As we encounter more digital texts, we must consider the reading strategies needed to understand them. In this session, participants will reflect on their own reading lives and identities as...
Sometimes students have a difficult time learning to research in efficient ways. Text sets are one way to scaffold the research process for students who are preparing to write informative...
Tammy Mulligan enhances the quality of the class read aloud and student discussions with the use of a whole-class response notebook. Franki Sibberson shares how she integrates student choice and...
This professional development session is designed to help participants explore the concept of weekly “homework challenges,” as well as to consider what is working well with their homework program and...
Melanie Meehan shares some ways teachers can press the pause button in the midst of teaching to assess whether they are teaching the right lesson at the right time. The...
Gigi McAllister gives a brief explanation of how her thinking on goal setting has changed, as well as the ways in which she uses student goals to connect with parents. Max Brand shares strategies for helping parents talk with students.
Katherine Sokolowski shares a wall display from her fifth graders that students build to celebrate who they are and people they love from home. The reading is from Suzy Kaback, explaining the value of an "All About Us" board in classrooms.
Katherine Sokolowski scaffolds fifth graders Liam and Caden through the process of learning to recommend books to each other. The workshop includes reading from Tara Barnett and Kate Mills with suggestions for fostering better partnerships through student-created "want ads."
Leslie Lloyd preserves instructional time by having her third-grade students share their Post It Prove It notes on a bulletin board throughout the reading workshop. Click here to download the...
Ruth Ayres confers with third grader Jade about the value of collecting ideas in her writer’s notebook, and shares some strategies for organizing the information. Click here to download the...
Leslie Lloyd's third graders analyze literal and figurative language (which they describe as “nonliteral”) in Donald Graves's poem "Bully."
Beth Lawson shows how to get the most from a conference about series books in third grade. Inferring and synthesis are discussed, as well as the use of written notes for making meaning from texts.
Linda Karamatic begins a punctuation study with her second graders, sharing mentor texts, starting an anchor chart, and engaging students in punctuation inquiry partnerships.
Word study and nonfiction reading are combined in Franki Sibberson's whole-group nonfiction word hunt activity. Each child shares which word he or she found, where it was found, and reflects on what the discoveries mean to the community of word learners.
In this second video in a three-part series, Jennifer Morgan leads her grades 3 and 4 students as they work together in small groups on a science and writing task. She focuses on her role as a listener and gives the opportunity for the students to express how they are organizing their observations and data collection.
Beth Lawson confers with a third grader about her book about Blues singers. The student is keeping track of important ideas on sticky notes and has quite a collection. Beth makes suggestions about ways to organize all the notes.
Franki Sibberson teaches a minilesson on fonts as a revision strategy for her grades 3 and 4 students.
In this minilesson from Franki Sibberson's grades 3 and 4 classroom, Franki takes students through the process of selecting and revising titles. For young students having trouble understanding that writing revision involves more than just adding text, a minilesson on revising titles is a quick and easy way to show the power of making small changes to drafts.
In this video filmed in the spring, Franki Sibberson helps her third and fourth grade students think through what books they might select for independent reading. The discussion ranges from new books available in the class library, to individual quirks and preferences.
Franki Sibberson facilitates a discussion with her class of third and fourth graders about their nonfiction reading. They are setting goals during Nonfiction Reading Time.
At the beginning of this book club, Beth Lawson checks in with three students about their character studies in the book Because of Winn Dixie. As they prepare to have an independent conversation, she offers them a suggestion to get started.
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