We were filming some literacy lessons in a Maine school a couple weeks ago. The discussion among the teachers after the lessons naturally segued into preparations for the end of the year. Carolyn, a veteran teacher in the group, shared how her classroom clean-up has changed over the years.

"The biggest mistake I made early in my career was taking down the wall displays too soon at the end of the year. You want to get a head start, and feel like you are making progress, so it's tempting to take down bulletin boards a week or more before school is out. But that sent a message to my kids - we've taken down our thinking and hard work from throughout the year, so our thinking and hard work for this year is over. Now we sort through work, desks, folders in the week or two before the year ends....but we save taking down the bulletin boards for the last day."

Carolyn was speaking in a group that included a couple novice teachers, and you could see the wheels turning in their heads as they revised their plans for end-of-the-year clean-up. It only makes sense - if we start the year with bare walls, and slowly fill them up with our best thinking throughout the year, no wonder students perceive emptying the walls is akin to emptying our minds.

So how do we transition to the summer months? We are moving into the season of cleaning, sorting, and closure. We're starting a collection of features to help with that transition in the Big Fresh. Over the coming weeks, we'll post articles and videos on sorting through materials, using learning from this year to plan for next, and reorganizing classroom libraries and book rooms before shutting them down for a stretch.

This week we start with some advice on preparing students for thoughtful, independent summer reading. Enjoy!

Brenda Power

Editor, Choice Literacy

www.choiceliteracy.com

Free for All

We spend all year helping students learn to be thoughtful, independent readers...and then we send them off for the summer with a list of required books we've chosen for them to read. Or we promise them a coupon for pizza and cupcakes in September if they plow through enough titles. Maybe there is a better way? Franki Sibberson shares her strategies for helping students sort through and plan what reading will be most helpful and enjoyable to them over the summer. The process begins a few weeks before the year is out to allow students to take responsibility for their summer reading. Franki includes a simple student planning template to start classroom conversations about summer reading:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/345.cfm

NCTE has posted a terrific article chock-full of web resources and lesson links on summer reading preparation. (All links are open now at the site, but some will expire for non-NCTE members in 10 days):

http://www.ncte.org/elem/content/127259.htm

We've launched our biggest promotion of 2007 - the PDPalooza! summer site license and DVD sale Save 33% to 60% on site/license DVD combos, with the best prices of 2007. If your school already has a site license, you can do a "rollover" and save even more:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/346.cfm

For Members Only

While it may be too early to take materials off classroom walls, it's never too soon to think about what displays have worked well, and which ones might be changed next fall. The Sisters (Gail Boushey and Joan Moser) give a rundown of what's included on the "Community Language Board" in this five-minute video tour - an everchanging display of vocabulary words from read-alouds, sight words, and alternative words and phrases compiled by the class all year long:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/347.cfm

Late in the school year can sometimes be a good time to try new things - not only for classroom teachers, but for literacy coaches. Jennifer Allen tries one morning of group observations among the new teachers group, rather than the standard individual visits to demonstration classrooms. In this article, she writes about how she will carry the learning from the experiment into fall "partner" observations. The essay is packed with goodies - video excerpts of a 5th grade writing workshop, team debrief, and study group discussion, plus sample completed observation forms:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/348.cfm

We've posted the last feature in our three-part series on closure activities. These quick "time-capsule" suggestions not only close out the year for a study group or faculty - they will give you great fodder for the first meeting of the next school year:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/349.cfm

And from the Choice Literacy archives, if you're looking for a literacy-themed project to celebrate with families the literate lives of their children, Andie Cunningham's "Honor Books" are a wonderful gift to create as an end-of-the-year gift that will be cherished:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/149.cfm

That's all for this week!