Content Category: Choice Literacy
Results
First-Grade Conference: Information Writing
Stella Villalba confers with Esmeralda about her information writing on blue jays.
Letting Students Organize Informational Books
I’m scared. It sounds chaotic. I envision books strewn all over the place and students moving around the room like ping-pong balls. I’ve read about how to do this, but...
August 7, 2020 Slow Down to Be Kind
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind. Henry James There...
Reading Minilesson: Theme
Dana Murphy leads a reading minilesson on theme in fifth grade, explaining how students might think more deeply about themes through characters' problems.
Routines for Building Gratitude
It was a particularly dreary Northwest winter morning. It had rained all night, and as I hustled to the car to leave for school, I noticed puddles of standing water...
Management and Middle School Workshops
I had the class gathered around the screen at the front of the room. I was going for a coach’s-huddle sort of feel, hoping they would all lean in and...
July 31, 2020 The Importance of Routines
Good habits are worth being fanatical about. John Irving One night last winter, I read for a few minutes in bed before I fell asleep. This one small change in...
Lessons and Minilessons: What’s the Difference?
What is the difference between a lesson and a mini lesson? Minilessons are responsive to students by design. They can be planned for many purposes, to meet a variety of...
Planning Writing in Kindergarten
Hayley Whitaker leads a minilesson in kindergarten on how to plan a narrative writing draft.
Varying Workshop Structures to Meet Student Needs
I just feel like I have so many students who need help. I end up sitting with just a few students and never see the rest. There’s never time for...
July 24, 2020 Christmas in July
What is not started today is never finished tomorrow. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe I love Christmas cards. They are one of my favorite things about the holiday season. We make...
First Grade Minilesson: Connections
Melissa Atwood leads her first-grade class with a minilesson early in the school year on making connections to text.
Picture Books for Persona Poems
It was a Tuesday evening, and I was trying to get some writing done as I sat in the back of my daughter’s dance class. I had my notebook propped...
Call Me by My Name
Sometimes we forget. We forget that middle schoolers don’t wake up on school days and start plotting their teachers’ demise. We forget that second graders aren’t being naughty when they...
July 17, 2020 Walking Tours
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Mark Twain My sister got me hooked last year...
Sparking Ideas for Realistic Fiction
When we ask our young writers to come up with ideas for realistic fiction, we start by immersing them in stories about how real authors come up with their ideas....
Conferring over Motivation and Genre
Christy Rush-Levine confers with Griffin over his reading responses. They consider the differences between dystopian literature and realistic fiction, as well as what motivates characters.
Building Interest Through Artifacts
Far too many of my students have not been out of the town in which they live. If they have, it has been to visit a relative or attend an...
Historical Fiction Background Folders
I first introduced historical fiction background-information folders to my students the year each group chose books for which they had no historical knowledge. This became evident as a big problem...
July 10, 2020 When Your Glasses Fall Into the Lake
May we always see life through love-colored glasses. ...
First-Grade Conference: Repeated Phrases in Writing
Bitsy Parks confers with Michael about his gingerbread man writing. She encourages him to use a repeated phrase in the writing, echoing a whole-class lesson on repeated phrases.
