Content Category: Choice Literacy
Results
Student Learning Targets
I recently came across this comic from Baldo by Cantú and Castellanos via a family member whose hobbies include archery. In the comic, a young girl is using a bow...
Rethinking Reading Goals
This fall, my students' reading goals typically included sentences such as these: I want to read more minutes. I want to read more pages. I want to read a different...
Setting Nonfiction Writing Goals in First Grade
Danielle French helps first grader Dakota set goals while writing her nonfiction how-to essay.
How to Speak “Friend”
In my morning pre-kindergarten class, we speak many languages, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and English. As we are considered an English language classroom, our focus is on building understanding and...
Book Blurbs in the Middle School Classroom
We’ve all seen them when we are browsing for a book. They are those little words on the cover of a book with praise from another author. They are thoughts,...
The Big Fresh March 28, 2015 The Devotion of Reading Teachers
If you plan to build walls around me, know this -- I will walk through them. Richelle Goodrich Reading teachers are a devoted, dogged, stubborn type, aren’t they? Last...
Researching Like Writers: From Read-Aloud to Notebooks
It is no secret that in my classroom we try to keep it real. Once the authenticity is gone from the work my students and I do together, my students...
Intervening with Read Aloud
Recent research indicates that increasing student engagement by 1 percent is correlated with a 6 percent increase in student performance on literacy assessments. We are not at all surprised, as...
Whole-Class Conversations for Read Aloud Closure
About 10 years ago, I began the ritual of having a whole-class conversation each time we finish a chapter book read aloud. I created this idea when I noticed that...
Percy Jackson Read-Aloud in Fourth Grade
Tony Keefer demonstrates how he makes his read-alouds interactive, and explains why he selected Percy Jackson to use with this group of fourth graders.
Releasing Responsibility
"I see children as kites ..." writes Erma Bombeck. "You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you're both breathless ... they...
The Big Fresh March 21, 2015 Taking Detours
Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn't mean to take. Paulo Coelho I recently was in the midst of studying the novel Lord of...
Surviving “That Class”
Amy had one of those classes. She had taught third grade for nine years and had never encountered a group of children who appeared to be so mean and uncaring....
Anchor Chart Changes
The other day I noticed the young teacher who was on indoor recess duty standing in the middle of my classroom, turning in a slow circle as she studied my...
Weekly Check-In Sheets
I think one of the most often asked questions when you share that you teach reading and writing workshop is “What do you do for grades?” This is a tough...
The Big Fresh March 14, 2015 Eating an Orange
In this moment, there is plenty of time. Victoria Moran A writer’s life is a necessarily slow one. To write, I need ideas, inspiration, and details, the collection of...
One Tool, Many Uses: Poetry Notebooks
Lori uses poetry notebooks in her first-grade classroom. I’ve been in her classroom many times when her students were using their poetry notebooks. The word notebook is probably a misnomer...
Giving Students a Notebook Tour
I don't remember ever having a writer's notebook in elementary school. Sometimes, I look at our students and my daughters with their writer’s notebooks and I wish I had a...
Blackout Poems and Paint-Chip Haiku: Two Fun Ways into Poetry with Adolescents
Writing can be really hard, especially for kids. I see my students struggle the most when I introduce poetry. It almost seems as if when they are given fewer words...
Catching Up with Anna
Because reading workshop and book clubs are such a big part of my reading curriculum, it is crucial that kids keep up with the work. To do that, they need...
Using a Sketchbook as a Tool to Teach Grammar
A couple of years ago, I ran out to purchase a sketchbook after I heard how Kate Roberts and other staff developers from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project...
