Content Category: Choice Literacy
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First-Grade Word Learning with Kinesthetics
Katrina Edwards teaches her first graders the word much using kinesthetics.
Retelling and English Language Learners
Have you ever taught a group of first graders how to retell stories? If you have, then you know it is one of those units of study that requires patience...
Teaching Tone: Deal Me In
Supply List for AP Literature: Sticky Notes Binder Composition Notebook Deck of Cards I’m sure that many of my students were surprised to see a deck of cards on their...
The Big Fresh October 6, 2018 Get Under the Ball
Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger. Arnold Palmer This weekend we went to watch our youngest daughter’s team play in a volleyball tournament, hosted in our...
Word Walls in Preschool? Yes, You Can!
“What’s wrong?” I asked, spying Mona’s long face. She launched into a tirade. “They are insisting that I put up a word wall. They have a rule that all classrooms...
Fear of Reading
When I first start talking about the amount of independent reading we will be doing in class during the year, I expect some of the following reactions: some groans, some...
Moving Beyond Pokemon: Conferring with Clover
Bitsy Parks works with a first grader stuck on writing about Pokemon characters. She uses other writing from Clover to nudge her to try something new.
High Standards and Struggling Learners
Jerry was a student in my class this past year. He was in my seventh-grade social studies class. He showed up to the first day of school in dirty sweatpants...
The Big Fresh September 29, 2018 The “One Thing” Mindset
This year has been a good one for me, and a bad one for a few of my closest friends and family members. They are dealing with serious illness themselves,...
Cause and Effect: Conferring with Olivia
Christy Rush-Levine helps eighth grader Olivia deepen her understanding of cause and effect in this reading conference.
Conferences Between Middle School Parents and Teachers
The week after school started, my 14-year-old nephew announced he would have four study halls during eighth grade. My sister looked at me for an explanation, her face expressing pained...
Linking Pictures and Text: Conferring with Ava
Katrina Edwards begins her conference with first grader Ava by having her share what she learned from a picture walk through a simple text, and then she helps her use...
Four-Step Reading Conferences
Conferences with my middle school readers often went like this: I would pull up a chair alongside a reader, ask about the reader’s current book, and listen to the summary...
The Big Fresh September 22, 2018 Sometimes We Should Just Clap
There is no wine in the world as heady as applause; and it has the same effect. It temporarily subdues anxiety and restores confidence. Khushwant Singh The circle created by...
Planning a Student-Led Minilesson
Franki Sibberson helps Lucas plan his minilesson for his fifth-grade classmates on how to connect words and facts from two different sources.
Student-Led Minilessons in Fifth Grade
At the end of the year, each student in my classroom taught a minilesson to the class. There were no formal rules or templates. My only directions were “Think of...
Student-Led Minilessons in Middle School
“Can I try teaching a minilesson?” Marta asked after class one day. I have been teaching middle school social studies in a workshop model for about 10 years now. Each...
Student-Led Minilesson: Connecting Facts from Different Sources
Lucas leads a minilesson in Franki Sibberson's fifth-grade class on connecting facts from different sources.
The Big Fresh September 15, 2018 Inviting the Stranger In
Good things happen when you meet strangers. Yo-Yo Ma In her new book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, Priya Parker writes about the...
History Through a Child’s Eyes: Conferring with Omar
Christy Rush-Levine confers with Omar, who is reading The Rock and the River. The book is a fictional account of a tumultuous time in civil rights history, considering protests through...
Balancing Whole-Class and Independent Reading in Middle School
The choice between whole-class novels and independent reading can be a false one in many middle school classrooms. Katie Doherty's sixth graders discuss their reading together of a novel in...
