In this One Thing You Might Try… blog post, Grace Choi shares her approach to the start of the school day and encourages teachers to swap out the Morning Work in favor of a Morning Choice time full of play, talk, and connection.
Ditching the Morning Work (One Thing You Might Try . . .)
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Centering Student Talk in Shared Reading (One Thing You Might Try . . .)
In this One Thing You Might Try… blog post, Andrea Castellano shares the Collaborative Shared Reading Protocol—a shared reading strategy that keeps engaging text and student talk at its center.
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Joyful Learning Through Play (One Thing You Might Try . . .)
In this One Thing You Might Try… blog post, Wendy Rodrigues Fu writes about the power of child-centered classroom play and the benefits for kids of all ages.
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Getting to Know Our Students with Identity Interviews (One Thing You Might Try . . .)
In this One Thing You Might Try… blog post, Christy Thompson, a literacy teacher and co-author of Hands Down, Speak Out, writes about identity interviews as a powerful strategy for getting to know students.
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The First 26 Days of Kindergarten: Learning Letters and Sounds with a Sense of Urgency (One Thing You Might Try . . .)
In this One Thing You Might Try… blog post, Carolyn Helmers, a kindergarten teacher and co-author of Intentional From The Start: Guiding Emergent Readers in Small Groups, shares a powerful way to get started with letter name and sound learning in kindergarten right from the start.
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Cultivating a Climate of Wellness in the Classroom (One Thing You Might Try . . .)
In this One Thing You Might Try . . . blog post, Alexis Shepard writes about the practice of using wellness checks as a social emotional learning tool.
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Wordle for Word Study—Kids Love it Too (One Thing You Might Try . . .)
In this One Thing You Might Try . . . blog post, kindergarten teacher and co-author of Intentional From the Start, Carolyn Helmers, shares how she’s using Wordle as an engaging and meaningful phonics experience for her students.
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Six Ways to Use Elkonin Boxes Across Your Literacy Block (One Thing You Might Try . . .)
In this One Thing You Might Try . . . blog post, Susan Vincent, coauthor of Intentional From the Start, shares six practical ways to integrate Elkonin sound boxes into literacy instruction with early readers.
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Reconsidering the Early Childhood Author Study (One Thing You Might Try . . .)
In this One Thing You Might Try . . . blog post, teacher Kerry Elson tells the story of what happened when she began to rethink the traditional author study she did with her kindergarteners and instead designed a new author-illustrator study around Donald Crews.
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In this One Thing You Might Try . . . blog post, Lakeya Omogun tells the story of a small mailbox that had a big impact on students’ willingness to share their ideas and their sense of belonging to the classroom community.
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