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Do you pride yourself on staying current with best practices in teaching reading and writing?

Are you often asked to lead your colleagues in new assessment or curricular programs?

Are you looking for quality content on the web, without having to wade through acres of ads, pop-ups, and sales pitches for materials you don't want or need?

We designed this site for people like you, with the resources we were looking for on the web but never seemed able to find easily. Choice Literacy is a subscription-based members-only resource for innovative K-12 literacy coaches and teachers. For more information on how the site works, view our video tour:

For a membership charge of just $49.95 quarterly or $99 annually, you get 365 days of uninterrupted access to the site. All the content is available exclusively over the net and updated weekly. To subscribe now, click here to use our secure online order form.

We are an international community, with thousands of members from all 50 states and over 40 countries. We keep our site ad-free through the support of our members. Click here to read unsolicited testimonials from our members.

What Does Choice Literacy Provide to Literacy Leaders?

Choice Literacy is a truly different type of professional development resource, designed specifically with the needs of literacy leaders in mind. If you believe change that endures comes from within school communities, and are looking for thoughtful, practical tools on the web to help make that change happen, then we may be a good fit for you.

We assume you are well-read about best practices in literacy education, and aren't looking for a one-size-fits-all program or magic cure for any of your school's ills. If you're like us, you've probably been burned at least once or twice with a PD program or product that delivered far less than it promised.

But if you're like our members, you're also constantly on the hunt for new ways of observing and guiding colleagues, or leading study groups, or injecting just a bit more talk about literacy learning into weekly staff meetings. A little weekly inspiration from savvy, funny colleagues who are just as passionate as you are about teaching reading and writing doesn't hurt either.

We also assume you don't have a lot of time to wade through irrelevant content or fluffed up lessons to find what you need. And you really don't have the patience to sift through scores of ads to get to the content you want on the web.

Concise, Inspiring, and Relevant

Choice Literacy presents the "how" of literacy leadership, with weekly infusions of field-tested activities, suggestions, and protocols that help communities grow and thrive around literacy goals. Our contributors are published authors working in schools now as teachers, coaches, literacy specialists, and curriculum coordinators. Our subscription fees allow us to keep the site ad-free, and we pride ourselves on our independence. Our joy is helping colleagues do their jobs well.

Rather than explain how we're different, it's easier to show you how we're different. You can click on any of the links below for samples of our content:

Insights from Veteran Coaches -- Our contributors are continually trying out new ideas in their schools, and then writing about their discoveries here. Shari Frost and her colleagues try out the "Open Book Club," an alternative to literature circles that extends book discussion groups into communities beyond individual classrooms in this example --

you can read about it by clicking here.

Forms and Templates for Professional Development -- Our eGuides are brief workshop guides on specialized topics. You can click here to view the sample "Puzzle Kids" eGuide -- an 11-page workshop guide for use in study groups or with mentor teams learning how to assess and assist students who are not identified as special needs, but still falling through the cracks in one way or another.

Hard Truths about Tough Issues -- Literacy Coach Confidential is our advice column, and here is a sample question: "Attendance at my study groups is pathetic. What can I do to improve participation?" Click this link to read our response.

Examples of Coaches Learning in the Midst -- Many of our features are series, with a literacy leader working in a school over weeks or months to consider one issue. In this example, Jennifer Allen shares how she is helping new teachers move from individual to group observations as part of her yearlong new teacher group series.

You can click here to read the article -- like many of our features, it includes professional-quality video.

Insights from Top Researchers and Writers in the Field - We talk with our favorite authors about their new projects, interests, and research studies.

Click here for an excerpt from an interview with Ellin Keene, where she discusses starting points for new teachers interested in reading strategy instruction.

Resource Lists -- At least twice a month we publish short annotated booklists on themes, and we specialize in scouring the web for the best sites for literacy leaders. If you click on this sample article, you'll see Franki Sibberson describe how children's literature blogs, or the "kidlitosphere," can support teachers' work.

Videos of Best Practices -- Our videographers have won Emmy awards, and our audio recordist just took one of the top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival. There's no YouTube home video here.

Yet at the same time, we know many schools and individual teachers have older computers for viewing videos, so many web video formats will freeze up their machines. Our solution? We film classroom sequences with multiple cameras, using experienced crews so that the original footage is of high quality. We then post videos in Flash format to ensure the videos can be viewed on 99% of computers manufactured in the last five years (as long as you have a connection faster than dial-up). You can sample a classroom video of a conference with an English language learner

by clicking here.

For a membership charge of just $49.95 quarterly or $99 annually, you get 365 days of uninterrupted access to the site.

All the content is available exclusively over the net and updated weekly. To subscribe now, click here to use our secure online order form.

Members receive:

• Expert advice from the Choice Literacy network of contributors--all literacy leaders with decades of experience in diverse classrooms.
• Access to the Choice Literacy print library of strategies, lesson suggestions, and classroom-tested wisdom. The archives include over 200 resources for K-12 literacy instruction, with a focus on reading and writing coaching and instruction, assessment tools, and planning grids.
• Continuously updated materials, with an average of 20 new features each month. The Big Fresh literacy resource e-newsletter will keep you posted on what's new when you're too busy to visit.
• A wealth of workshop suggestions, guidance and support for literacy coaches at all levels of experience and need.
• Strategies for building communication and collaboration between mentors and new teachers.
• Dozens of videos posted on-line of expert teachers working with children for analysis, guidance, and reflection. This is professional video from our award-winning multi-camera crew.
• Wonderful stories of success, failure and everything in between--because like Crow in Crow and Weasel, sometimes we all need a story more than food to survive.
• No lesson scripts. Ever. All of us who teach are works-in-progress, just like our students. We respect the intelligence, integrity, and creativity of teachers too much to hand any colleague a script.

We invite you to join our community today.

Respectfully yours,

The Choice Literacy Team

TO BECOME A MEMBER

Joining now will give you immediate access to all the resources in the members only section. To join, use our secure online order form.




Site licenses are available to schools and districts interested in enrolling multiple members from the same school or district. These licenses are available for an annual term only. For an enrollment form and further information click here.

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