Content Category: Choice Literacy
Results
Using Pictures to Decode in First Grade
Bitsy Parks helps first grader Zac work on his decoding skills by using a fun picture book.
September 11, 2020 Florence Genevieve Saperstein
Work hard in silence—let your success be your noise. Frank Ocean Early this spring, I spent a couple of weeks hiking with my family in a remote patch of...
Fifth-Grade Reading Conference: Harry Potter
Katherine Sokolowski confers with fifth grader Tucker about his Harry Potter book. This brief conference includes connections to the movies, recommendations for a classmate, and suggestions for using an audiobook...
Choice in Literacy Workshops
Early in the school year, I came across this message posted on social media by Donalyn Miller: Unpopular opinion of the day: If your students don’t have any autonomy or...
Nurturing Independent Reading Lives in Middle School
Independent-choice reading is the lifeline of our literacy classroom. We are firm believers, like the educators we admire and learn from, that when given the right books, time to read,...
September 4, 2020 A Specific No
It takes effort to say no when our heart and brains and guts and, most important, pride are yearning to say yes. Practice. Cole Harmonson One of my favorite...
Socratic Discussion in Third Grade
Lora Bieghler facilitates a Socratic-style discussion among third graders.
Fostering Cultural Awareness Through Book Clubs
I teach in a small, rural school district that is 99 percent white. My students do not have a lot of knowledge about other cultures, and their exposure to people...
Fourth-Grade Reading Group: Goals in Fiction
Gigi McAllister leads a group of fourth graders in discussing characters and their quests or goals in the story.
Meet Someone New Monday: Using Picture Book Biographies to Bring Marginalized Voices into the Classroom
During a summer stroll, I realized my mind was wandering to a beloved corner of my classroom library—my collection of picture book biographies. Although they are available to my readers...
Flipping Literature Discussions
One of my fondest memories of literature classes in college is of our sitting in a circle and working through a difficult poem as a group, discussing and making meaning...
August 28, 2020 Don’t Talk About My Writing Without Me
The way we behave, the way we treat others, the way we respond, the way we support, defines the work experience for everyone around us. ...
Building Online Writing Groups
One of the last moments I spent with my grandmother happened when she was in a temporary care facility while my aunt, her primary caretaker, was on vacation. Grandma had...
Using Photographs in Remote Learning Communities
It is amazing how cameras and photographs have evolved with technology. I can remember days when I had to remember to bring my camera to school, take some pictures, drop...
Three Things Digital Tools Have Taught Me About Feedback
No digital platform is an effective instructional tool unless I am thoughtful about how I use it to give and receive feedback. As a middle school language arts teacher, I...
August 21, 2020 Future Focused
It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday. John Guare What will school look like this year?” It...
Partner Reading: Quick Share
Gigi McAllister has two reading partners in her fourth-grade classroom do a quick practice of retelling their stories.
Sustaining (Not Just Building) Community Online
Some teachers had spent a wonderful day with me exploring instructional possibilities for using tools (i.e., Flipgrid, Kialo, Padlet) to meet, poll, see, and connect with our students as thinkers...
August 14, 2020 A Place for Wonder
The important thing is never to stop questioning. Albert Einstein “What are you writing about today?” my daughter Hannah asked me on her way out the door. “I’m writing about...
Poetry Resources for Remote Learning
I have always loved poetry. I’m not sure if the love began when my grandparents gave me my first poetry book, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, or if it was...
Fact or Fiction?
Surely if alternative facts are untrue they should be called Ficts? Alan Dapre “Did you read that in nonfiction?” It was early February, and our fourth graders were learning...
