This weekend I heard a story that freed up a lot of time for me - I hope it does the same for you. "The Sisters" (Joan Moser and Gail Boushey) shared the tale of a child who was cleaning up her room before her mother arrived home from a trip. The girl threw dozens of little items in her toy box - Legos, trinkets, Matchbox cars. She then placed larger items on top - dolls, boxed puzzles, games - only to find the lid of the toy box wouldn't shut.

Her father came in to help, and explained, "You need to take everything out. Always put the largest items in first. The small items will fit around the large items."

Joan and Gail used the story to illustrate a classroom design principle - if we want to redesign our classrooms, we need to take everything out of the room, and begin by putting the big, important things in place first. These "big things" aren't just physical items, but an expression of our belief systems. For example, if we believe a large meeting area is crucial, that goes in place first. We work our way down to the smaller items...and in doing so, discover what we value most.

If we don't take this approach of giving space first to what is most important, we end up losing room for some of the things we prize most. Many of the "smaller" items we may value less (like a teacher desk and instructional materials storage) can end up taking up much of the space needed for the meeting area that is crucial for building the class community day by day.

While it's a great design principle for classrooms, the story of the toy box made me rethink my plans and schedule over the next few months. I scoured my calendar, and discovered a couple items that were taking up a lot of space (and causing a lot of stress!) in my professional life. I ended up canceling plans to attend a conference, and nixed a project for the spring. In the scheme of my priorities for the year, these two activities were tinkertoys. But they were taking up a lot of energy and planning time, crowding out the important projects that deserved more of my attention.

When you flip through your calendar and look at your plans for the next few months, are there any activities that are already causing undue stress? Is there a way to streamline or even eliminate a couple of them? For me, the conference was a trip I made every year and took for granted as being essential. But the truth is, it's not really necessary to do my job well, and I wasn't looking forward to taking the time for it this year.

We can so easily get locked into certain events, activities or rituals year after year, that we may not notice they aren't as large or important in our professional lives as they once were. If they are making us scramble to find space for the new "big things" that need our attention, we need to set them aside. They may still fit in our lives - but perhaps they will be smaller or come at a different time of the year.

This week we've got an interview with Spunk and Bite author Arthur Plotnik, as well as a wonderful excerpt from the book that includes many great weblinks for word learning. Plus more as always. Enjoy!

Brenda Power

Editor, Choice Literacy

www.choiceliteracy.com

Free for All

We've posted the first part of a two-part interview with Arthur Plotnik, author of Spunk and Bite and many other terrific books exploring links between writing, language, and style. In this week's excerpt, "Grammar is a Tool That Evolves in Our Hands," we talked about the challenge of editing and support student writers without taking over their drafts, as well the place of standard English instruction in writing workshops:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/468.cfm

We've also provided a wonderful excerpt from Spunk and Bite, if the book is new to you. "Writers' Words, Drops by Dottle" is a playful take on word choice in writing, and it includes many intriguing links to word learning and vocabulary resources on the web (my favorite is the "Worthless Word of the Day"):

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/469.cfm

"Who, What, When, and Where of Writing Rituals" is a brief article from the National Writing Project that takes a look at the quirky rituals of famous authors through history, and connects them with real-life habits of young writers in and out of school. This short piece would be a good focus reading for a study group discussion of writing workshop routines:

http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/456

Thanks to all who joined us in Rockland, Maine this past weekend for the fall Choice Literacy Workshops. It was such fun to meet so many of you from the U.S. and Canada. Registration is open for the Choice Literacy winter literacy coaching and reading assessment workshops in Clearwater, Florida. These will be our only workshop offerings this winter - details are available at this link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/454.cfm

For Members Only

Are students in your classroom or school constantly bumping into each other and jostling books and desks because there are just too many bodies in classrooms that are too small? "Tight Spaces" is a photo essay in the design series by The Sisters (Gail Boushey and Joan Moser). We've posted part one of the photo essay which includes some ingenious tips for freeing up traffic paths and clustering literacy work areas:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/472.cfm

Have you ever observed a video of a conference between a teacher and child, and wondered what happened the next day? This week's video is of Ruth Shagoury conferring with Leonela, a young English language learner making connections between her drawings and emerging knowledge of letters and sounds. We've included video from Ruth and Leonela's conference the following day, which moves the learning in surprising directions. The feature includes an alphabet template used for assessment and reference during the conferences:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/473.cfm

Franki Sibberson's booklists are always popular with members - this week she shares one on strong new female characters in children's books. If Nancy Drew was an important literary role model for you when you were a preteen, you might enjoy a peek at the sassy new gals who are influencing our tweens:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/471.cfm

From the Mailbag: We hear from a couple different members every week who have had their newsletters stopped by their Internet Service Provider (ISP). Schools tech departments and commercial ISPs are continually upgrading their spam filters, and sometimes The Big Fresh is collateral damage. If you want to ensure uninterrupted delivery of the newsletter, ask your tech support person to whitelist the www.choiceliteracy.com and www.aweber.com domains (Aweber is our newsletter delivery service). You can also email tech support at commercial ISPs and make the same request. Keeping us in your email address book is good insurance, too.

That's all for this week!