Content Category: Choice Literacy
Results
Owning Our Teaching: A Podcast with Vicki Vinton
Vicki Vinton is the coauthor of What Readers Really Do and The Power of Grammar. You can follow her latest thinking at her blog, To Make a Prairie. In this...
The Big Fresh November 17, 2012 Purse Pass
Silence is a statement that is open to gross misinterpretation. Craig Bruce "Why do you only have one dollar in your purse?" Ahna looked alarmed as she straightened my...
Evaluating the Literacy Classroom
In my career as an educator, the way teachers are evaluated has changed dramatically. I have a clear memory of my first evaluation. My stomach was clenched in first-year teacher...
Quick Sketch Sensory Images Read Aloud: Introduction
Linda Karamatic uses quick sketches to teach her second graders about sensory images in reading. This is the first installment in a two-part series.
Common Core Booklist: Writing Personal Narratives
One emphasis of the The Common Core State Standards in Writing is narrative writing for fourth graders. When looking closely at the standards, students are expected to develop an experience...
Preschool: Learning in Many Languages
Melissa Kolb explains how she supports many languages in her preschool classroom through the thoughtful use of volunteers and other resources in this three-minute video:
Tracking Thinking While Reading
Melissa Styger confers with a fourth-grade student using a template to help students track thinking and comprehension. The template is a simple two-column organizer that students have available during their...
The Big Fresh November 10, 2012 Whimsy
Cinderella is proof that a pair of shoes can change your life. ...
Teaching Revision Through Talk, Routines, and Drawing
The Common Core Standards for writing require that students learn the concept of revision from a very young age. When we are working with K-2 students we want them to...
Writer’s Launch
Every year I revisit the same question: Why do children so often begin a home visit or enter my classroom with a need to confess to me all of the...
Informational Snapshot Writing
I never pictured myself as a kindergarten teacher, but what does a first-year teacher do when she receives a call to interview for a kindergarten position? Ta-da! Instant kindergarten teacher....
Staying Child-Centered When You Work with Adults
A hesitation can be a teachable moment. Occasionally my daughter asks me if I miss teaching kindergarten students. My answer is always the same: I pause, gaze off in the...
Nourishment: Making Time and Space for Little Joys
As I write this, it is early Saturday morning. I’m wrapped in a quilt pieced with pirates and bright fabric that my mom made just for me. Sweet coffee is...
Teacher Vulnerability
Dear Mrs. Johnson, This has been just a wonderful year of school for Molly. You have reignited her love of learning and I can’t thank you enough for that. This...
Mixing Information and Narratives
In this conference from a second-grade classroom, Sean Moore helps Mia flesh out her writing on friendship with examples.
Peer Conferring: The Modeling Phase
Lucy Calkins makes no bones about it: “Research is really clear that even just five minutes of conversation about books ramps up comprehension.” It’s those three words ramps up comprehension...
The Big Fresh November 3, 2012 Giving Too Much
The greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too...
Conferring for Conventions (Conventions Series Part 5)
Take your age and subtract five. That’s approximately the number of years you’ve been working with conventions in your writing. For me that number is 35. For 35 years I’ve...
The Big Fresh October 27, 2012 Consider It Done
Choice Literacy hosted workshops recently at a resort where the motto is "Consider It Done." This was the tagline heard whenever a staff member introduced herself, as in "Hello, I'm...
Creating Anchor Charts with Multiple Classes
Three years ago my building was moving to a semi-departmentalization concept. Now I would be teaching my own homeroom reading and writing, but I would also teach two additional classes...
Book Matchmaker: Read Aloud Versions of Old Favorites
Not only do children love to hear new versions of favorite stories, but the thinking that happens when students read these stories is powerful. Seeing connections between stories, characters...
