Choice Lit Topic: Guiding Groups
How many? How often? How to assess? What’s the teacher’s role? We share flexible and creating strategies for leading groups, and teaching students how to partner and work well with classmates independently. Resources include everything from planning and assessment forms to scores of video examples of groups in action at many grade levels.
Results
Literary Salons: Book Clubs, Elevated
I usually do a round of book clubs with my students, but this year so many of them were in a good groove with their independent reading that I was...
Small-Group Instruction: Bookmaking
Teacher: “I was thinking for today’s reading time, we could write a book together, and then I'll make a copy of the book for each of us and we can...
Changing How I Teach Small Groups
I’ve changed lots about my teaching over the years, too many things to count. Many of the changes I have made help me listen more and let the students’ words...
Fostering Cultural Awareness Through Book Clubs
I teach in a small, rural school district that is 99 percent white. My students do not have a lot of knowledge about other cultures, and their exposure to people...
Building Online Writing Groups
One of the last moments I spent with my grandmother happened when she was in a temporary care facility while my aunt, her primary caretaker, was on vacation. Grandma had...
Balancing Conferences and Small Groups
Read any professional book on the workshop model, or listen to any literacy consultant, and they will tell you: Students should have 30 minutes to read independently while the teacher...
Building Conversation Skills in Book Clubs
Fifth graders use a visual tool to help them build on each other's ideas in book clubs. They are applying a strategy demonstrated in an earlier minilesson.
Minilesson: Building Conversations in Book Clubs
Dana Murphy leads a minilesson on book club conversations, using a fishbowl strategy and building blocks to support more sophisticated discussions.
Teaching Conventions in Small Groups
“Do you pinky promise?” I asked Josie. “I do,” she solemnly agreed. We linked pinkies and looked each other in the eye. I smiled. Josie had just agreed to edit...
Previewing Book Club Books
Gigi McAllister finds taking time to have students browse texts before forming book clubs makes all the difference in the quality of the discussions.
The Power of Video Replay
The team huddles around as the coach calls attention to the iPad in his hands. Players watch intently as the clip of the winning goal is played . . ....
Book Club Tools
I am a big fan of Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbooks. I love the unique flavors in his recipes and the way he incorporates so many vegetables into each dish. On the...
Guided Reading for Proficient Readers?
I was excited when I saw Tracy’s name on my “coaching roster.” Tracy is an enthusiastic teacher who is well respected in the school district that had contracted me. I...
Using a Strategy Notebook in Small-Group Instruction
I glanced up at the clock in our classroom. That clock was my nemesis and my guiding light. Twenty minutes. I had 20 minutes left before I had to call...
Releasing the Teaching to Students
I have watched my students grow in many ways since the beginning of the school year. They have picked up various skills, understand the standards and their use more competently,...
Forming Groups Using a Planner
It was late October, and I was feeling great about my one-on-one reading conferences. I was listening more than I was talking, taking succinct but valuable notes, and feeling like...
Getting Started with Strategy Lessons
The district in which Kate coaches has teachers in grades 1-5 who are comfortable with guided reading. Three years into reading workshop, many are ready to try strategy lessons as...
Small Group: Creativity
Franki Sibberson pulls together a group of fifth graders to explore writing mentors together.
Scaffolding Partner Work
Katherine Sokolowski scaffolds fifth graders Liam and Caden through the process of learning to recommend books to each other. The workshop includes reading from Tara Barnett and Kate Mills with suggestions for fostering better partnerships through student-created "want ads."
Linking Evidence to Reading Response in First Grade
A group of first graders we work with is reading level M texts independently in late winter. Although the texts they’re ready and able to read have more complex ideas,...
Reading The Crossover: Fourth-Grade Reading Group
Gigi McAllister leads a group of boys who are just starting the novel-in-verse The Crossover in her fourth-grade classroom.
