Content Category: Choice Literacy
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Poems to Start the Year
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. —Robert Frost Last year I had a student who had such anxiety about being called...
Honoring Student Identity (Download a Survey)
At our first faculty meeting this year, our principal shared that two of our middle school families had contacted the school to say that their children identify as nonbinary. Both...
Creating a Classroom Emotional Intelligence Charter
Happy. Sad. Frustrated. Overwhelmed. Joyful. Our classrooms are filled with many emotions, and at any moment a different emotion can surface and affect our learning and community. Over the years...
July 1, 2022: Booklists!
You don't want to lose the things or people that leave imprints on your heart. —Elly Swartz Unanticipated Joy At the end of the school year there are always pockets...
Befriending Characters in Times of Grief (Booklist)
You don’t want to lose the things or people that leave imprints on your heart. —Elly Swartz, middle-grade author On the first day of school, 16 fourth graders spread out...
Bring Me Something Funny (Booklist)
I passed the stack of picture books recently picked up from our local library to my son who teaches third grade. “There are some great new picture books here,” I...
June 24, 2022: Booklists!
We read to know we are not alone. —C.S. Lewis Readers Need One Another My mom was the librarian in my hometown. It’s a small town, the kind where the...
Using The Proudest Blue in the Classroom
We loved using picture books in our fourth-grade classroom. We’d use them for everything: read alouds; reading and writing minilessons; writing mentor texts; small-group shared texts; vocabulary; and to promote...
Join a Reading Community
I started blogging to document life-fun in 2007 after my first son was born. I was always taking pictures, so a friend suggested I’d like blogging. I jumped right in,...
June 17, 2022: Booklists!
Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly. —Sir Francis Bacon Required Reading? I grew up surrounded by cornfields as a...
June 10, 2022: Deeper Thinking
Life is not testing you. She is rooting for you. —Danielle LaPorte Rooting for You We all have seasons of life when it feels like there is one thing after...
Branching Out: Allowing New Influences on Our Pedagogy
Although educational theorists such as Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky laid the groundwork for what we know about teaching and learning, it's important to also acknowledge their positionality as white men...
Studying Character in Intermediate Grades
Tried and true: a North American phrase meaning something in the past that has proven to be effective and reliable (from Oxford Languages dictionary). Synonyms include dependable and time-tested. The...
Interpreting Figurative Language
Your life is dependent upon your relationship with words. —Jason Reynolds These words are the perfect launch into reading Long Way Down with our seventh graders. Jason Reynolds’s novel in...
June 3, 2022: Celebrating Capability
Life is a flower of which love is the honey. —Victor Hugo Offer Joy My daughter Hannah is at Marine Base Camp Pendleton in California but had the opportunity to...
Creating Thematic Text Sets for Inquiry
Choosing a one-word theme for the year has been gaining in popularity. Based on what they want to accomplish and how they want to feel, people choose one word to...
Maintaining an Adult Reading Life
One quick scroll through my Instagram feed will tell you what matters most to me: my family, my dog, knitting, and books. (All right, maybe tacos and cheeseburgers too.) These...
Five Books for Teacher Reflection
Summer is a time for rest, rejuvenation, self-care, and relaxation. What better way than picture books to jump-start a reflection on what teachers need most to return to school feeling...
Transitional Chapter Books: A Deeper Look at Features and Formats (Booklist)
After Josie shared a list of transitional chapter books she had explored with a group of students, Hannah found herself thinking about the word transitional, its meaning, and the reason...
Intergenerational Booklist
Coming back after winter vacation I was inspired to read Ten Ways to Hear Snow to reflect on the rare snowfall that our region had experienced over break. My students...
Reflecting on My Roots
As part of a graduate program, I am enrolled in a course that focuses on educational theory. As I looked at the readings for the first weeks, I saw many...
