CCIRAblog

Squeeze It In!

Weaving Read-Aloud Experiences Into Your Published Literacy Program

by Maria Walther, 2027 Featured Speaker at CCIRA

What if you didn’t have to choose between your published literacy program and the picture books you love? What if you could squeeze them in and make your literacy instruction even richer in the process? When you surround your published literacy program with engaging and varied read-aloud experiences, you create opportunities to build community, spark curiosity, develop language comprehension, and deepen students’ thinking, all while supporting the literacy goals you’re already teaching.

Start With the Theme or Topic

Suppose your literacy program has a unit focused on the theme of community. Rather than relying solely on the texts provided in the program, bring in a few picture books like the ones below that invite learners to explore the idea of community from different perspectives.

A read-aloud experience can serve as an entryway into any topic. Before students begin the weekly text, you might use a picture book to activate background knowledge, introduce key vocabulary, or simply get kids wondering. So, you’re not taking time away from your literacy curriculum. You’re using a carefully-selected picture books to make the curriculum more complex.

Three Ways to Squeeze It In

1. Read Picture Books Like You Read Chapter Books

One of my favorite ways to make room for more read-aloud experiences is to stop thinking of a picture book as something that has to be read from beginning to end in one sitting. Instead, read it a little bit at a time. A few pages today. A few more tomorrow. This gives you more time to think aloud and invite readers to . . .

Turn and talk
Make an inference
Notice an author’s craft move
Return to an illustration
Predict what might happen next

When you spread a picture book across several days, you create more time for collaborative conversations—an essential element of an impactful interactive read aloud. As an added bonus, your students begin to anticipate the next day’s reading. That little bit of suspense can make read-aloud time feel even more exciting!

2. Integrate Read-Aloud Experiences Into Content Area Instruction

Read-aloud experiences can extend far beyond your literacy block. Picture books are helpful resources for building knowledge across the day. Find a compelling nonfiction picture book that gives learners something new to ponder when studying topics like these:

Choose a text that gets kids saying, “Wait! I want to learn more!” A content-rich picture book can lead to inquiry, provide background knowledge, introduce vocabulary, or give students a shared text to revisit as they learn more. Read-aloud experiences don’t have to be separate from your curriculum. They can be woven right through it.

3. Use a Simple Multi-Day Structure

If you’re wondering how to make a picture book fit into your program’s weekly plan, try this five-day approach from More Ramped-Up Read Alouds:

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5
Introduce theme or reading strategies using a picture book read-aloud experience.	“Shared reading” of the story of the week per publisher’s directions.	“Close reading” of story of the week per publisher’s directions.	“Response to read” with the story of the week per publisher’s directions.	Share and compare the story of the week with a picture book read-aloud experience.

A structure like this gives you permission to linger with a book instead of rushing through it. It also allows you to connect ideas and vocabulary throughout the week. The goal isn’t to squeeze an entire additional lesson into every day. It’s to make small, intentional read-aloud moments count.

Squeeze More From Every Read-Aloud Experience

One of the reasons I love weaving picture books into a published program is that a single book can support so many goals as you can see in the graphic below.

And sometimes, the most important thing a book does is simply give you something to talk about together. Think about how often you can say, “Remember when we read…”

“Remember when we read A Room With a View (Ho, 2026) and we inferred Oliver’s feelings?”

“Remember when we read about communities and noticed how living in a community helps people?”

“Remember that word we learned last week?”

Those shared book experiences become part of the fabric of your classroom and give readers a common bank of texts to draw upon.

Observe Your Readers

There’s another benefit to squeezing in read-aloud experiences: kid watching.

When you step outside the predictable structure of a published lesson, you get opportunities to observe readers in different ways.

Who eagerly shares an idea?
Who makes connections between texts?
Who can infer?
Who uses a new vocabulary word?
Who notices something in an illustration that others missed?
Who changes their thinking after hearing a classmate’s perspective?
Who has a lot to say but needs support getting those ideas onto paper?

