Joan and Gail of "The Sisters" teach a lesson together to Joan's K-2 students.

Welcome! Choice Literacy partners with "The Sisters" (Gail Boushey and Joan Moser) to present many of their innovative curriculum development ideas. We update this page once every two months, with a new featured video or lesson idea from Gail and Joan.

What's different about "The Sisters"? Joan and Gail aren't full-time consultants. They are teachers, working in schools every day. Joan works with kindergartners and colleagues, and Gail is a grades K-5 literacy coach in a nearby district. Even though they have a growing base of teachers who use their "Daily Five" and "CAFE" systems in literacy workshops throughout the U.S., Canada, and beyond, what they enjoy most is learning with students and colleagues every day, as part of a school community.

We post free samples of Joan and Gail's work with children and colleagues on this page. If you want full access to ALL the videos, templates, lesson suggestion, and classroom makeover tips developed by Joan and Gail in partnership with Choice Literacy, consider purchasing a Choice Literacy individual or site membership. For more information on membership benefits at Choice Literacy, click on this link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/10.cfm



Design Principles

Are you looking for the "Design Principles" handouts Gail and Joan mentioned in a recent workshop? Click on the two links below to download them. You will need Acrobat Reader on your computer to access these PDF files - virtually all computers have it installed already. The two-page "Establishing an Environment for Learning" handout is available at this link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/sistersdesignquestions.pdf

The "Seven Steps to Redesign Your Classroom Space" one-page handout is at this link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/Sisters7final.pdf

Making Classrooms Beautiful: Cleaning up Amy's Storage Area

Now that the students are gone and classrooms are quiet, it's a good time to think about classroom organization, design and storage. We thought you might enjoy a video excerpt from Joan and Gail's DVD Simply Beautiful: Classroom Design for Gracious Living and Learning. If you've ever "inherited" a bunch of "treasures" from the previous occupant of your classroom, you can appreciate new teacher Amy's dilemma in organizing her storage area. You can click on this link to access the video and a one-page workshop guide for the "hotspots" activity for study groups and staff meetings:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/168.cfm

For details and ordering information on the full "Simply Beautiful" DVD from Joan and Gail, including this sequence and many others, click on this link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/products/item8.cfm

Concepts of Print: Conferring with Mariano

Do you ever wonder where to begin with a young reader who is just beginning school? We thought you might enjoy Joan's first conference with kindergartner Mariano - an example of a "concepts of print" assessment to gain information about a child's strengths and needs. To view the video, click on the "play" button in the lefthand side of the viewer (you will need high-speed internet access):

This conference is an excerpt from the CAFE in the Classroom: Helping Children Visualize Literacy Goals DVD, which presents Joan and Gail's system for integrating assessment and goal-setting into daily literacy workshops in K-5 classrooms. For more details and ordering information, click on the link below:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/products/item11.cfm

More from "The Sisters"

Simply Beautiful DVD

Classrooms don't have to be dank and dreary places - in fact, teachers are discovering that more inviting classrooms create more opportunities for learning. In Simply Beautiful , Gail and Joan visit the classrooms of five new teachers to help each one deal with specific design challenges. For information on purchasing Simply Beautiful and to view more sample footage from the series, click on this link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/products/item8.cfm






CAFE in the Classroom DVD/CD Workshop Kit

Assessing young readers involves more than determining a reading level and moving them onto the next. Gail and Joan developed the CAFÉ assessment system to help elementary students understand and master different strategies used by successful readers. CAFÉ is an acronym for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding Vocabulary, and the system includes goal-setting with students in individual conferences, posting of goals on a whole-class board, developing small group instruction based on clusters of students with similar goals, and targeting whole-class instruction based on emerging student needs. For information on purchasing CAFE in the Classroom and to view more sample footage from the series, click on this link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/products/item11.cfm

"The Sisters" and Choice Literacy

Gail and Joan partner with Choice Literacy to present many of their ideas as they are developed throughout the school year. For more information on membership benefits at Choice Literacy, click on this link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/10.cfm

Want just a sample of Choice Literacy's content, before deciding if you want a paid membership? Subscribe to The Big Fresh, our FREE weekly e-newsletter for literacy leaders, by filling in the box below. Over 8000 literacy leaders from throughout the globe subscribe to The Big Fresh:

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