Content Category: Choice Literacy
Results
March 1, 2019 Joy and Ambition
Joy is not made to be a crumb. Mary Oliver Did you happen to catch the video of gymnast Katelyn Ohashi from UCLA performing a flawless and exuberant floor...
February 22, 2019 What’s Your Catchphrase?
Love in the rain is better than hate in the sunshine. Matshona Dhliwayo There are the inevitable hard days, and we all have them. There are hard days at school...
Student-Led Minilesson: Annotating Reading with Sticky Notes
Reagan from Franki Sibberson's fifth-grade classroom presents a minilesson on annotating reading with sticky notes.
Building Cultural Awareness
I don’t understand why they just didn’t call the school if they wanted to find out more . . . Did they just show up late to their meeting? When...
Reading Bingo
Every teacher understands the winter slump—the time of year when enthusiasm (both in students and teachers) wanes and established routines begin to feel mechanical and devoid of the life they...
The Power of Paper
My husband is particular about his tools. He has a certain hammer he likes for some projects and not others, and wrench choices require lengthy explanations if I dare to...
Scaffolding Revision with a Mentor Text
“I’m finished,” Hayden says, waving his arm, clearly proud of his accomplishment. We smile and let Hayden and our other “finished” students place their writing in the basket before we...
Crafting the Basics: First-Grade Writing Conference
Bitsy Parks confers with Aubrey early in the year, connecting key text elements such as title, author, and the links between images and text to mentor texts used in whole-class...
Exploring Dystopian Literature: Fifth-Grade Reading Conference
Katherine Sokolowski confers with Ian about The Giver, suggesting other dystopian novels he might enjoy next.
Bringing Multiple Texts and Perspectives into Teaching Point of View
This year my fifth-grade students struggled a lot with point of view. I thought it was something they had already learned in the years before. They might have covered it,...
Detour Texts
Students in the intermediate grades have a lot to learn as readers. They need to pay attention to the small details in a text, keep track of multiple characters, understand...
February 15, 2019 Abandoned Canoes
As one goes through life, one learns if you don't paddle your own canoe you don't move. Katharine Hepburn Sometimes when my husband and I are out on the...
Revising Literary Analysis Essays: Supporting Claims
Christy Rush-Levine uses an analogy about putting furniture together to present a minilesson to her eighth-grade students about revising their literary analysis essays.
Revising Dialogue in Narrative Writing
The more I teach young writers, the more I can predict the challenges they’ll have within various genres. Although some children benefit and learn from mentor texts that are more...
Practical Revision Strategies
We started a recent conference with Kyra by asking a typical question: “What are you working on in your writing?” Kyra pointed to her memoir and responded, “I’m revising for...
February 8, 2019 The Community Potato
If you're poor, potato chips are the food of life for you. It's the caviar. Sandra Cisneros Picture this. It's the holiday week between Christmas and New Year's, but...
Thoughtful Read Aloud Structures
Franki Sibberson shares how she integrates student choice and collaboration into reading response during daily read alouds in her fifth-grade classroom. The book she is reading is The Girl Who...
Linking Evidence to Reading Response in First Grade
A group of first graders we work with is reading level M texts independently in late winter. Although the texts they’re ready and able to read have more complex ideas,...
Readers Want to Respond
My family and I were driving to a local bookstore when my son said, “I took an AR quiz today.” What?! I thought. I specifically asked his teachers not to...
February 1, 2019 Pick a Lane
I was driving through western Massachusetts recently when this billboard caught my eye. Maybe you don’t think the sign is funny, but it cracked me up and broke up the...
5 Strategies for Engaging Boy Writers
I was ashamed. I have spent a good too many years since—too many, I think—being ashamed about what I write. ...
