Content Category: Choice Literacy
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Tracking Young Children’s Writing and Development
It's important to us to be aware of each child's writing growth as they progress through the year. Knowing what a child is attempting, experimenting with, and mastering helps us...
Mentor Texts and Teacher Modeling: The Listing Strategy
In this video from her fourth-grade classroom, Aimee Buckner teaches the "listing" strategy, using the book This Is the Tree: A Story of the Baobab as a mentor text. Aimee...
Common Core Conversations: Increasing Argumentative Writing
"Let's argue more often!" Does this exclamation bring up some feelings for you? Are they positive? Maybe . . . if you won debates in high school. Perhaps the word...
The Difference Between Conferring and “Touching Base”
Sometimes when I talk with teachers about creating "the luscious feeling of endless time," they look at me like I've lost my mind. They tell me they love the idea,...
“I Am the Book”: Helping Emergent Bilingual Learners Connect with Books
Too often in school, emergent bilingual students have trouble connecting with the book. This fall, I planned to change that. I wanted to help my English language learners read with...
Whole Class Interviews: Building Community in Writing Workshop (TEMPLATE)
As I begin to set up my classroom, I can't help but think back to Jonathan's comment on our last day of school a few years ago in June. We...
Word Study is More Than Spelling
When I was teaching kindergarten years ago, Chelsea ran into the classroom after a trip to the restroom. She was very excited as she yelled, "I found a word! I...
Important Book, Important Notes: Guiding Young Students Through Notetaking
For about six weeks last winter, my daughter Lindsay was doing research on dogs during her self-directed learning time in kindergarten. She checked out a pile of Eyewitness books about...
A Strategy Lesson for “Drive-Thru” Readers
Early in the year, like many teachers across the country, I work diligently to teach and reteach my students how to choose a just-right book. We review the parts of...
Teaching About Words, Grammar, and Mechanics Through Children’s Literature (BOOKLIST)
When I think about my students as learners, I want them to be more than just good spellers. I think that this year, many of my daily word study lessons...
Company-Ready Teaching
Friends who have never been to our house are coming over for dinner. Suddenly, I see my house through new eyes: dust bunnies in the silverware drawer, the paint on...
Breathing New Life into the Writer’s Notebook
By the time they step into our classroom, my sixth graders have kept writer’s notebooks ever since they were in second grade. They arrive knowing that a writer’s notebook is...
Choosing Books in Verse
Poetry can seem intimidating to some young (and old) readers. So asking a student who isn’t too sure about reading a single poem to read an entire novel written in...
Panels and Pages: Using Graphic Novels in the High School Classroom
My students love graphic novels, and as I’ve made more of an effort to read them myself, so do I. However, I have noticed that there is still a bit...
Dot Images: Taking Time to Reflect Brings Out Mathematical Ideas
“My students just aren’t understanding how to decompose numbers,” Jessie, a kindergarten teacher, admitted at a team meeting. “I ask them to show me how numbers can be broken apart,...
Ready-to-Go Book Talks
It’s the beginning of the school year, and you have several book talks already written in your plan book and ready to go. You are ready to pitch these books...
Pop-Up Poetry
Once when I was traveling with friends, we saw a man selling poems that he wrote on the spot at a holiday market. Intrigued, I decided to purchase a poem....
Teaching = Communication
On a recent walk with a long-time friend, the topic of “math rules” came up. Lydia, a vice president of data analytics for a large corporation with degrees in mathematics...
Giving Kids Time and Space to Show Their Brilliance
We were at a local playground in the Buckeye State last summer, and someone had left a piece of chalk lying on the blacktop. My newly turned three-year-old son took...
Twitter Chats and Professional Development
Networking and learning with other educators has always been fun and inspirational for me. I enjoy going to literacy conferences and meeting all kinds of wonderful minds. In the past...
Tweeting an Author
Katherine Sokolowski helps Amelia send a tweet to a favorite author.
