The Big Fresh from Choice Literacy April 30, 2011 Changing the View


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The Big Fresh from Choice Literacy
April 30, 2011
Changing the View

Pay attention to where you have your brainstorming meetings. Don't have them in the same conference room where you chew people out over missed quarterly earnings. Pay attention to the noise and the smell and the crowd in the place where you're trying to overcome being stuck.

Seth Godin

When's the last time you held your staff meeting in a classroom instead of the school library? What would happen if you moved your morning read aloud outdoors on the sunniest day this week? There is always a fine line between the comfort of a routine and the trap of a rut. If you're feeling stuck or bored, a temporary move could do your colleagues and students a world of good.

Heather Rader meets with her teacher writing group in a local coffee shop; Andrea Smith takes her students outdoors to lift the quality of their science observation journals. It's not just the break in routine that sparks creativity. It's those new sights, sounds, and smells that may help those in your community look in new ways at old problems. Give it a try - what have you got to lose?

This week we're starting a month-long series of features to help you close out the school year well with students and colleagues. Plus more as always - enjoy!

Brenda Power
Editor, Choice Literacy

Free for All

Service Note: The Choice Literacy server is being moved on Sunday, May 1st. There will be downtime from 1 - 8 p.m. Sunday as the server is worked on. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the service disruption.

Here are some fresh and fun ideas for Closing Out the School Year from Choice Literacy Contributors Aimee Buckner, Trish Prentice, Karen Terlecky, and Stella Vilalba:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/1504.cfm

Franki Sibberson interviews extraordinary school librarian and blogger John Schumacher in an inspiring new podcast that will get you thinking in new ways about school librarians and their role in your learning community:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/1501.cfm

You can see Franki's creativity in her own school library with her Poetry Picnic. There are a dozen different areas featuring poems and fun activities. It's a festive way to celebrate poetry and the coming end of the school year:

http://readingyear.blogspot.com/2011/04/poetry-picnic.html

Are your students creating author bios for their end of year publications? Children's book author Katie Davis has a series of different bios at her website that could serve as fun mentor texts for a lesson on author blurbs. From fake to family to rebus (!) versions, there are many sample styles:

http://katiedavis.com/blog/about-katie/biography/

Readers in the Middle with Katie Doherty is a full-day workshop for improving reading instruction in middle school classrooms. This year it is offered in Tacoma, Washington (June 29th) and Ann Arbor, Michigan (July 25th). Participants will leave with a wealth of new ideas, materials, and a DVD of literacy instruction examples from Katie's diverse middle school classroom. Click on the link below for a full description and registration information:

http://bit.ly/ho1w70

For Members Only

Katie Doherty turns her middle school students into Great Lead Investigators - an activity that is a terrific combination of mentor texts, group work, and connections to student writing:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/1502.cfm

Kindergartners may be too young for reading interviews early in the fall, but Mandy Robek finds Spring Reading Interviews are an excellent bridge to families and summer reading suggestions:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/1503.cfm

We've posted the second and final installment of our video series from Andrea Smith's fourth-grade classroom. Frogs as Ambassadors Part 2 presents how Andrea uses an inexpensive prop to help students develop their literary nonfiction writing skills:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/1500.cfm

Our new cluster on Teaching Retelling and Summarizing Skills has contributions from Karen Terlecky, Erin Ocon, Heather Rader, "The Sisters" (Gail Boushey and Joan Moser), Clare Landrigan, and Tammy Mulligan:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/1499.cfm

We're featuring a bonus video this week to complement the new summarizing cluster and the Frogs as Ambassadors videos. Heather Rader works with intermediate students on writing summaries, working from a nonfiction text about frogs. This is the first video in a series:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/1505.cfm

That's all for this week!