Content Category: Choice Literacy
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My World Maps
What we do is who we are. I repeat this phrase often as I think about a project I’m starting with first-year teachers in grades 4-6. What we do is...
One Child, Many Stories
Have you ever sat down in front of a student’s data and still felt like you don’t have any answers to your questions? Those moments are too familiar to me...
Authentic Reading in Kindergarten
Reading is a staple in our household. I am an avid reader, my eight-year-old daughter always has her nose in a book, and you can catch my six-year-old daughter on...
Group Meeting: Sharing Resources for Animal Study
Katherine Sokolowski helps her fifth-grade students expand their territory for their animal research projects by sharing information sources and peer connections.
The Big Fresh April 28, 2018 Doing Enough
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Eleanor Roosevelt Years ago, at the end of the school day, I was tidying up my classroom and getting...
Summer Reading
“Kids! Let’s get to the library today and turn in your summer reading list!” I yelled through the house last August. “Oh, okay, great! I’m ready,” answered one of my...
Spreading Love with Compliments
It was the end of the year—a time when teacher patience is growing thin and students (and teachers) have visions of lazy mornings and long days lounging in the sun....
The Big Fresh April 21, 2018 Big Dog
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog. Dwight D. Eisenhower I was on an early...
Looking Forward with Students
Remember those first weeks of school? That time when you felt like the current class would never understand the classroom routines, and you went home exhausted from the effort of...
First-Grade Conference: Reading with Feeling
Katrina Edwards confers with first grader Ellie. She helps Ellie read more fluently and with expression by transferring her feelings to those of characters.
Using Tech to Find Authentic Audiences for Student Writing
Stanford professor Andrea Lunsford organized a project in which she collected and analyzed almost 15,000 writing samples. They included formal (i.e., assignments, essays) and informal (i.e., emails, blog posts) examples....
Puppy Chow
My little, old dog: a heartbeat at my feet. Edith Wharton One of the most essential teaching moves I make didn’t have a name until Jennifer Gonzalez “verbed” the...
Reimagining Reading Logs
“Henry, are you enjoying Mr. Popper’s Penguins?” Kate asked. She was in a third-grade classroom leading some small groups during a fiction reading unit of study. As she was coaching...
Weeding a First-Grade Library
The stack of books on my counter sat for weeks, slowly getting taller and more disheveled despite my attempts to straighten it out every few days. These books were new...
The Big Fresh April 14, 2018 Radio Hatteras
Radio is the theater of the mind. Steve Allen My husband and I spend time each winter in Hatteras, a tiny fishing village on a spit of sand 70 miles...
Books on a Budget
It was post-awards season. All my bookish friends were on a literary social media site, sharing their thoughts on the most recent American Library Association Youth Media Awards recipients. We...
Book Talk: “The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary”
Katherine Sokolowski demonstrates her book talk skills when she presents The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary to her students late in the school year.
The Big Fresh April 7, 2018 Reading the World
Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, "What else could this mean?" Shannon Alder A few months back, a...
Managing Independent Projects
If you had been able to walk around our classroom last Friday, you might have paused to see Sophie sketching a picture in a comic strip panel. As you glanced...
Building a Next-Read Nonfiction Stack
Katherine Sokolowski helps fifth grader Jack build a next-read stack of nonfiction, highlighting a variety of text features and historical references.
A Year of Learning About Student Refugees
I placed a pair of scissors in front of her after showing her how to match the pictures as I cut them. I waited patiently for her to pick up...
