Content Category: Choice Literacy
Results
My Name Is Not Julie
This is the story I don’t want to tell you. I don’t want to tell it because it is too good to be true, and I don’t want you to...
Comic Books and Mini Caped Crusaders for the Youngest Readers (Home is Where the Books Are Series)
I’m not a big comic book reader. Both of my brothers are, so I’ve tried to get into the sweeping and gorgeous graphic novels they periodically recommend, but they just...
Lists, Facts, and Reports: Conferring with Anna
Franki Sibberson confers with fourth grader Anna to help her connect report writing with her love of animal lists.
Touchy Topics for Opinion/Argumentative Writing
Many teachers have asked me for lists of arguable topics that appeal to kids. While I have some personal favorites, I offer this scaffolding to plan so they develop something...
A Graphic Novels Unit in 5th Grade
I recently tried a new unit in my classroom. I had read Terry Thompson’s Adventures in Graphica last summer. While I have always celebrated graphic novels and encouraged my students...
Understanding Adolescent Readers: 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,...
The Big Fresh January 26, 2013 The Stick Game
Half of the time I don't know what they're talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that everyone but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the...
Building Peer Conferring Skills in the Primary Grades
In my past experience with sixth-grade students, peer conferring was a way of life in our writing class. Students were able to take the lead and really push the thinking...
Classroom Jobs Build Community
As I began this year in my kindergarten class one of the classroom processes that I chose to focus on was our classroom jobs. In the past, as a part...
Lifting the Quality of Peer Response
Helping children learn to listen to each other well and give feedback takes a great deal of time. For many years, I just assumed that kids intuitively knew how to...
Whole Class Writing Share: Teaching Response Skills in 1st Grade
Katie DiCesare's first graders respond to their classmates' writing, using questions they developed together over time.
Thank You For Arguing
Often when I consider a fun, fresh way to connect students to a new strategy or subject matter, my own children are a great frame of reference because they love...
The Big Fresh January 19, 2013 Shoulds
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing, and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. Rumi At the side of my desk sits my little Epson printer. It's...
Using Wipe-Off Boards with Young English Language Learners
It is January, a time to review teaching practices and rethink, reorganize, and re-energize. January is a perfect time to refine skills-based teaching practices, and wipe-off boards are the perfect...
It’s Not About the Tool — It’s About the Learning
Schools have to prepare students for jobs that have not been created, technologies that have not been invented and problems that we don’t know will arise. Andrea Schleicher Incorporating...
Brainstorming Student Blogs
Franki Sibberson works with a group of students as they brainstorm how they will create a blog together.
The Big Fresh January 12, 2013 Control
Control is never achieved when sought after directly. It is the surprising outcome of letting go. James Arthur Ray Years ago when I was a professor at the University...
Helping Students Develop Independent Previewing Skills
Franki Sibberson leads a group of 15 of her fourth graders in a lesson on finding books using Web-based resources.
Previewing and Picture Walks with Fiction Texts
If nothing else, children should leave school with a sense that if they act, and act strategically, they can accomplish their goals. I call this feeling a sense of agency....
Eyes on the Fries: Just-Right Books and Reading Peer Pressure in Middle School
One of my favorite parts (okay, definitely my favorite part) of my morning running group is the socializing. During one pre-dawn run in late summer, I found myself running with...
Book Talks in 4th Grade
Tony Keefer previews Infinity Ring with his fourth graders, and talks about the value of book talks for building a reading community.
