literacy
-
Right before summer vacation begins every year, teachers urge their students to read, read, read. Not only do we want them to keep up the reading skills they’ve built up over the year, but we also want them to enjoy the freedom to choose and read whatever they want! I’m not a fan of incentive…
-
Once a month, LPS teachers have a “teacher-led” staff meeting. Teachers must be in the building from 3 to 4 working on anything of their choice. After going to the Saturday Reunion at Teachers College and Literacy for All, I was desperate to share all of the new ideas I’d learned. I’d been considering lots…
-
My literacy coach consult booth during conferences During conferences last week, I hosted literacy coach consultations. I gathered lots of resources, information, and peppermints to entice parents to visit and chat about supporting their readers and writers. I *loved* talking with families about great early chapter books, how to access audio books for free, and…
-
Waking up before sunrise to get a front row seat to hear Jason Reynolds at TCRWP’s Saturday Reunion was ABSOLUTELY worth it! What a keynote! Moving, enigmatic, funny, nostalgic, and POWERFUL. I couldn’t even take notes because I was so absorbed in his words. Words that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since…wow.…
-
Background At the last PD day a couple weeks ago, the literacy coaches organized a variety of stations focusing on writing about reading. Teachers spent the majority of the morning exploring resources like the Literacy Continuum and Learning Progressions, analyzing student work, and calibrating assessment. They collected tons of ideas about what students need to…
-
A quick search for “toolkits” in the Units of Study Facebook groups will yield dozens of posts with requests for and pictures of various toolkits. They are certainly a hot topic. However, I haven’t seen many that focus on writing about reading, a component of balanced literacy that students are expected to do throughout the…
-
I love lists, and my favorite kinds are about books. Brightly and Facebook groups for the Reading Units of Study, Writing Units of Study, and, especially, #classroombookaday, often share book recommendations. Whenever I see “best funny books for elementary students” or “top picture books for older kids”, I place holds at my library to check…
-
This list comes directly from this awesome blog post from the Nerdy Book Club, “Digital Device + Free Texts = Reading All Summer Long”. Check out their post if you want more background, but here are all of the links to free online reading resources! Storyline Online: Artists from the Screen Actors Guild and the…
-
One of my mantras as a teacher is, “If the students can do/make/think it, they should.” So when we realized our schools’ walls could use some spiffing up, we decided to turn over the decor transformation to the students! Since this is “The Year of the Reader,” what could be better than some inspirational reading…
-
Do you want to host a book tasting? It’s a great activity to introduce new books or genres to students, in which students spend a few minutes browsing an individual book to get a “taste” of it before deciding if they want to read it. To make the event even more appealing, I’ve created a…
A SEA OF TALK 