Content Category: Choice Literacy
Results
Administering a Pre-Assessment
We’ve launched the school year, and teachers are busy getting to know students both as people and as writers. The other day, I had a conversation with a new second-grade...
Writing as an Act of Resistance and a Source of Strength
I want to record what others erase when I speak. —Gloria Anzaldúa Writing has always played a significant role in my life. Since I was a little girl, I’ve kept...
Book Matchmaker: Read Alouds That Invite Young Readers to Participate
There is nothing like a great story that naturally invites readers to join in. Our youngest students love those repeated phrases, and don’t need a prompt to jump right into...
Launching a Classroom Library
I learned the hard way you simply cannot just hand over the keys to your classroom library and let 23 kids take it for a spin. Disaster will shortly ensue....
Field Experience: Supporting Independent Reading, Choice and Stamina
Helping students learn to choose books and develop stamina are important to developing independent readers. This field experience offers opportunities to see minilessons, small group instruction, team meetings and a...
Using 9/11 Research to Build Community and Writing Process
It seems unreal to me that the students who sit in front of me have no personal knowledge of the events that transpired on September 11, 2001. To them, it’s...
Building Community Access to Texts Through a Lending Library
Stories affirm our experiences. They challenge our comfort zone. They give us space to hibernate and pull us out of our isolation when we need to be reminded we aren’t...
Field Experience: Book Talks to Empower Independent Reading
Helping students find books they want to read is the heart of powerful independent reading. This field experience chronicles the way book talks put books in adolescents' hands that have...
Trusting the Letting-Go Moments
Last year we started school with lots of joy and inquiry. My students arrived and were greeted with monarch eggs and milkweed on the windowsill. Sticky notes were available to...
Kindergarten: Conferring with Grace
Hayley Whitaker confers with Grace about her writing early in the year.
The Sharpening Stone
I watched a lovely video recently that was designed to describe the approach of a nonprofit called One Village Partners (OVP) and the work they do with people in different...
Strategic Seating
In my seventh- and eighth-grade literacy-based history classes, I am a firm believer in daily collaboration. I want my students to learn content and practice various standard-based skills on their...
Goals and How-to Writing in First Grade
Danielle French helps first grader Dakota set goals while writing her nonfiction how-to essay.
Books That Sustain the Linguistic Lives of Multilingual Learners
Being immersed in the world of picture books is one of my favorite ways to stay current with what students are reading, the topics authors are choosing to write about,...
Middle-Grade Mental Health Booklist
Talking about mental health is not always easy. As we continue to distance ourselves from the pandemic, we need to be aware of the effects it has had on the...
Talking Through Characters
Our sixth graders are getting ready to write realistic fiction stories, and one of the important parts of the process is getting to know their characters. In the past, I...
Moving from Whole-Class Texts to Independent Reading: Characterization
In an effort to make more space for independent reading, over the years I have reduced the number of whole-class novels that I read with my classes to two, maybe...
The Shades of Sadness: Character Feelings and Traits
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.3 Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or actions). Considering my...
Choice Literacy Writing Guidelines
Choice Literacy readers are looking for the "how" of literacy leadership written by smart, funny, passionate educators. We publish writing with fresh ideas and strong craft -- the type of...
Personal Touches Early in the Year – Classroom Design Photo Essay Series
Early in the year, many of the walls in our classroom are bare, as we wait to fill them up with our learning - our new words, books we've...
I Think, I Wonder, I Understand: Making Sense of the Work of Literacy Coaches
The "I Think I Wonder I Understand" (TWU) chart was designed collaboratively with colleagues who are preparing to become literacy coaches -- Molly Ayer, Leslie Barrett-Jones, Susan Kiningham, Darcie St....
