Content Category: Choice Literacy
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The Big Fresh February 1, 2014 Strength and Weakness
Sometimes you don't realize your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness. Susan Gale My father always said, "Everyone's greatest strength is their greatest...
Previewing a Book with an Eighth Grader
In this brief conference, Katie Baydo-Reed chats with an eighth grader as he previews The Wednesday Wars and makes connections to the main character.
Multiple Strategies for Kindergarten Readers
Tammy Mulligan explains why it's important to encourage kindergarten students to use other strategies beyond "sound it out" in this demonstration small group.
Children’s Literature for the Olympics
The 2014 Winter Olympics are about to get underway in Sochi, Russia. Soon the 24/7 coverage of the games will begin. We’ll watch video clips of athletes training, hear the...
Explanatory Grammar Moves: Getting Verbal with It
The Common Core asks 8th graders to understand the use of verbals -- gerunds, infinitives, and participles. To keep myself from becoming verbally abusive, I will write about only one...
Making Classics Relevant for Middle School Students
I stumbled into a job as an English teacher based largely on the legs of one book. I was so inspired by Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird that it...
Middle School Design: Cozy Reading Spaces
I love to ooh and ahh over the beautiful things that teachers do with their classrooms. I have always been jealous of the cozy reading nooks and class meeting areas...
15 Minutes on Friday: Writing on Demand with Students
I have learned that if I wait to write until I think I have something to write about, it is often a very long wait. On the other hand, if...
Jennifer Serravallo on Formative Assessment (PODCAST)
Franki Sibberson chats with Jennifer Serravallo about formative assessment in this podcast. Jennifer is the author of The Literacy Teacher's Playbook, Grades 3-6: Four Steps for Turning Assessment Data into...
The Big Fresh January 25, 2014 The Unconference
Nothing will work unless you do. Maya Angelou Last weekend I attended an "unconference" -- the Northern New England nErDcamp at the Biddeford, Maine high school. The organizers used...
Conferring with Sebastian
Katie DiCesare chats with first grader Sebastian in this one-minute conference, then shares her reflections on where Sebastian might go next in his reading.
Formative Spelling Assessment
“In order to tailor instruction appropriately for children, it is important for teachers to learn about their students’ orthographic understandings. Ongoing monitoring of students’ writing is one part of the...
Rereading and Retelling to Inferring: Part 2
Linda Karamatic uses texts her second graders already know to build their inferring skills as they construct a chart together.
Liberty and Dystopia: February Literacy Contracts
Since it is February and we celebrate President’s Day this month, we focus on government and leadership in reading. We chose dystopian literature as the theme of the February Literacy Contract. ...
The Big Fresh January 18, 2014 Reading a Community
The power of the people is much stronger than the people in power. Wael Ghonim A second-grade teacher in my building got a surprise the other day. We'd just...
Smarter Charts (PODCAST)
In this podcast, Franki Sibberson chats with Kristi Mraz and Marjorie Martinelli (the authors of Smarter Charts K-2: Optimizing an Instructional Staple to Create Independent Readers and Writers) about ways...
Words Chart Minilesson
Ruth Ayres introduces a word chart to help students monitor their spelling strategies in this second-grade minilesson.
Exploring Inferring with Second Graders: Part 1
Linda Karamatic uses read alouds to begin the process of building an inferring chart with her second-grade students.
The Shape of Stories
One of the first language arts units of study I teach combines narrative structure in reading workshop and writing narratives in writing workshop. To help students understand exactly what I...
Act III: Exploring Subtext with A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare and the Common Core Series)
The Common Core states that high school students should be able to “adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and...
The Big Fresh January 11, 2014 Pull Over
Lead, follow or get out of the way. Thomas Paine My daughter Ahna and I were driving when I spotted flashing lights in my rearview mirror several blocks behind...
