Content Category: Choice Literacy
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Unlocking Student Thinking: The Power of Problem Posing in Story Problem Contexts
As I watched my 16-month-old twins play at a local playground, I was struck by how they navigated this open area. It was fenced in, of course. Having two toddlers...
Book Matchmaker: 3rd Graders Reading Below Grade Level
Ellen is a tutor and works with 3rd grade students who are reading below grade level. Although these students are reading below grade level, they want to read...
Picture Books for Naming Emotions
I wrote in the first installment in this series about my daughter’s diagnosis with emotion dysregulation. Through our family's journey of learning how to help her, we discovered the importance...
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...
Writing Partner Feedback in Fifth Grade
In this video, partner teams in Franki Sibberson's fifth-grade class share their drafts and ask for specific feedback on their opinion-writing pieces.
Activities Linking Books and Visual Learners for Early in the Year
By late August I wake two or three times every night, thinking about that first day of school. I love the early days of school. I love meeting new students...
Writer’s Workshop: Planning for “Dips”
I'm training for a half marathon. I need to keep to a training schedule if I'm going to be ready. In the past, I tend to run from January through...
Connecting with Students at Home
Our first three days of remote learning were a whirlwind. I created lessons for my third-grade students and posted them for the students to access and complete. Students did the...
Finding Topics in Writer’s Notebooks Minilesson
Sean Moore shares the importance of using a writer's notebook to discover topics in this minilesson with his second-grade students from early in the year.
Collecting Ideas in the Writer’s Notebook
Ruth Ayres confers with third grader Jade about the value of collecting ideas in her writer's notebook, and shares some strategies for organizing the information.
Conferring with Spencer: Writing Notebook Topics
Katherine Sokolowski helps fifth grader Spencer brainstorm topics for his writing notebook.
Forming Groups Using a Planner
It was late October, and I was feeling great about my one-on-one reading conferences. I was listening more than I was talking, taking succinct but valuable notes, and feeling like...
The 4 Fs of Assessment
Assessment is driving my students crazy. The constant need to collect numbers for determining curriculum gaps or monitoring progress detracts from developing readers. Buried in the obsession to collect data...
Discussion and Summary As a Prelude to Fiction Writing
With the spotlight on the teaching of writing being directed toward expository, opinion, and persuasive writing, fiction writing has been reduced in many classrooms. As the time for the fiction...
Haiku Writing
Writing workshop had been humming along all year. We were listening to lots of mentor texts. We were drafting stories. Some students had folders bursting at the seams with drafts,...
Helping Kids Lead Every Day: Changing Who “Owns” Small Groups in the Classroom
One Sunday evening, while planning for my small-group instruction in reading, I paused. Why was I thinking about these groups as my small groups? They are the kids’ small groups,...
Teaching Rereading During Class Read Alouds
I teach my 4th graders the power of rereading using the mentor text Goblins in the Castle by Bruce Coville. In this video, you can see we use rereading as...
First-Grade Writing Conference: Celebrations to Suggestions
Katrina Edwards begins her conference with first grader Allen by celebrating all he is doing well in his writing. She highlights his language and details in writing before moving on...
Revising Titles Minilesson
In this minilesson from Franki Sibberson's grades 3 and 4 classroom, Franki takes students through the process of selecting and revising titles. She uses the poem "Confessions of a Reader"...
A Minilesson on Minilessons
Franki Sibberson leads a minilesson in her fifth-grade classroom to help students design their own lessons. Students also assess what goes into a high-quality minilesson.
Integrating Vocabulary and Retelling Strategies into Read-Aloud
Stella Villalba scaffolds the language development of her first- and second-grade English language learners during read-aloud by highlighting vocabulary and providing a tool to assist with a partner retelling activity....
