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
Sharing Writing in a Class Celebration
Does celebration matter? Is celebration essential to the business of developing meaningful, conventional, and powerful writers? When there is more to teach and meeting all the needs of students as...
Shoulders-Down Spaces
In certain people, places, and events, we hear the tune of our own bones. Laurie Patton Last February, I found myself walking under the famous Dragon’s Gate and onto...
Does the Pencil Still Have Power?
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered. The point is to discover them. Galileo Galilei An enormous supply of graphite was found in northern England in...
Building Routines
I give the group of teachers a big wave and a smile as they quietly slip out of the classroom. Many of them smile and wave back, some mouth Thank...
Getting to Know Each Other Through the Work
It is the first full day of school. In my first class of the day, 31 seventh graders are staring at me and wondering what my social studies class is...
Invitations vs. Accountability
My reading life is full of invitations. A friend recommends a book. I get invited into a book club. I see an announcement for the next #titletalk Twitter chat in...
Seeking Personal Relevance
All teachers know that each class of students comes with its own personality and dynamic. For instance, I vividly remember the year I had the class of eighth graders who...
The Year’s First Read Aloud
Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own...
Compass Points and Empathy
“Today we are going to discuss our thinking about one of our story’s main characters—Viola,” I announced at the start of my fourth-grade reading workshop. I was met with a...
My World Maps
What we do is who we are. I repeat this phrase often as I think about a project I’m starting with first-year teachers in grades 4-6. What we do is...
Spreading Love with Compliments
It was the end of the year—a time when teacher patience is growing thin and students (and teachers) have visions of lazy mornings and long days lounging in the sun....
Looking Forward with Students
Remember those first weeks of school? That time when you felt like the current class would never understand the classroom routines, and you went home exhausted from the effort of...
Literacy and Global Competence
We must build students' global connectedness as if our lives depended on it. Homa Sabet Tavangar I recently worked with an intermediate student who was upset because, he said,...
A Variety of Share Sessions
Sharing in writing workshop is a powerhouse for producing energy, excitement, and new learning to sustain writers. I’ve always pressed teachers to tap into a variety of share sessions to...
A Community Reads “Wonder”
Author C. Alexander London wrote, “It’s a fact: people can survive without books. People can even have wonderful, full lives without books. But they can’t endure without community, and community...
Questioning Within Read Alouds
Throughout the year, I have been studying and implementing strategies to increase the quantity and the quality of the questions students ask within their classrooms. In the past, I have...
End-of-Year Read Alouds
As we gather in our last community circle of the year, I pull out I Wish You More by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and read it to my attentive and quiet...
Students Watching Teachers
Every few weeks, we have a teachers' meeting or professional development before school starts. I do everything I can to make sure teachers are out of the meeting and back...
Stop and Inquire
“Did Washington really chop down a cherry tree?” In the middle of a minilesson about the French and Indian War, I introduced George Washington as a young soldier in his...
Flash Forward with New Students
In my experience, student scheduling begins in the spring and is not finalized until midsummer, at best. However, this year, our principal pledged to make a change. Not only did...
First-Grade Reflections: Looking Back to Move Forward
It was the first day back after winter vacation, and I looked at the plans that I had penciled in the week before break. “Review reading workshop expectations: independent reading,...