These moments can provide valuable anecdotal information about your students as readers, thinkers, listeners, and talkers.

And Don’t Forget the Joy!

Of course, we want our read-aloud experiences to support important learning goals. But we don’t want to lose sight of something equally important. Books are meant to be enjoyed. When you weave picture books throughout your published literacy program, students encounter more creators, characters, perspectives, and possibilities.

That matters.

Because when you make room for joyful read-aloud experiences, you’re not just squeezing more instruction into the day. You’re carving out time for the essentials: curiosity, conversation, and a genuine love of books and reading.

Want More Ideas?

I’ll be exploring this idea and more at CCIRA conference in February in my workshop: 60 Picture Books, Endless Possibilities: Revving Up Your Read-Aloud Routine. You can also find free resources on my website, connect with me on Instagram @mariapwalther and @year4thebooks, and learn more by reading these books:

Finding the Joy

By Krista Griffin

I don’t know what kind of teaching day you have had, but I’d like to
challenge you to stop right now to think about something that brought you
joy at school today. It might be a small thing, a simple thing, or even a
surprising thing, but I bet you can think of something. Maybe a student
made an amusing joke, or your principal complimented you, or you
connected positively with a colleague. Perhaps a parent told you something
positive their child said about your teaching. Hold on to that joy moment
and we will come back to it!

As someone who has been an educator in Colorado in some form or
another for the past 33 years, I have witnessed many trends, district
mandates, legislation, curriculum changes, and hot topics in education and
I know that you have too. Now, as a teacher educator, I recognize that we
need good teachers now more than we ever have, and I’ve worked to find
the role I can play in this beyond doing my best to prepare students to be
strong literacy teachers. Understanding there doesn’t seem to be a way a
middle-aged professor can affect huge issues like teacher pay, working
conditions, or respect for the profession in any significant way, I looked for
other ways I could possibly affect this profession that I love.

One thing that I quickly found is that teacher retention is a major issue, with
a 2018 study reporting that 44% of teachers leave in their first five years.
Since research drives policy, I decided to examine the role that a focus on
joy can play in the experiences of new teachers. I created the Joy Project,
a five-year longitudinal study of new university graduates entering the
classroom in their role as the professional teacher for the first time. I knew
about the power of gratitude and how it can change mindsets, so I
wondered if joy would be similar. I also launched a study on motivation,
engagement and joy in the mandated curriculum era, turning my lens to all
teachers, not just early career ones.

After attending CCIRA and NCTE this past year, I wasn’t surprised to hear
that I wasn’t the only one focusing on these things. The word joy came up
often in the sessions I attended and always got a big response. Who isn’t
looking for joy?! But what is it exactly, and how can teachers find it? Not
surprisingly, there isn’t a one size fits all answer, because there never is in education, or in anything, really. One way of conceptualizing joy is to think
of it as something that is based on what is happening within us, as opposed
to happiness, which we can think of as something that is based on what is
happening around us. As Timothy Kanold puts it, it is “an internal action, a
daily decision to practice walking through life because of the good, and
despite the difficult, circumstances we live within.”

I know all too well that there are things in teaching that are distinctly not
joyful. This approach isn’t to minimize those things or create an
environment of toxic positivity. But one thing that is clear is that the joys of
teaching may be lost if they are not intentionally captured. Data from the
first two years of the Joy Project have solidified this premise, as early
career teachers that are keeping reflective joy journals (called “joynals”),
meeting together in joy cohorts, and writing yearly summaries all report that
these practices help them remember and focus on the things that are joyful,
rather than the things that are not. One second year teacher reports that he
remembered the positive things he wrote about in his joynal far better than
the things he didn’t write about that might not have been as joyful when
thinking back over his year. Additionally, all of the teachers in the Joy
Project are returning to years 2 and 3 of teaching next year.

