Content Category: Choice Literacy
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Memorable Students, Memorable Teachers: A Quick-Write Icebreaker for Teacher Workshops
"Memorable Teachers, Memorable Students" is a simple quick-write reflective activity that is especially appropriate for summer or "getting to know you" events early in the year with study groups, teacher...
Teacher/Principal Conferring: Reflecting on Readers’ Notebooks
In this conference, Principal Karen Szymusiak and 5th grade teacher Liz Cramer discuss the ways Liz uses readers' notebooks in her classroom. Before the conference, Karen spends an evening reading...
Running and Reading Logs
In this first video in a two-part series, Clare Landrigan meets with a group of fourth graders to talk about reading logs and goals. In this excerpt, Clare uses the...
How Study Groups Are Like Self-Cleaning Ovens
One of our favorite inventions ever is the self-cleaning oven. Set a timer, lock the oven door, and a few hours later -- voila! You have a clean oven, and...
Punctuation Quotes
In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy and the semicolon quietly practices the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is...
“Hard” Reading Workshop: Understanding How Proficient Readers Comprehend Difficult Text
This workshop activity is useful for a study group, staff meeting, or mentor meeting where the topic is reading instruction. Over the past two decades, comprehension research has focused on...
Literacy Coaching Interview Rubric
The "Literacy Coaching Interview Rubric" was designed collaboratively with colleagues who are preparing to become literacy coaches. We talked through the different philosophies in school communities about the purposes and...
Conferring with Colin
In this reading conference with Colin, Joan Moser (of "The Sisters") helps him set a goal of working on accuracy.
Running and Reading Logs Part II
In this second video in a two-part series, Clare Landrigan meets with a group of 4th graders to talk about reading logs and goals. In this excerpt, Clare confers with...
The Language of Coaching Part II: The Leading Edge
Peter Johnston has written an entire book about the subtleties of our communications. In Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning (Stenhouse, 2004), Johnston explores the places where work is partially...
Notetaking Strategies Part I: “In the Midst” and “After the Fact” Notes
Memory is made as a quilt is made. From the whole cloth of time, frayed scraps of sensation are pulled apart and pieced together in a pattern that has a...
New Teacher Conversations: Breaking Through Roadblocks and Sustaining Support
At our final New Teacher Conversations meeting, we wanted to celebrate with the first-year teachers as well as look ahead to their second year. Knowing this was the last scheduled...
Mentor Interviews — A Protocol of Questions
Fall is a time when many novice and seasoned teachers begin mentoring relationships. But what do the mentors expect from this partnership? And how might their expectations differ from those...
Quick Take: Advice from Katie Doherty on Starting a Middle School Reading Workshop
In this one-minute quick take video, Katie Doherty has advice for middle school teachers who are thinking of launching a reading workshop in their classrooms.
Finding Words: Linking Community and Classrooms
Principal Karen Szymusiak and 3rd Grade Teacher/Literacy Coach Pam Hahlen do a quick word search activity using dictionaries donated to the classroom by a local service club.
Poets on Notebooks Quote Collection
Why a journal? Well, I like writing that spills over. I want to live as much as possible at the ends of my fingertips rather than, say, in the capillaries...
On Board with Literacy Leadership
It all started last summer when we read Jennifer Allen's book Becoming a Literacy Leader. We wanted to move from our current roles of reading specialists in the direction of literacy...
Establishing a Routine for Notetaking
Once you decide when you're going to keep more notes, you'll need to find ways to preserve that time. This is no small feat for teachers and literacy coaches. We...
Learning Curves and Dips: Planning and Goal-Setting for Writing Workshop
I am learning how to run. It sounds silly, "learning how to run," but it's true. At first I just started running a minute, walking a minute. Eventually, I ran...
Rethinking Writing Centers
Every classroom has one. The children absolutely love them. The teachers invest considerable thought, effort, and resources into outfitting and organizing them. There was only one problem. No one was...
Bookroom Tours Part III
In this six-minute video, The Sisters (Gail Boushey and Joan Moser) give a tour of a "choice" bookroom. Unlike many bookrooms organized by level and maintained by teachers, this room...
