Content Category: Choice Literacy
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March Literacy Contracts: Nonfiction Curiosities
Spring is arriving in March, and with it, a renewed sense of curiosity and enthusiasm. Spring gives us a bounce in our step, more energy, and a desire to learn...
The Big Fresh March 1, 2014 Sensing Spring
Each day has a color, a smell. Chita Banerjee Divakarumi The calendar turns to March, and everyone longs for spring. Here in Maine, we expect to be buried in...
Bracketology
It was March 2013. Brackets were everywhere you turned. March Madness had taken over NBA basketball. I was participating in Madness poetry-writing tournament. Our fifth graders were writing persuasively and...
Drama and Two-Page Spreads: Conferring with Max
Ruth Ayres confers with second grader Max about the story of his lost dog, and uses a mentor text to demonstrate the power of two-page spreads.
The Big Fresh February 22, 2014 Making Opinions Matter
Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else. Mark Twain On a recent Saturday I spent the afternoon with some elementary...
The Pause That Refreshes: Write When the Conversation Gets Hot
This year I am participating in a book group for parents at my kids’ school. Instead of reading popular parent fare, How Children Succeed, or Mindset: The New Psychology of...
Writing Fiction: More Than Just a Walk in the Park
It’s the day before the last day of school and we have taken over the local park. Hundreds of middle school students are gallivanting around eating hot dogs and snow...
Conferring About Lemony Snicket and Vocabulary
Aimee Buckner confers with fourth grader Samantha about reading a series and tackling challenging vocabulary at the same time in this brief video.
So You Think You Can Combine Sentences? You Can!
Teaching conventions unconventionally is a passion of mine. Just because I’m using the word unconventionally doesn’t mean that these approaches are new. In fact, the work of William Strong and...
The Big Fresh February 15, 2014 Fancy Foods
First we eat. Then we do everything else. M. F. K. Fisher When I was a child and went with my family to the grocery store, we generally filled...
Sentence Combining in Workshops
Combining sentences is a putting-together approach instead of the taking-apart approach that has dominated much of the worksheet or drill work of grammar instruction. Tried-and-true classroom practice as well as...
More Sophisticated Mysteries: Conferring with Yuki
Franki Sibberson confers with fourth grader Yuki to expand his reading options. You can access the list of books Franki shares by clicking here.
The Power of Mystery Series for Teens and Tweens
It’s what every book lover dreams about: finding a book with wonderful characters and a gripping plot, only to discover that the story doesn’t end with this book. You do...
A Tool Worth Exploring: Sentence Combining
A high school teacher tells me, “The students aren’t coming from the middle school with the grammar skills we expect of them.” The middle school teachers ask me, “Are elementary...
Conversational Skills in a Boys Book Club
Linda Karamatic observes a second-grade boys book club using tokens as a cue for turn taking, and then discusses her observations with the students.
Deeper Writing: The Story Behind the Selfie
My students tend to skim the surface with their writing, covering a lot of ground in not a lot of detail. Come to think of it, my young adolescents are...
The Big Fresh February 8, 2014 Keeping It Short
The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have. Vince Lombardi Last week I visited a sixth-grade class led by Justin Stygles in Norway,...
Making the Most of Short Texts
The Common Core State Standards are still on the horizon for 5th grade in my district. But, like the first time you see the distant, shadowy shape of Pikes Peak...
“Article of the Week” Activity in Fourth Grade
Tony Keefer demonstrates how the article-of-the-week activity adapted from the work of Kelly Gallagher is a powerful tool for building skills and community in his fourth-grade classroom.
Collecting Ideas in the Writer’s Notebook
Ruth Ayres confers with third grader Jade about the value of collecting ideas in her writer's notebook, and shares some strategies for organizing the information.
no i don’t think you need to shave
I’ve been conducting an experiment this year. It began on the first day of school. I don’t generally “do content” on the first day of school. Traditionally, I like to...