Let’s turn back to the joy moment you thought of. Was it connected to
relationships with students and families, support and encouragement from
administration, or collegiality with other teachers? These are three common
themes that have come up in the Joy Project so far. You don’t have to join
the project to start your own joy journey, though. Here are three simple
things you can do to get started.
*Consider keeping a joynal to capture these moments of joy that feed your
soul.
*Start a team meeting with the question “What has brought you joy this
week?”
*Ask your students to keep joynals and to share out their joyful moments
and to reflect on this process.

Stay joyful and stay tuned. Phase 2 of The Joy Project focuses on
becoming joy mentors and ambassadors for grade level teams and whole
schools!

Dr. Krista Griffin is a professor of Literacy and Elementary Education at MSU Denver where she has taught for 14 years. Dr. Griffinhas taught in some form and in some town in Colorado for the last 33 years. She loves to read, which works out well in her line of work. She is passionate about helping new teachers find ways to make literacy engaging and meaningful for their future students. Her research interests include motivation, engagement and joy in teaching and literacy, researching with children, and best practices in literacy instruction. Reach out to her at kfiedle3@msudenver.edu.

Teaching Students What To Do Instead of Asking the Chatbot

By Sarah Zerwin, CCIRA Conference Featured Speaker

“What do you notice?’

This is where my instruction starts, with a simple invitation to my students to point out the small things they notice in any kind of text. From this low-stakes starting place, students build their own meaning out of complexity following a three step meaning making process.

Step one is to Start Small with what you notice.

Step two is to Seek Connections to grow your thinking.

Step three is to Take Action by deciding what you’ve figured out and do something with it.

The Original Thought Annotation (OTA) is the most frequent Step One strategy in my classroom. On a humble sticky note, students jot down a specific text detail that grabbed their attention and then a sentence or two about what they think about it.

To Seek Connections, my students use rambling, rough writing to explore connections across a few separate OTAs, and they also use conversation with their classmates to explore and build their ideas.

Step Three looks different depending on the class. My IB English juniors take all the ideas they’ve built about our shared texts in Steps One and Two and use that thinking as the content of their official IB assessments. My sophomores take the thinking they’ve built to help them decide what they want to write about in informal weekly timed writings and in process papers toward the end of each unit.

We loop through these three steps again and again and again, offering students repeated practice in a meaning making process that shows them how to make sense of anything complex. (See my book, Step Aside: Strategies for Student-Driven Learning with Secondary Readers and Writers, for many more details about the Three Step Meaning Making Process.)

My Gmail inbox now asks if I want it to summarize an email thread for me. I have a teaching-focused AI tool at school I can use to generate instructional plans, emails to parents, and multiple choice reading comprehension questions. I can put a sizable collection of student responses into a chatbot and ask it to discern the top five themes in my students’ thinking, instantly completing a qualitative data analysis task that would take me much longer than the chatbot’s few seconds. In short, we have new tools that can save us significant time if we choose to use them, and so do our students. We and they may choose to use those tools even when we really should do the thinking on our own. It’s more critical than ever that we teach our students concrete strategies for figuring things out, using their own words to navigate and explore their thinking.

The temptation to offload thinking work to the robot brains in AI chatbots is real. Our students are hungry for guidance to help think through it. I want to create reasons in my students’ minds that will combat the temptation. After reading this open letter from a high school student to ChatGPT, my students now might think, using the chatbot might make me less creative. From reading this op-ed from a college professor, my students might stop and think, using the chatbot might get in the way of me developing some really important foundational thinking skills.

But even with these reasons floating around in their thinking, they still might opt to offload the hard thinking work to a chatbot, especially if they’re not sure where to start. That’s the impact of a simple strategy that yields rich, student-generated thinking. A strategy they can use when they’re trying to make sense of any complexity, like a conversation they have with someone or a news report they read or see. This meaning making work is not just for poems and novels in classrooms. The reading and writing work we do in ELA classrooms is skill building for life.

A simple three step meaning making process teaches students what to do on their own, without the AI crutch.

