What do you think is the toughest genre to write? Poetry? Technical Manuals?

My vote goes to letters of recommendation. When I was a college professor, mid-December always found me with a stack of requests from my students, novice teachers who would soon be completing internships and heading into full-time work.

Here was the challenge - these 20 young educators were all vying in the same pool of applicants for the handful of jobs that would be advertised in our small rural state. I couldn't cheat and say the same things about a few of them (though lord knows I was tempted), and I had to be fair if I wanted my opinion to have any credibility with the principals and teachers on the hiring committees who all knew me well.

I learned to look for the telling anecdote, the story or experience that could express in some unique way each person's strengths. By late fall my desk was covered with scraps of paper, post-its, jottings on envelopes with my shorthand "Carrie Goosebumps breakthrough" or "Andi guitar science" - gibberish with just enough detail to jog my memory about the story I would tell that captured that young teacher's personality.

And most importantly, I learned how to pepper my letters with red-flag phrases these novice teachers might not notice, but would surely capture the attention of the hiring committee. "Andie is working on her skills in collaborating with peers" or "Carrie has made progress in attending to details for projects..." These were phrases that alerted committees to skills that were not fully developed yet.

This week, we've got an intriguing feature from Suzy Kaback, who asks young teachers to write a letter of recommendation for themselves, and then shares the letters with their mentors. The mentors learn so much in the process they decide to write their own personal letters of recommendations.

I tried the activity myself this week, and found the end of the year is the perfect time to be thinking about strengths, and what I need to improve in the coming year. It's a fresh take on new year's resolutions. Brenda is definitely working on her patience, and has made progress in her technological skills. The deficiencies were easier to highlight than strengths, which is often the case when we're thinking about ourselves.

This would be a fascinating activity for teacher-mentor teams, or a study group. Literacy coaches could use the information to help develop personalized professional development plans. Most of all, it gives everyone a chance to remember some of the gifts colleagues bring to the community. Recommend yourself as you head into the new year, and don't be surprised if you find you're overqualified for much of what you do.

This is the last Big Fresh newsletter in 2008. We have our annual winter break over the next two weeks, and we'll be back on January 3rd with a new issue. As we close out the year, I want to thank you all for your support of Choice Literacy. Every day my mailbox is flooded with newsletters, coupon offers, web links, blog posts, and other materials from education publishers. I'm reminded continually of how much information is available, how little time there is to read it,and how grateful I am you spend some of your precious minutes each week visiting Choice Literacy.

The newsletter started in August 2006 with 88 readers, and we've grown to over 24,000 readers in 70+ countries. It's been a phenomenal year of learning and expansion for us here at Choice Literacy. Our goal for 2009 is simple - to keep earning your trust each week by delivering content to your mailbox that is worthy of your time.

From the home office, Shelly and I wish you the best of holidays and a true break from routines and responsibilities. We'll be back in the new year!

Brenda Power

Editor, Choice Literacy

Free for All

Suzy Kaback asks her students to write letters of recommendations for themselves, and finds the activity ripples across the school mentoring community. This exercise is a terrific catalyst for creating personal improvement plans:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/781.cfm

For high school students, ReadWriteThink has a lesson series based upon a John Updike poem with a similar theme, though the path to it is more literary. The goal is to help students consider what they might be doing in five years, and what they need to do to get there:

http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=943

ReadWriteThink also made the list of favorite sites for free lessons on the web in Edutopia's 2008 Annual Survey. Other picks include Thinkfinity, Merlot, and BrainPOP. You can access their choices and a teacher discussion of the list at this link:

http://www.edutopia.org/best-site-download-free-lessons-2008

Last week we recommended www.playlist.com as a terrific source for free online music based on musicians and styles of your choice. Subscriber Kim Storey recommends Pandora as an even better choice, since you only have to type in one song or artist and a "station" is created for you. She wrote, " You can create your own stations for music in your classroom by artist, song, genre, etc. and it is free! I have stations with all instrumental music (Chris Botti, Jim Brickman) and Pandora also has great seasonal music to listen to at home." You can give the service a whirl at this link:

http://www.pandora.com/

If you have time in this busy season for a one-minute jolt of fun, we have a holiday classic for you - from the Choice Literacy Archives, last year's blooper reel from The Sisters (Joan Moser and Gail Boushey):

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/503.cfm

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A common dilemma for teachers in mid-December - what to do over the next couple weeks when the schedule is disrupted with special events and you have an extra 10-15 minutes while waiting or transitioning back into the routine? Read alouds to the rescue! Franki Sibberson has suggestions for read-alouds that encourage kids to participate and make use of all of that pent-up energy:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/744.cfm

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan in "Why and Watch Me" present some teacher question and reflection prompts for helping struggling readers understand why and how reading is a meaning-making process:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/765.cfm

Holiday break is often a good midyear checkpoint for considering what's going well with the use of walls for anchor charts and vocabulary learning, and what might need to be revised or redesigned. This week's video from the Choice Literacy Archives features The Sisters (Joan Moser and Gail Boushey) explaining the concept of the community language board - a wall that is a repository for interesting words from read-alouds, charts of class texts, and other language learning tools:

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

In quiet moments, winter is the time many of us pause and think about the things we cherish, and what we need to let go of in our classrooms and lives. Choice Literacy's Poet Laureate Shirley McPhillips has a beautiful new poem and reflection, "The Porch in August: Letting It Be," in which she reminds us "in the face of all that tugs at us from the past and from what's to come, we can step into the moments of the day with our students and take pleasure in what we find there." Such wise words for the end of the year:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/751.cfm

Finally, two site resources If you have a little extra time over the holidays and want to catch up on what you've missed recently at Choice Literacy. All 115 issues of the newsletter are available in the Big Fresh Archives:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/department62.cfm

The Annotated Archives section of the site is where you can access brief descriptions and links to all 600 features currently available:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/department27.cfm

That's all for this week!