Content Category: Choice Literacy
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The Big Fresh February 20, 2016 Act the Way You Want to Feel
We won’t make ourselves more creative and productive by copying other people’s habits, even the habits of geniuses; we must know our own nature, and what habits serve us best....
The Big Fresh February 13, 2016 An Ear for Your Craft
Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out. ...
From Compliments to Challenges: The Conferring Card
Melanie Meehan uses a conferring card in her writing conference with Cara to ensure she has a record of the strengths and revision possibilities they discussed.
What’s a Great Workshop Day?
I used to think that for a literacy workshop to be a success, the whole workshop had to run smoothly, from minilesson to share time. Now I know that success...
Setting the Stage for Meaningful Peer Feedback
Peer-to-peer feedback is something we value in our classroom. We expect that the feedback that peers give to one another can lead to meaningful revision, just like the feedback we...
Shared Reading in the Digital Age
For the past decade, it has been my pleasure to work directly with literacy coaches, teachers, and children in K–3 classrooms. Most of the teachers and coaches with whom I’ve...
SITO: Self-Imposed Time-Out
Last school year was my most challenging in terms of classroom management. I was faced with more students who had greater emotional needs than ever before—students neglected by absentee parents,...
Slow Down
It’s easy for me to get caught up in a rush, both personally and professionally. There’s always something to check off my to-do list: another standard to cover, another appointment...
The Big Fresh February 6, 2016 Lessons from the Electrician
The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. ...
Planning and the Tuesday Effect
I used to hate Tuesdays. I began hating them when I was a brand-new teacher. I would spend all weekend crafting a week’s worth of the most perfect lesson plans....
Pausing for Reflection in Second Grade
Sean Moore pauses midway through the year with his second graders to revisit reflection strategies while reading.
Getting Creative with Writing Celebrations
During my years of being involved in writing workshop, end-of-unit celebrations have typically consisted of students reading one of their finished pieces to an audience. I love to be invited...
The Big Fresh January 30, 2016 What’s New and Good?
We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude. Cynthia Ozick A friend I see once or twice a month always says the same words...
The Compliment Conference
Camilla sorts her book bag, and a frown stretches across her face as she slides books out and tosses them to the side. Her shoulders slump, and she looks out...
Maintaining Momentum As a Writer
Author Jennifer Richard Jacobson meets with a group of fifth graders and gives advice about how she keeps generating new ideas and writing.
Wonder and React
During the first part of our information writing unit, we tried hard to get our fifth-grade students to ask questions. The classroom teacher and I modeled wondering and reacting to...
Growing Toward Independence
When I first noticed Alex, he was sitting on a stool near the window in his first-grade classroom. His books were on the shelf, but he was actually turned away...
The Big Fresh January 23, 2016 No Balance
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. Alain de Botton If there is something people share as a struggle, it’s trying...
Kindergarten Reading Conference: Building Confidence
Mikey was my second reading conference, and before I had settled in, he had an urgent need. He needed to tell me he couldn’t read the book he had self-selected....
Time for What Matters
As a high school teacher, I see my students for 42 minutes each day. That’s 3½ hours in a good week (without pep rallies, blood drives, and so on) to...
Building Stamina in Middle School Writers
I am sitting in writing workshop, deep in thought as I confer with a seventh-grade writer. Just as I trhink we're really getting somewhere, starting to work together to move...