The challenge is convincing students that they can make sense of complexity and that what seems like extra work up against the lightning speed of a chatbot is worth their time.

Our students are hungry for our guidance. Let’s offer it to them. Not just guidance about new and evolving AI tools, but also what to do instead of asking the chatbot to make sense of things for them.

It’s simple. Start here: What do you notice?

Sarah M. Zerwin teaches language arts at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado. She is the author of Point-Less: An English Teacher’s Guide to More Meaningful Grading and Step Aside: Strategies for Student-Driven Learning with Secondary Readers and Writers. See more at sarahmzerwin.com.

School Morning 2026

By Louise Borden, CCIRA Conference Speaker

Last August, my friend Patrick Allen invited me to write a blog post for CCIRA as I’ll be speaking to teachers this February about my work as a writer of books for young readers. The other posts I’ve read on the CCIRA website are by amazing educators who are mentors to teachers across the country. Their words are inspiring ones about engaging students, growing readers and writers, and designing strategies for lifelong learning.

I immediately worried: Whatever could I offer in a post to veteran teachers?

Due to travels and procrastination, I delayed in sending Patrick a post. Then, today, while watching a huge snowstorm from the windows of my writing room, a storm that’s affecting most of our nation, I at last found words to share with you.

Over the past decades, I’ve visited hundreds of schools across America from Maine to Florida to California. As a writer and as a visiting author, I consider engaging with students and teachers, and walking their hallways, to be an important and inspiring part of my life. Because of this, eight or so of my books have school settings. Additionally, several of my historical picture books mention school in their stories. And . . .always . . . teachers are my heroes.

In 2012, my husband and I were living in the Washington, D.C. metro area when the tragedy at Sandy Hook began to unfold on a December school morning at 9:35 a.m.

After hearing the terrible news, I recall standing outside of Union Station and looking at the American flags fluttering in the breeze around the entrance drive. And I thought about all the students and all the first graders I’d had the honor of meeting during my author visits. That very December, our oldest grandchild was a first grader – in Colorado.

Since that day, I’ve kept a list of the names of the Sandy Hook first graders near my desk. And on that paper are the names of the teachers and principal lost that morning. Over the years, while our country rushed ahead into the future, the list was my steady way of remembrance. As we sadly know, other tragic school shootings have followed.

Both of our daughters (one is a teacher) have children of school age . . . and each morning when they drop off our grandkids at school in Denver and Atlanta, there are hugs or quick goodbyes with everyone ready for the adventure of the day.

All of us – you in the teaching community – and I as a visitor walking across countless school parking lots to enter through those front doors, have seen this same morning interaction: the goodbyes and the love, between parents and their children, before the day unfolds for teachers and students.

I’ve been thinking a lot in the past few weeks about Renee Good – born in Colorado Springs – who was fatally shot in Minneapolis on January 7 after dropping off her 6 year-old son Timmy at his school.

January 7 was a Wednesday, and I assume it was a normal post-holiday vacation morning for Timmy as he said goodbye to his mom . . . a boy who had lost his father just two years before. Timmy probably entered his school with a sense of safety and familiarity and walked up the hall to his kindergarten room, maybe with classmates in their puffy winter coats beside him, chattering away with their backpacks full of kindergarten dreams . . . or maybe Timmy was alone as he hurried up the hall. Sixyear-olds always have an energy and an eagerness in their steps, yes?

I don’t know the name of Timmy’s teacher . . . or what that teacher’s classroom looks like. I don’t know anything about Timmy’s school.

I only know that Timmy’s mother, an English major who wrote poetry, was shot in the head at 9:37 a.m. Central Time . . . while Timmy was in his classroom, or maybe he was lining up with other kindergarteners to go to Library or Art.

What was he doing in that tragic moment . . . in the routine of a school morning . . . snow scattered across the landscape outside his classroom windows?

In that moment, at 9:37 a.m., Timmy’s entire educational life was a bright horizon before him.

This winter . . . kindergarten.

Then next year . . . first grade!

