Content Category: Choice Literacy
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The Big Fresh April 29, 2017 Teacher Voice
Quiet is the new loud. Joe Robitail The summer after I became a teacher, my extended family got together for a large reunion. We were all having a fantastic time...
Lunchtime Talk Practice
Katrina Edwards preps her students for lunchtime chats with classmates to foster more social and conversation skills.
Supporting Student Agency with Questioning Strategies
One fall morning I walked into Mrs. Olson’s third-grade classroom. Scanning the room, I saw Devin crunching on his snack while deeply engrossed in his recent I Survived . ....
Small Solutions for Big Problems with Classroom Discussions
If I walk out of my classroom during class changes, the hallways is abuzz with chatter and conversation. I observe intimate powwows in front of lockers and hasty discussions down...
The Big Fresh April 22, 2017 The Final Push
Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory. William Barclay Music pumping, mic on, the clock winds down to the...
Reading Ambassadors
This year I decided to try something new. I thought there was a need for students to hear their peers talk about reading. I had noticed that students would read...
Hosting Reading and Writing Events
“Is it true that we get a copy of the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid book next year?” an incoming fourth grader askd on step-up day. He was referring...
Building Excitement for Book Awards
I get excited about the American Library Association announcement of book awards at the end of January. I love to read through blogs and websites to find out which books...
The Ocean Research Project: From Launch to Celebration in 10 Days
For the past few years I have attempted to make it so that research is not a one-and-done endeavor in our fifth-grade reading and writing class. Throughout the year I...
Planning a Family Literacy Night
Heather Fisher and Kathy Provost work with a group of reading specialists to plan a family literacy night.
Author Visit: Small as an Elephant
Jennifer Richard Jacobson answers questions from a fourth-grade class that has just finished a read-aloud of her book Small as an Elephant.
The Big Fresh April 15, 2017 Teachers Writing
The desire to write grows with writing. Desiderius Eramus Last year during the last week of school, I met with a group of fourth graders, and we talked about...
Minilesson: Writing a Mentor Text
In this minilesson, Gigi McAllister uses her own writing as a model for adding character traits to a draft.
Get in the Pool: Teachers Who Write
I always wanted to be a writer. As a little girl, I kept notebooks and folders filled with loose-leaf pages of my latest novel. I wrote a lot of haunted-house...
Teachers Who Write
At a recent roundtable presentation, the facilitator asked us to think about our core beliefs when it comes to literacy, teaching, and learning. Although I agreed that everything I was...
The Riskiest Writing
Being a writer means taking risks. Nothing feels riskier than writing live in front of your students, yet no other writing model is more valuable. Let’s step back for a...
The Big Fresh April 8, 2017 Form, Distance, and Speed
Strategy is about making choices and trade-offs. It's about deliberately choosing to be different. Michael Porter Before I had my third lovely, sweet, and calm baby, I had settled into...
Exploring Goals in Fiction
Gigi McAllister meets with a group of fourth-grade girls who are all using picture books to explore larger themes or the goals of the main characters.
The Power of Picture Book Conversations
I remember reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Scoot a few years ago. I was intrigued but overwhelmed by the medical jargon. I had passages marked to...
Research Through Picture Books
“Mrs. S, I can’t find anything in this book. Can I just use the iPad?” Blake closed his book in frustration. This is an all-too-common refrain in my classroom during...
First-Grade Conferring: A Two-Word Picture Book
Bitsy Parks confers with a first-grade English language learner over a very simple picture book.
