Choice Lit Topic: Content Literacy
Reading and writing across the curriculum is sparking more interest than ever among teachers and school leaders. Here are the resources you need to build more writing into your math curriculum, more reading and talk into your science program, and especially, how to infuse more nonfiction texts into your teaching throughout the school day.
Results
Common Core Research Shifts
As expository writing becomes more integrated in Common Core, many changes are occurring in my classroom as I redefine student research. There are four shifts that I am making with...
Whole Class Research Planning in 4th Grade
Andrea Smith's students brainstorm how to proceed with their owl habitat research project.
Streamlining Research Check-ins
For an obsessive person, I’m oddly disorganized. It’s strange: I am meticulous about list making, obnoxious about planning ahead, and consumed with noting everything on my calendar (I break into...
Rethinking Nonfiction Topic-Based Text Sets
When I think about text sets, I consider the ways we collect books as teachers to help build background knowledge and understanding around a topic. With text complexity being highlighted...
Exploring Explanatory Moves Writers Use
There is a difference, subtle though it may be, between informational and explanatory writing. Let’s take a deeper look at the moves writers use to explain beyond merely explaining how...
Research Book Clubs for Struggling Readers
This past fall one of our fabulous learning support teachers and I were sitting on the carpet after school trying to think of a way to get a student we...
Whole-Class Research Planning
Andrea Smith leads her fourth graders through brainstorming for their owl research project.
Nonfiction Reading Group in First Grade
Katie DiCesare brings together a group of her first-grade students who are reading nonfiction, helping them to expand the ways they share what they are learning with classmates.
Chris Lehman on Student Research (PODCAST)
Franki Sibberson chats with Chris Lehman (author of Energize Research Reading and Writing) about how the Common Core is changing the ways teachers approach student research in their classrooms. You...
“We Gather Together”: On Research and Weddings
There are many similarities between committing to a research project and committing to a spouse. As I worked with a team of seventh-grade teachers at Wawasee Middle School to create...
Limiting and Extending Choice in Student Research Projects
Have you read enough research projects on bears, baseball, and badminton? Over the past several years, I have learned unlimited choice in research projects does not always make students’ writing...
Owl Research: Whole Class Explanation of Marking Up Text
Andrea Smith explains a close reading activity her fourth-grade students will complete as part of their owl research.
The Sponge Summary Lesson: Introduction
Heather Rader teaches a fourth-grade class, using the analogy of a sponge to explain how summaries work. In this video, the students review the four rules used for nonfiction summaries and corresponding kinesthetic movements and brainstorm a list of “what’s important to know about summaries.”
Literacy in the Music Room: A Sequence of Lessons
Many people speak of the connection that can be made between music and mathematics, and music is sometimes used to reinforce math concepts. As a longtime music lover, I’ve found...
13 Ways to Raise Students Who Hate Research
Certainly there are just too many words of positive advice for how to raise empowered students. Sure, of course, some people want kids who are inquisitive and energized to learn....
Research IS the Project (Primary Research Series)
Have you had good chocolate and then tried really excellent chocolate? Were you ever able to go back to the just-good chocolate? Yeah, me neither. That’s what happened when I...
The “Tys” of Student Research: Safety and Credibility (Primary Research Series Part 2)
I’ve been feeling very “meta” lately as I research research about research. Christopher Lehman’s book: Energize Research Reading and Writing: Fresh Strategies to Spark Interest, Develop Independence, and Meet Key...
Using Comics in Literacy Workshops
Franki Sibberson works with her 3rd and 4th graders to use comics in the literacy workshop. Students study a variety of comics and list common attributes in small- and whole-group settings.
Literacy in Content Areas: A Podcast with Penny Kittle
Penny Kittle is a classroom teacher and literacy coach at Kennett High School in North Conway, New Hampshire. She is the author of Public Teaching: One Kid at a Time,...
Nonfiction Word Hunt
Word study and nonfiction reading are combined in Franki Sibberson's whole-group nonfiction word hunt activity. Each child shares which word he or she found, where it was found, and reflects on what the discoveries mean to the community of word learners.
From Reading to Writing Informational Texts
I first met Sal and Anthony in Mrs. Bean’s second-grade classroom on a Monday afternoon. It was about 45 minutes before school let out, and the class was finishing up...