Each year unfolding into the upper grades.

On January 7, Timmy’s future held many teachers . . . waiting for him in their classrooms in the years to come.

I can only imagine the deep caring and love that any teacher must offer to a student who has lost his or her parent. My own dad at age 12 and his younger brother at 11 lost their father to a sudden heart attack. I’ve never reflected until today, while writing this post, on what teachers at Beechwood Elementary during that week in 1931 said to the two Walker brothers when they returned to school after the days of mourning an unexpected death.

What are the words to offer a child who is stricken with shock or grief or fear?

Thank goodness that today, in 2026, we have school counselors across the nation who have the training and the hearts to bring comfort and courage to bereaved students and their teachers.

Perhaps some of you have had to be that teacher . . . enveloping your students with compassion and patience after they’ve endured a loss at a young age.

The news stories and the politicians will debate videos and accounts and the sad moments before and after what happened at 9:27 a.m. Central Time to a 37-year-old Minneapolis mom, born in Colorado.

But we, those who will attend CCIRA in February, work in schools. It’s a true honor to learn with, and from, children. Each school morning, we walk down hallways echoing with the voices of our staff and our students.

And sometimes we walk past the classrooms of kindergarteners who are just learning what the routines and rhythms of education are all about.

We’ll remember not the politics of January 7, 2026 but in our hearts we’ll carry Timmy’s teachers, our colleagues who’ll be beside him in the days and years to come as he continues his journey of education.

And I will say prayers of thanksgiving that TEACHERS are the ones who shine lights of hope and healing in this world. Your weekdays are crammed minute by minute – and with schedules and responsibilities that neighbors and family have no clue about.

On this January Sunday, as the predicted big snow (yes, it is now here!) is sweeping across many states and school parking lots, I offer you no strategies for reading, no wise words from my work as the author of 33 children’s books.

But I thank you for being dedicated teachers – who show up on school mornings before your students are dropped off by their moms and dads with a hug or a smile or words of love.

Thank you for your classrooms, your dedication, and your passion. Let us all together beam courage across the snowy miles to Minnesota to bring healing to Timmy and to the staff at his school. In this moment on a school morning, in this one historic and tragic moment, you too, are this boy’s teacher.

I look forward to meeting you this February in Denver . . . and thanking you in person for your life work with America’s children, leading them to literacy with love.

“To consider yourself a writer as you move about the world is . . .a beautiful way to live, a form of open-mindedness, even in terrible times. Here life is, going on all around. It is a form of writing itself; if you do it, you are a writer. It’s likely to lead to putting words down on a page, at least a few, but even if it doesn’t, it can make you feel alive. Lucky. Luck you can make yourself.” – Elizabeth McCracken from A LONG GAME – Notes on Writing Fiction

Louise Borden graduated from Denison University with a degree in history. She taught first graders and preschoolers and later was a part-owner of a bookstore in Cincinnati, Ohio. In addition to writing children’s books, she also speaks regularly to young students about the writing process. Her books include Good Luck, Mrs. K!, which won the Christopher Medal, and The A+ Custodian. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and you can visit her at LouiseBorden.com.

Writing Ideas: Keeping it Real

by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, 2026 Conference Featured Author

Right now, as millions flirt with AI partners, discuss suicide with ChatGPT, doomscroll, laugh at fake videos of bunnies jumping on trampolines, soothe loneliness by talking with Alexa, and settle in for hours of gaming in both dingy basements and luxurious leather chairs, snow falls softly outside. One cardinal swoops across a cold winter sky. This small, feathered flash of red may go unnoticed though; many of us are looking at digital windows instead of out of glass ones. Our bodies are in the real world, but our minds are in the cloud.

As writing teachers, we show our charges how to analyze mentor texts, try craft moves, and study sentence structure. And while writing craft matters, it is important to remember that literature does not exist to be deconstructed. We humans write to share ideas, explore feelings, teach concepts, tell stories, and express opinions. Humans write to connect with other humans. Artists write and paint and dance and sing about their ideas. Yet often, our young writers lament, “I don’t have any ideas.”

