured a widely acclaimed author, Jason Reynolds. He delighted the participants with a story about his childhood. He told us about an event called a “Go-Go” that...
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...