In this very-virtual time in history, we must remind our students that the concrete world of our senses is a meaningful and worthwhile place to spend time and examine. It is our job as teachers of writing to help students find ideas by (re)connecting them to the actual, physical world of planet earth. How do we help our digital-native students believe they can conjure and elaborate on their own ideas without relying on Gemini?

Turn Tech Off When Not in Use – We can turn interactive whiteboards on when we use them and turn them off when we are finished using them. This models intention – we turn technology on when we need to use it. Screens need not constantly stare at us.

Read Books Straight Through – We can read whole poems and books straight through, allowing students to get lost in texts. By reading whole texts aloud, we give students new worlds to inhabit and imagine. Listening to whole texts focuses and lengthens attention and builds empathy. We can always return to these texts later to evaluate craft moves or character traits.

Visit Nature Outside – We can take children outside to make shadows, gather oak leaves, watch a robin look for worms, reminding these children that our world is beautiful, interesting, and worth learning about. We can teach them the names of a few local plants and animals so that they will recognize and care about these plants and animals as fellow living things.

Bring Nature Inside – We can set up a wee nature table, inviting students to share found shells and stones and pinecones, helping them notice and wonder about pocket-sized, free treasures. Many of the best treasures, after all, are free, and free is for everyone.

Keep Notebooks – We can write for a few minutes each day, by hand, in paper notebooks. By doing so, we help students develop agency as they realize one need not be plugged in to create. Writing in notebooks, students realize that thoughts come through the motion of a hand on the blankness of a page with the inkness of a pen.

Be Present – We can turn our own phones off when in our students’ presence. When we do this, we silently say, “I will not be distracted from this important time we have together.”

Make Art – We can make things with our hands, folding origami stars or painting with watercolors during a ten minute transition. Students deserve to know that their growing bodies can manipulate materials in the 3-D world as well as their thumbs can manipulate pixels in the 2-D world.

Make Peace with Quiet – We can provide a few moments of quiet, allowing students to put their heads down or close their eyes or breathe deeply. While they (and we) may be uncomfortable at first, they (and we) will come to trust that every quiet space need not be filled with beeping and Googling. Brains think new thoughts when given such space.

Engage Students’ Senses – We can offer our students tiny sensory experiences: smelling cinnamon, touching sheepskin, tasting cider. While video game characters fly and shoot aliens, human bodies touch and taste and smell and hear and see. We cannot control the hours of online time students spend at home, but we can feed their senses as we look at light through a prism or pass around a scrap of velvet. We can remind students that human beings have senses and that ideas come through these senses.

Listen and Model – When students say “I don’t know what to write,” we can listen. Rather than suggesting topics, we can share bits of our own real lives and pages from our own paper notebooks, modeling how we find ideas through the act of writing, modeling how we allow our thinking to change and do not expect perfect ideas to arrive fully formed. We can trust that – through our trust – young writers can and will welcome ideas of their own.

Yes, AI is everywhere. Yes, many parents know students’ grades before students do, and many young people are digitally tracked wherever they go. Yes, children and adults both play hours of video games daily. Yes, it is difficult to know what is real and what is not real online. It’s all true. But so are cardinals true. So is snow true. And a most precious role of the writing teacher is to point to cardinals, to encourage students to touch snow. For real.

For ideas’ sake.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is author of several poetry and picture books for children, including Forest Has a Song, With My Hands: Poems About Making Things,Write! Write! Write!, and her latest, The Sound of Kindness. A former elementary school teacher and longtime writing teacher with a master’s degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, Amy is also author of the professional book Poems Are Teachers: How Studying Poetry Strengthens Writing in All Genres. She has blogged for children at The Poem Farm since 2010 and is interested in your ideas about keeping it real in education. Find Amy online HERE, and watch for her forthcoming book, John and Betsy, a story told through poems.